[sling5s]

Adding a Schiit Wyred solved the bright treble for me on the Hugo. The Hugo itself is so detailed and neutral but adding the Wyred really rounded off the rough edges.

How significant was the Wyred in rounding off the treble?
I guess I should research the option if I decide to sell the Dac 19 and just go with the Mojo.

 

[sheldaze]

  Did some comparisons, Audio Gd Dac 19 with Mojo out of LC and HD800.
The Audio Gd Dac 19 has slightly more body and weight. But the biggest difference is that the Dac 19 is warmer than the Mojo. The Mojo treble is definitely brighter. On some tracks with treble energy, the Mojo makes me cringe. But with the Dac 19, it's there, but it does not make me cringe. The Mojo is supposed to be warmer than the Hugo, hate to imagine how the Hugo is, being more leaner and brighter than the Mojo. To me, the Mojo is still on the bright and cold side, at least with the HD800/LC. 
 The Audio Gd Dac 19 is much better pairing with LC for the HD800. If I had warmer headphones, I would go with the Mojo. (posted also in dac 19 thread).
The Mojo sounds a clearer and more forward in it's presentation and detail. 
 
 
As for LC  (balanced) with Mojo vs Mojo SE straight out with HD800, the LC gave the HD800 bass, body, dynamics and soundstage. Straight out of the Mojo, the HD800 sounded clear and clean, but the mids sounded too thin and treble bright. Most (not everyone) on the Mojo thread says how the Mojo is such a great pairing with the HD800, I got to disagree.  Maybe I'm missing something. 

I'll give you my inputs on Monday, when my HD800 arrives. I would though be comparing Gungnir Multibit, Mojo, and Pono.
And I would be bypassing USB, using a DAP to feed both Gungnir and Mojo via COAX. Pono is of course its own DAP, so it would feed LC via line output.

 

[doctorjazz]

I use the Pono to feed my amps (Pono and ZOTL) quite a bit, but drive the HE-1000, or, at present, the acs Encore (using single ended LC, sounds great). Curious on your take with the Senns.

 

[Burtron5]

First impressions on the Liquid Carbon;
 
Thanks to the wait, I had my power cable, balanced in, balanced to headphone, and even a nice fresh set of rubber feet
at the ready. Got back from our Christmas trip and there it was! Sitting on the kitchen table crying; "Open me!"
 
It only took minutes to unpack, situate and plug in the Cavalli to the Emotiva DC-1, flip the power on and "Voila!" music!
 
But wait...not just music, rich, deep, wide, powerful detailed music with a punch!  This compared very favorably against the JDS Labs
Element that was my earlier DAC/Amp. So glad, cuz it's 3x the cost and you never know just how these things will work out.
 
I know it's day 2 and that leaves much time to burn in and mellow, deepen, etc.
 
Happy Happy, thinking Cable Company next to tryout superior headphones.
 
Currently working with HE400s, HD600, HD700.
 
Thinking HE1000 vs. HE-X, vs. anax mod HD800. Might have to hold up a bank to get there, but.....

 

[Mattyhew]

Hello all, I'm about 50 hours into the burn in process, wanted to make a quick post as my impressions seems to differ greatly from others.
 
Before I begin the headphones im using are the Fostex TH900s which are notoriously easy to drive and even on the low gain setting never get above the 10 o'clock mark. The amp is being run in single ended mode both input and output.
 
Compared with other amps I have tried at meets (Hugo/V200/WA6 to name a few), as well as A/Bing my Gilmore Lite (my previous amp) out of my dB Labs Tranq DAC, the Bass from the Carbon is severely anaemic. Messing around with an EQ suggests this is somewhere in the region of a -10 dB EQ to all freq below 80hz. 
 
I had always planned to get my TH900s changed to a balanced connector however such a drastic sound signature difference is giving me concern considering the comments about not much changing during burn in.
 
Balanced operation should be able to supply more power, however the effect of power on the TH900s is usually that it tightens up the otherwise sloppy bass.
 
Could this all be being caused by SE operation?

 

[Wildcatsare1]

Hello all, I'm about 50 hours into the burn in process, wanted to make a quick post as my impressions seems to differ greatly from others.

Before I begin the headphones im using are the Fostex TH900s which are notoriously easy to drive and even on the low gain setting never get above the 10 o'clock mark. The amp is being run in single ended mode both input and output.

