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The Headphone Guys, with HeadphoneAddict (Larry) and Blutarsky (Scott).
Much of the equipment was the same as the 8/12/ and 8/19 mini-meet:
Colorado Springs 8/12/08 Mini-Meet Report! Single Power Square Wave XL vs Melos SHA Gold shootout! Balanced HD600 vs HP-1000 - Head-Fi: Covering Headphones, Earphones and Portable Audio
Colorado Springs 8/19/08 Mini-Meet Report! Woo WA6 maxed vs Single Power and Melos! Also more on Stello DA100 DAC - Head-Fi: Covering Headphones, Earphones and Portable Audio
Larry: In previous meets we found that we could listen to the balanced HD600 plugged directly into the back of the Melos via the XLR Pre-amp out jacks, and it sounded great. And, when we plugged in my silver plated copper XLR IC into the signal path the XLR IC hurt the soundstage and treble. We did this to see if the reason the Single Power Square Wave XL has a smaller soundstage with less sparkle than the Melos was due to the amplifier or the interconnects. As confirmation that the problem was the interconnects, we used some stranded silver RCA interconnects made by Pendles that sounded better with the Square Wave than my XLR cables - the SP Sq Wave actually sounded very much like (and as good as) the Melos when both amps were using the same silver IC's, with only a slight difference in the soundstage still not being quite as wide as the Melos.
So, we were determined to find some good XLR interconnects, but to also compare some different brands of interconnects and review them. We didn't get to accomplish all of this, but we did get to do some of it. The problem being that I didn't bring my SP Sq Wave and Apogee mini-DAC, planning to just insert the IC into the signal path and see if the sound was affected like last time. I forgot that this is basically using the XLR IC as a headphone extension cord, and not as an IC. Ooops. Here are some of the cables - forgot pics of the other set of anti-cables and the Pendles RCA and XLR cables.
Scott: Yeah, I don't know what you were smoking there.
Larry: Thanks. So, we also didn't have time to compare a bunch of interconnects like I was hoping to do, having made sure we had a pair of matching XLR and RCA interconnects by Anti-cables, Pendles and mmwwhats from Head-fi. But, we will do better next time. The other main goal of this meet was to see if my WA6 maxed with new tubes could catch up to the Melos SHA Gold or even beat the Zana Deux in a head to head "battle of the ears". I had laid down the gauntlet last time, and my bluff was called.
Scott: Hey, at my house the home team always wins! It seems that every time we think we have a great idea for a comparison two or there more great ideas develop. Maybe next time we'll have to spend less time eating....NOT.
Larry: Hmmmmm... Anyways, at the previous mini-meet on 8/19/08 we had compared my Woo WA6 to the Melos and Single Power using the same IC's and Stello DAC. We didn't have time to do a direct comparison to the Zana Deux with it, although we did compare the Melos to the Zana Deux; but then we pulled out the Zana Deux to install the WA6. In that comparison, we found the Zana deux to have just as big of a soundstage as the Melos and they sounded almost the same, but I wondered if it was maybe missing a little bit of midrange energy vs the Melos (which I put at #1 for Grados by a small margin). At that meet we found the WA6 to have a smaller soundstage than Melos and Single Power; and it lacked just a little bit of body and substance to the instruments that interfered with the illusion of real instruments being in the room with us. That was with Sylvania 6DE7 driver tubes and a Amperex Bugle Boy GZ34 rectifier. Doing research on the WA6 proved that they really thrive on the RCA 6DE7 driver tubes (with the divider between the two halves) and the Sophia Princess rectifier tube. So, I made sure to order a Sophia and pull the RCA out of my spare stock of tubes for this contest between the Zana Deux and Maxed WA6 with Pseudo Dual Power Supply mod.
Scott: The Sophia is a beauty of a tube, I had the Sophia black plates for my Moth 2SiA3 and they sounded great - boy I miss that amp. I was very anxious to see how the Sophia sounded on the WA6, I figured they'd be an improvement for sure.
Larry: After determining that the amps were all warmed up adequately, we did get to compare my "iMod 5.5G > portable Vcap dock > mmwwhats RCA soft dead silver in air tube dielectric > WA6 > HD600 with stock cable and APS V3 cable" with Blutarsky's "Mac mini > Stello DA100 optical DAC > Pendles stranded silver RCA IC > Zana deux > HD600 with APS V3 cable", as well as his Melos fed by Joe Grado Signature Ultra Wideband RCA cable.
