tell us more!
what's the advantages ? what about the iha8 as main amp for the hekse? thank you
It's really, REALLY good.
What I've been testing right now it's how does this amp pair with different dacs, all of the R2R at this point, for starters, there's really not a bad pairing when it comes to R2Rs with this amp, from the very affordable Fiio K11 R2R, to the hifiman goldenwave serenade and all the way up with the Cyan 2. The stand out here is the Cyan 2, it's the blackest background I've heard up till now, going straight USB into the Cyan 2 from my gaming rig and even using my OTL tube amp to pre-amp, unless I go into high gain on both the TA-84 and the iHA-8, then some noise starts to creep in but that's just the nature of tube amps, they're inherently noisy things. The serenade adds a little bit more warmth to the sound, it has a little bit more grunt in the low end in comparison to the Cyan 2, but it doesn't have the black background of zero noise in comparison to the Cyan 2 and it doesn't have the same technical chops of the Cyan 2, tonally they're similar but the Cyan 2 it's a little bit more natural sounding, the serenade it's a little bit more intense because it has a little bit more intimate soundstage. The Fiio K11 R2R is the noiser of all, it's it just doesn't compete against the Cyan 2 or the serenade, but it's a really competent DAC/Amp, it just doesn't have the same level of resolution and details but it makes it up with warmth and tonality, but in a pinch, you could get this dac and it will pair well with the iHA-8.
With my HEKse, I'm currently using ZMF Hybrid lambskin pads for it, so it tames the treble forwarness and adds a good amount of bass, specially mid bass, so it gives the HEKse an almost DD driver quality to the way the HEKse hits with drums in particular, very natural and impactful, a more dynamic presentation of the sound. With the iHA-8, I'm currently pre-ampinig it with my OTL tube amp, the TA-84 with PSVANE art series tubes, so this add even more warmth and a hefty bass boost and it rounds off some of the treble. The iHA-8 it's being run on hyper mode and high gain, controlling the volume directly from it and I have found that this is the best way to first, reduce background noise and second, it again adds a little bit more warmth and naturallity to the sound of the HEKse and any other headphone for that matter, the bass is well exended and impacful, treble is well represented, under control, it's not going to color it to much or round it off, if the track is bright on the treble, it's going ot come through the headphone, the mids are really well represented, I'm not getting a lot of glare or shoutyness(again unless the singer and/or the mastering and mixing was done that way), but even if it's not the best of recordings, it's not making it edgy or making me cringe, it's relatively smooth sounding for as much as the HEKse can be say to be smooth.
With my current setup it has made it that for me right now, the HEKse is EQ optional, and so for my Focal Clear, my LCD-X 2021 I still have to EQ it, it's just to recess in the upper mids-lower treble and it just doesn't hit that hard on the bass without EQ, it tends to sound bland and boring in comparison to other headphones I have. The HD800S sounds really good from the iHA-8 but I prefer to listen to it directly from my OTL tube amp, it just pairs better with it, but thats another headphone that I have to EQ, mostly because of the very intense treble peaks that headphone has, planning on listening tomy LCD2Cs with dekoni microsuede pads and also throwing the Arya Organic for a listen soon.
The iHA-8 for me is the best SS amp I have tried yet, it does get very warm, like even warmer than my previous SS amp, the Aune S17 Pro, it doesn't have a remote or pre-outs, it's just a headphone amp, but it does this incredibly well and it's a noticiable improvement over the S17, I'm just amazed that there are not many proper reviews of the this amp still to this date. It strikes a really good balance between sounding neutral and natural while adding a little bit of spice to the music, not over doing it, it will reveal differences between different chains and in this way it's really transparent amp, it does have some limitations, but if it fits your use case and as long as you take into account that caveats that come with this amp, then I think this could very well be the last amp you buy. I havent tried really super demanding headphones like the OG Susvara or the ModHouse Tungsten, so I don't know how well will it handle this kind of loads, the hardest thing to drive that I have in my collection is the DT880 600 ohm and this amp drives it well enough but I do need to cranck up the volume and go high gain, hyper mode on to drive it properly, also another thing that I have noiticed with this amp is that it can take a lot of gain from a pre-amp, so this can defenitively help in driving those headphones that are a little bit more demanding.
As you said, that’s both a good and a bad thing.