Compared with other amps I have tried at meets (Hugo/V200/WA6 to name a few), as well as A/Bing my Gilmore Lite (my previous amp) out of my dB Labs Tranq DAC, the Bass from the Carbon is severely anaemic. Messing around with an EQ suggests this is somewhere in the region of a -10 dB EQ to all freq below 80hz. 

I had always planned to get my TH900s changed to a balanced connector however such a drastic sound signature difference is giving me concern considering the comments about not much changing during burn in.

Balanced operation should be able to supply more power, however the effect of power on the TH900s is usually that it tightens up the otherwise sloppy bass.

Could this all be being caused by SE operation?

What are you using as a source?

 

[Mattyhew]

What are you using as a source?

 
So the A/B setups that i'm comparing are.
 
Tidal/Foobar (FLAC) > dB Audiolabs Tranq DAC (USB) > Gilmore Lite (RCA) > TH900s
 
 
Tidal/Foobar (FLAC) > dB Audiolabs Tranq DAC (USB) > Liquid Carbon > TH900s
 
Nothing but the amp is changing, same cables etc.
 
EDIT: Repeated the test with a range of headphones i had available to me: Martin Logan Mikros 90 (portable), FLC FLC8 (IEM), ATH-AD2000s. 
 
All displayed a similar phenomenon.

 

[sheldaze]

10 decibels seems like a lot! I would say to continue to burn-in, as long as you don't hear any odd sounds, distortion, buzzes, etc. As long as the only issue is the bass is not filled in.
 
50 hours burn-in was not enough for me. But it wasn't like bass was that far off. I kept A/B comparing between Liquid Carbon and Ragnarok, and found the Ragnarok had significantly more bass, noticeably more bass, at 50 hours of burn-in on the Carbon. But I still do not think it was 10 decibels.
 
150 hours in, I really don't feel the need to A/B - the Carbon just sounds right. And perhaps contact Cavalli on Monday, if it still sounds really far off.

 

[stjj89]

Hello all, I'm about 50 hours into the burn in process, wanted to make a quick post as my impressions seems to differ greatly from others.

Before I begin the headphones im using are the Fostex TH900s which are notoriously easy to drive and even on the low gain setting never get above the 10 o'clock mark. The amp is being run in single ended mode both input and output.

Compared with other amps I have tried at meets (Hugo/V200/WA6 to name a few), as well as A/Bing my Gilmore Lite (my previous amp) out of my dB Labs Tranq DAC, the Bass from the Carbon is severely anaemic. Messing around with an EQ suggests this is somewhere in the region of a -10 dB EQ to all freq below 80hz. 

I had always planned to get my TH900s changed to a balanced connector however such a drastic sound signature difference is giving me concern considering the comments about not much changing during burn in.

Balanced operation should be able to supply more power, however the effect of power on the TH900s is usually that it tightens up the otherwise sloppy bass.

Could this all be being caused by SE operation?

I'm running my modded th900 balanced out of a dac19 and LC. I'll report back after burn in is complete on Monday. However, my initial impressions were that it sounded kinda bright and aggressive without the added bass authority that the was hoping for. On my bifrost-LC-he560 setup, however, the bass is very prominent, tight, and punchy. Might be a synergy thing.

 

[coastal1]

I don't know, there's a lot of variables between my setups and yours but I can say that the LC -> Sennhiser HD650 w/ balanced cable had great bass. I haven't A/B'd it to the very popular Bottlehead Crack + Speedball w/ good tubes that I also have and that are highly recommended and that I've enjoyed, but my first impression was that the LC had a stronger bass, definitely seemed more defined/note separation/imaging, compared to my familiarity with the Crack.

I brierly switched to SE adapter and volume was (obviously) noticeably lower, but once I turned the volume up didn't notice as big of a drop in SQ as I thought there'd be, though I didn't listen to SE very long

Hello all, I'm about 50 hours into the burn in process, wanted to make a quick post as my impressions seems to differ greatly from others.

Before I begin the headphones im using are the Fostex TH900s which are notoriously easy to drive and even on the low gain setting never get above the 10 o'clock mark. The amp is being run in single ended mode both input and output.

Compared with other amps I have tried at meets (Hugo/V200/WA6 to name a few), as well as A/Bing my Gilmore Lite (my previous amp) out of my dB Labs Tranq DAC, the Bass from the Carbon is severely anaemic. Messing around with an EQ suggests this is somewhere in the region of a -10 dB EQ to all freq below 80hz. 

