High impendance is what I use as well. I switch between BTL and Parallel modes depending on headphone since planars seem to like current over voltage.
Cen.Grand 9i-906 "Silver Fox"
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spw1880
100+ Head-Fier
Hi, i have a black silverfox. It is a fantastic amp. I watched a youtube vid about the silver fox being able to be used in a block configuration with 2 amps through the dual 3pin xlr ouputs. Just wondering has anybody bought 2 SFs and tried it.
project86
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All Cen.Grand gear 10% off for Black Friday - makes the Silver Fox that much more of a sweet deal!
As far as using dual amps - I don't see the point unless it's an amp that is actually designed to operate that way. To my knowledge that would be the Questyle CMA800R and the NuForce HA-200, both older designs which benefited from the additional power from monoblock operation. The Silver Fox is significantly more powerful by itself, even when compared to a pair of those models.
As far as using dual amps - I don't see the point unless it's an amp that is actually designed to operate that way. To my knowledge that would be the Questyle CMA800R and the NuForce HA-200, both older designs which benefited from the additional power from monoblock operation. The Silver Fox is significantly more powerful by itself, even when compared to a pair of those models.
Musikfan
100+ Head-Fier
Hi, I hope everyone had a pleasant Thanksgiving weekend. Is there a way to dim or turn off the display on the amp? Thanks!
skylinekursk
100+ Head-Fier
Hi everyone. I have silver fox since May. I was consider SF and US 5 by niimbus. Niimbus arrived today, it's not brand new so burn in is not an issue. Sound is very impressive. Should be interesting compare to SF soon.
project86
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Not that I'm aware of.
spw1880
100+ Head-Fier
Hi,
Just wanted to let everyone on this thread know that i am selling my black 2 month old black 906 big silver fox. Due to personal medical condition of my youngest son. currently its my end game SS amp. Very sad o let it go. But my boy needs me, Its best i am financially prepared in advance. it is in nearly new condition, please check out the classifieds and PM me if interested. thank you
Just wanted to let everyone on this thread know that i am selling my black 2 month old black 906 big silver fox. Due to personal medical condition of my youngest son. currently its my end game SS amp. Very sad o let it go. But my boy needs me, Its best i am financially prepared in advance. it is in nearly new condition, please check out the classifieds and PM me if interested. thank you
dfiled
500+ Head-Fier
Terribly sad, GLWS and best of luck to your little guy.
project86
Headphoneus Supremus
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Yeah somebody buy that amp and help a Dad out!
dfiled
500+ Head-Fier
I've never heard electrostats before and I would like to try a pair. I know nothing about how electrostatic amps work -- is there a transformer that can be used so that the Silver Fox could amp e-stat headphones? Is it a fool's errand to try and do this?
There are various transformer boxes that are designed to drive estats from a standard headphone or speaker amplifier. I use, and highly recommend, the iFi iESL. Unfortunately, it's been out of production for a while now, but can sometimes be found on the used market. Whether the Silver Fox has enough power for this application depends largely on which estat you're driving and your subjective assessment of the resulting sound. One very nice feature of the iESL is its adjustable input impedance, which can be set as low as 16 ohms. This increases the effective gain of the transformers while trading off a slight bit of linearity.
I haven't auditioned the Silver Fox or any estat transformer boxes other than the iESL, so I can't really give you any further guidance. I suspect you'd get enough performance to at least justify the experiment, but you might want to try and audition estat headphones first on a dedicated estat amplifier to make sure you even enjoy them. If you like speed and resolution, I think you will!
project86
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I would personally try to audition some electrostatic headphones before setting out on that path. I love me some Stax as well as the Audeze CRBN but my experience is that they really don't shine without getting pretty deep into dedicated amplification.
Transformer boxes will technically allow them to make music, and you can start out with a more affordable option like a Stax SR-L300 or something. But imho it's not worth the trouble over a more traditional headphone. That's just my experience having gone that route in the past, which is why I recommend trying to hear them for yourself to see if it might be worth it.
Transformer boxes will technically allow them to make music, and you can start out with a more affordable option like a Stax SR-L300 or something. But imho it's not worth the trouble over a more traditional headphone. That's just my experience having gone that route in the past, which is why I recommend trying to hear them for yourself to see if it might be worth it.
Completely agree about auditioning estats first.
However, a good transformer box will provide results comfortably beyond "technically allow them to make music", to my ears. I was already using a speaker amp to drive my Susvara, so for an incremental cost of $1500, it was a no-brainer to buy and try the iESL when I subsequently acquired a Shangri-la Junior. It was certainly a lot lower risk than shelling out $5-7k, which is the entry price for the "lower" end of well-regarded estat amplifiers. FWIW, I did audition the Eksonic Aeras at home for a few weeks, and while it did have a more energetic treble and better soundstage depth/layering vs. the iESL, it wasn't transformative in terms of my enjoyment of the music.
In summary, a transformer box turned out to be very much worth the trouble... for me anyway. YMMV, of course. The number of permutations of estat headphone, estat amp, transformer box, driving amplifier, genres of music, listener's ear/brain, etc. makes it impossible to make blanket recommendations IMHO.
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