The iMod to WA6 rig was only to get the amp warmed up fater with music playing, and the comparison was completely unplanned. I felt the iMod/WA6 system beat the Stello/Melos and Stello/Zana system by a very small margin, proving that at least my mmwwhats built RCA cables with 120 hours of burn-in were doing a great job. I mention this because the XLR IC only showed up on Friday and I was not able to put more than 48 hours on those silver cables, knowing the RCA version that I got a while back needed about 100 to settle down. This will become important later. Another important item was my finding the Melos rig to sound more laid back than the WA6 rig, for which we discovered the cause later in the meet (read on).
Scott: This time we stacked the Zana on the Melos and then placed the WA6 next to the Zana Deux, I thought all of the aforementioned ICs were Pendles quad/quad silver cables connected through a Mapletree LR1 to my Stello DAC. I used the Optical out from my Mac Mini to Stello as source. The Stello was placed on 192 bit upsampling and away we went.
Larry: So, the next thing we did was plug the HD600 with APS V3 balanced cable into the back of the Melos SHA Gold's XLR Pre-amp out to get a feel for the sound again (this cable has female Neutrik plugs and was initially built to plug into the back of the Apogee mini-DAC). It sounded pretty good, and when we inserted the Pendles made stranded silver XLR IC into the signal path the sound was relatively unchanged. Switching to my anti-cables XLR IC's we felt that the sound brightened up a little. Moving on to the unburned-in "mmwwhats" XLR IC's there was a brightness and sheen over the treble that was noticeable, however bass was still good.
I had feared that it was too soon to test out the cable, but we'd planned this meet for 3 weeks and the cables came as fast as they could but arrived 2-days later than expected. So, our conclusion was that the Pendles cable was the most neutral and changed the sound the least (if at all), the Anti-cables was still very good and added a slight increase in treble while taking nothing away, and the mmwwhats cable wasn't ripe enough to test without another 50 hours on it. This is important because as I'm sure Blutarsky will attest, the mmwwhats RCA interconnect with solid dead silver with air tube dielectric in my iMod/WA6 rig demonstrated NONE of the sonic qualities that the un-burned-in XLR IC showed.
Scott: I know the mmwwhats cable still needed some burn-in time but I found it to be a very sparkly sounding cable, it was very pleasant to my ears - strictly speaking it is not reference (at this stage in its burn) but so far a fun alternative. I can't wait to hear it in another 100 hours.
Larry: Here is the weird thing - I have since confirmed that the mmwwhats cables (now called Whirly Wisp) do not sound bright when used an an IC, but only when used as a headphone cable extension. I discussed this with Ken at ALO, and he confirmed that some cables will sound different depending on where in the chain they are used.
So, after briefly comparing the iMod/WA6 rig to the Stello/Melos rig and the Stello/Zana Deux rig, we decided to compare the Melos and Zana Deux once more before disconnecting the Melos to fit the WA6 in there. This time the results were swapped and it was pretty clear when comparing them with the Single ended HD600 and APS V3 cable that the Zana Deux was more detailed and handled complex musical passages better, while the Melos seemed to have a blurred midrange. That was weird, because at the last meet the Melos was slightly better than the Zana Deux.
So, we went to move the WA6 from the iMod rig, which we really only used for warm up (which took at least an hour to complete) over to the Blut's rig and make sure his amps and mine had the same DAC and IC's. This was when we discovered the Melos was using some Joe Grado Signature Ultra Wide Bandwidth cables, and not the same silver cables as the Zana Deux. Ooops.
Scott: Yeah, I remembered (a little late) that I bought and installed the JG cables thinking that my HP1000/HP1 and HP2 were JGSUWB and I wanted the path to be the same the entire way from source to phone. Until I discovered that the Pendles IC were far superior to even the Joe Grado cables. A couple of meets ago Larry and I compared a JG standard reference extension I have and found it choked the APS and Silver Dragon cables somewhat but that the Pendles cables were a great match for the APS/Moon Audio (silver based) cabled phones. Makes me wonder if I got my Grado recabled.... Whoops, indeed. I quickly changed the IC out and the setup is pendles quad/quad silver from DAC to AMP. Not an easy task reaching over and behind the amps when the tubes and amps are burning hot!