I had always planned to get my TH900s changed to a balanced connector however such a drastic sound signature difference is giving me concern considering the comments about not much changing during burn in.

Balanced operation should be able to supply more power, however the effect of power on the TH900s is usually that it tightens up the otherwise sloppy bass.

Could this all be being caused by SE operation?

 

[Mattyhew]

  10 decibels seems like a lot! I would say to continue to burn-in, as long as you don't hear any odd sounds, distortion, buzzes, etc. As long as the only issue is the bass is not filled in.
 
50 hours burn-in was not enough for me. But it wasn't like bass was that far off. I kept A/B comparing between Liquid Carbon and Ragnarok, and found the Ragnarok had significantly more bass, noticeably more bass, at 50 hours of burn-in on the Carbon. But I still do not think it was 10 decibels.
 
150 hours in, I really don't feel the need to A/B - the Carbon just sounds right. And perhaps contact Cavalli on Monday, if it still sounds really far off.

 
Based on what EQ i was using i would dare to say 10 dB was being conservative.
 
I plan to finish letting the LC burn in before I make my conclusion and if it was simply that, it will have certainly made me a believer, however it was so prominent that i was surprised that i hadnt seen it commented on.

 

[sheldaze]

Errr...just connected my TH-X00. I'm not happy with it...but think I'll do a little more digging.
In truth, I think I may be using this in the worst possible way to test the Fostex headphones:
 

1. single-ended input (must be summed)
2. single-ended output (is there an EE in the house - must it be summed again?)
3. very low impedance headphone (does anyone know the single-ended output impedance)

 

[Stillhart]

Did some comparisons, Audio Gd Dac 19 with Mojo out of LC and HD800.
The Audio Gd Dac 19 has slightly more body and weight. But the biggest difference is that the Dac 19 is warmer than the Mojo. The Mojo treble is definitely brighter. On some tracks with treble energy, the Mojo makes me cringe. But with the Dac 19, it's there, but it does not make me cringe. The Mojo is supposed to be warmer than the Hugo, hate to imagine how the Hugo is, being more leaner and brighter than the Mojo. To me, the Mojo is still on the bright and cold side, at least with the HD800/LC. 
 The Audio Gd Dac 19 is much better pairing with LC for the HD800. If I had warmer headphones, I would go with the Mojo. (posted also in dac 19 thread).
The Mojo sounds a clearer and more forward in it's presentation and detail. 

 
As for LC  (balanced) with Mojo vs Mojo SE straight out with HD800, the LC gave the HD800 bass, body, dynamics and soundstage. Straight out of the Mojo, the HD800 sounded clear and clean, but the mids sounded too thin and treble bright. Most (not everyone) on the Mojo thread says how the Mojo is such a great pairing with the HD800, I got to disagree.  Maybe I'm missing something. 

Adding a Schiit Wyred solved the bright treble for me on the Hugo. The Hugo itself is so detailed and neutral but adding the Wyred really rounded off the rough edges.

The first time I ever listened to the HD800 was through a Chord Hugo. It was literally painfully bright. I took those things off within seconds and it soured me on that headphone for a long time.

Unless the Mojo is significantly warmer than the Hugo, I can't imagine I'd love the pairing.

BTW, doesn't the Hugo run off battery even when plugged in? Seems weird that the Wyrd would do anything for it...

 

[santacore]

I bought my LC to pair with my TH900's as a bed side rig. After burn in I feel like the LC is a great amp, but not the perfect match with the TH900's. Since those are the only phones I can use in my bedroom setup, I will probably search for a different amp or go back to my Bryston. Like Mattyhew, I felt the bass control and punch to be slightly lacking with the TH900's. Besides the low end control, the amp sounds wonderful just like I remember.

 

[Hansotek]

Errr...just connected my TH-X00. I'm not happy with it...but think I'll do a little more digging.
In truth, I think I may be using this in the worst possible way to test the Fostex headphones:

• single-ended input (must be summed)
• single-ended output (is there an EE in the house - must it be summed again?)
• very low impedance headphone (does anyone know the single-ended output impedance)

I haven't tried the two together yet, but I'm not exactly shocked. Might be a little too much of a good thing pairing these two together. So far the TH-X00 seems to like amps that are of the brightish neutral variety. It loved my Burson HA-160 and the Creative X7. It wasn't terribly fond of my Audio-GD Master 9. As far as amping goes, it appears to be the anti-HD800 in practice.