Hey all,
I just received my Liquid Carbon about two days ago (helps to be located in California - it only took one day of shipping to get here), and I wanted to share some first impressions.
To begin, I've had it playing for about 30 hours so far. At this point, I've paired it up with my NuForce UDH-100 (has an AKM 4390 DAC chip) and my FiiO E10K (TI PCM5102 DAC chip) through each of their line-outs. Through the balanced mode, I've listened to my Hifiman HE-400i, HE-1000, and Sennheiser HD700. Through the single ended out, I've listened to my self-modded Fostex T50RP and my Etymotic ER4PT (with a P-to-S converter that transforms it into the ER4S).
Some notes:
- Runs kind of warm - even in cold winter weather. If it runs this warm now, oh boy I can't wait to see how hot it will get during California summers.
- The balanced out is really powerful. Even when listening to the HE1000 I don't think I've need to crank the volume knob beyond 12 o'clock. (Although I am a somewhat quiet listener.)
- Drives every headphone I own with absolute authority, with perhaps the exception of the HE1000 - and that's only because I've heard the HE1000 on extremely expensive setups, like with Hifiman's crazy tube headphone and speaker amp (EF-1000).
- Single-ended headphone out is no slouch (drove my modded T50RP, which is far from being the most efficient thing, pretty well.) And you get the basic qualities of the LC. But I think it's also far from what the amp is fully capable of, though I will have to do further testing on some of my headphones to confirm this.
- Single-ended out is pretty clean in terms of not having noise. At least, I couldn't any humming or anything with my ER4PT IEMs plugged in, with the music paused and the volume knob turned all the way to max on 1x gain.
- The bass really kicks on this amp. That was the first thing I noticed when listening to my balanced headphones. Heck, I didn't even know the HD700 was capable of that kind of bass.
- Even with the strong bass, I still feel that the LC overall has a neutral sound signature. Bass is strong, but mids are still very prominent and the treble doesn't sound rolled off to me. It won't transform any headphone into something different (for example, it didn't change my ER4PT into anything close to a bass monster)
- Really clean sounding, really transparent amp. I don't know what kind of magic Alex Cavalli has done here, but somehow the amp has even made my HD700 more enjoyable and less annoying to listen to. Sure, the HD700 has treble peaks, but they are only annoying in that they are present and not that those peaks also sound harsh, if I'm making any sense here.
- On the topic of transparency, if different DACs sound different, it will show up fairly obviously on the LC.
- The soundstage is really a highlight on the LC. Fairly wide soundstage, but what's really impressive is the depth. Extremely deep soundstage, but it doesn't sound incoherent or at odds with the width.
- Separation, imaging (distinguishing sounds from left to right), and layering (distinguishing sounds closer and further away) are also things that really impressed me. The really black background allows sounds to become ridiculously easy to distinguish from each other without sounding incoherent. This is both in terms of separation and imaging. Seriously, the amp made all the difference with my 400i - I honestly never knew that it could image and layer that well. Same with the HD700 - the LC gives it such a 3D soundstage that I was seriously in awe for almost all of the music I listened to.
In summary, I really like this amp. Absolutely worth every cent of the $600 I paid for it. And it's probably worth more than that.
Great job Alex!