Larry: Yeah, how we made it through the day without 3rd degree burns is beyond me! So, after we switched out the interconnects we determined the Melos was much better with an identical set of Pendles silver IC to those that the Zana Deux was using. At that point they were so close with the HD-600 that I wouldn't be sure which was which if switching them with my eyes closed.
Scott: This is just amazing! I mean how can these amplifiers be so close to each other that they are indistinguishable? We were changing back and forth for each others listening, not looking and could not guess which was which amp. Stunning. Before we switched the IC, I could easily tell the difference.
Larry: Yeah, it's funny how the difference in sound between the Joe Grado Signature interconnects and the Pendles built silver ones was greater than the difference between the amps! So, we then disconnected the Melos and installed the WA6 to it's power and interconnects, set the WA6 to "high impedance 100-600 ohm" and compared it to the Zana Deux. Again, we could not be sure which amp was which if we were to switch with our eyes closed. So, the Bluts put away the single ended HD600 and grabbed the HP-1000 and switched the WA6 to the "low impedance 8-99 ohm" setting - same result. Scott could not tell when he was listening to the Zana Deux vs the when it was the WA6, and guessed wrong when predicting which one he was enjoying. I didn't do any blind testing but I agreed they sounded very similar, although Scott's wife thought she liked the WA6 better (she didn't say why but maybe the WA6 is just "cuter" or more compact or something
).
We also tried my -=Germania=- modifed and re-cabled ATH-A900 between the Zana Deux and WA6 - sounded the same. Only by switching to the Grado PS-1 could we finally tell the difference and identify which amp was which - the Zana Deux seemed to control the bass a little better which seemed bumped by a couple of db on the WA6 and made the bass a little too much. So, the Sophia Princess rectifier had clearly solved the "lacking soundstage" and transparency on the WA6 and I won the bet, free Pizza!
Scott: I disagree with Larry, I say that the WA6 was not improved with the Sophia rectifier - it was transformed into another amp all-together. The upgrades Larry has made in the last several weeks incrementally improved the amp but this rectifier opened the soundstage, improved instrument separation, tightened the bass and greatly improved the midrange. I can not overstate how impressed I was with this little beast - my hats off to Jack Woo.
Larry: You had me going there for a second
I agree, this isn't the same amp you listened to in early May. Since we played around with a couple of other toys at this meet, I would like Scott to give his opionion of my -=Germania=- modifed and re-cabled ATH-A900 which I have said when used with a portable DAC/amp sound just like my previous ATH-D1000 optical digital 24/96 upsampling DAC/amp headphones. With these high-end amps, I feel the ATH-A900 with her "markl-like" mods of dampening and re-cabling can seriously compete with my APS V2 Denon D2000, and remind me more of a D5000 with the more forward mids. I still like the HD600 better, but I would not kick these A900 out of bed for eating crackers and getting crumbs in the sheets. I do think the modded A900 make a better low volume headphone than the HD600, which really wake up when you pump them up.
Scott: Well, it seems we have another challenge for our next meet. I want to hear the Germania mod'd ATH-900 and the D2K side by side. That said, I did REALLY like this phone, I am a big fan of the ATH feel and sound but her mods rectified the darkness that I always felt marred my ATH-W11R and even Larry's ATH-D1000. I felt the bass was as large as the D2k (from memory - but we'll test that) but either the cabling or perhaps the dampening vastly improved the mids from other ATH cans I've heard - not that I've heard them all. Of course you may say that if the mods take the ATH and change them so a Grado fan can better appreciate them they aren't ATH anymore... I can say I compared them briefly with my Ebony DBV3C and I like them very much in comparison - shoot maybe more. I'd like to spend some more time with them, wonder what woody cups would do for them?
Larry: Wow, woodie cups would be cool! But I have to say they still sound like an ATH to me, as there is a characteristic upper mids coloration that I hear in them all, but these and the ATH-D1000 are the first ones that the upper mids didn't bug me.
Then there was the Creative X-fi Xmod USB DAC amp, with crystalizer and crossfeed/3D enhancement (I have over 500 hours on it). Without any of the optional sound processing turned on it does a good job for transparently reproducing computer audio on a $60-80 budget, especially with lossless files thru Grados on the Mac with iTunes. And, the crystallizer and 3D sound processing really seems to wake up dull sounding streaming internet radio music and low bit rate music. My only complaint so far has been the hiss with my Livewires IEMs, which is resolved with using a Shure volume attenuator with the volume turned about 3-4mm.
Scott: Okay, I am going to stop inviting you over if you keep bringing these gadgets - every time you come over you show me a new doodad and I want it. I'm glad I didn't get around to buying the USB DAC you showed me last time because I loved this thing, the size is right, the sound is impressive and the price is a no-brainer. It may take the place of my Apogee Duet in my laptop bag.
Larry: Yeah, the USB DAC I showed you the last time was the iBasso D2 Viper, which did a great job as a pre-amp feeding the TTVJ Portable Millett Hybrid - I felt the D2/TTVJ combined were as good as the Duet for driving headphones on the go (the iBasso opamps were LMH6622 main/THS4032 ground). But, I sometimes hate having to charge the battery on the DAC and the amp. The Duet is nice in that it runs off the firewire bus power, and the Xmod has that same advantage - no battery to charge. So, having done A/B comparisons before, the Creative Xmod isn't on the level of the Apogee - but with efficient Grados like MS-1, HF-1 and RS-1 it is pretty darn good and sounds like a $200 DAC amp to me. And we can't forget how good the iPhone with Punnisher low profile dock sounded through the WA6 with Infected Mushroom "Dancing with the Kadafi". It turns out Scott was a trance-virgin and really liked it. I think I was also able to prove that the HD600 really can rock out with the best of them.
Scott: *Blushes*
Larry: Finally, there was the Klipsch Image X10 that I forced on Scott. I still feel these beat the Super.fi 5 Pro and Triple.fi 10 Pro, and remind me a lot of my SE530 before I put them in a custom shell.
Scott: I am still in love with my Westone ES2 and even Ety ER-6 for that matter but these were very nice. No comparison to the Westies but then they didn't cost anywhere near them either. My ear canals are too big for the large ear pieces (precisely why I'm a custom fan) so maybe if they fit better I'd like them more...
Larry: Yeah, the biggest single flange tip also seems a little small for me too, which is why we both had to wear them with a shallow fit in the boney portion of the ear canal instead, where it is narrower. Fortunately, my Westone UM-56 custom vinyl tips work with the Image and I get a perfect seal without any itching or sound leaking in.
Larry and Scott: Well, that's it for this installment of The Headphone Guys. Stay tuned for next time when we pit a Millett Starving Student Hybrid in a Jeff Gordon Nascar 24 candy box vs Zana Deux and Melos SHA Gold (-=Germania=- better hurry up the build). As a bonus, in between songs when we're hungry we can open it up and eat some double crisp chocolate.
Larry: PS: Maybe we should start doing beer reviews with our mini-meets, like Kevin and Alex on the diggnation podcasts?
Much of the equipment was the same as the 8/12/ and 8/19 mini-meet:
Colorado Springs 8/12/08 Mini-Meet Report! Single Power Square Wave XL vs Melos SHA Gold shootout! Balanced HD600 vs HP-1000 - Head-Fi: Covering Headphones, Earphones and Portable Audio
Colorado Springs 8/19/08 Mini-Meet Report! Woo WA6 maxed vs Single Power and Melos! Also more on Stello DA100 DAC - Head-Fi: Covering Headphones, Earphones and Portable Audio
Larry: In previous meets we found that we could listen to the balanced HD600 plugged directly into the back of the Melos via the XLR Pre-amp out jacks, and it sounded great. And, when we plugged in my silver plated copper XLR IC into the signal path the XLR IC hurt the soundstage and treble. We did this to see if the reason the Single Power Square Wave XL has a smaller soundstage with less sparkle than the Melos was due to the amplifier or the interconnects. As confirmation that the problem was the interconnects, we used some stranded silver RCA interconnects made by Pendles that sounded better with the Square Wave than my XLR cables - the SP Sq Wave actually sounded very much like (and as good as) the Melos when both amps were using the same silver IC's, with only a slight difference in the soundstage still not being quite as wide as the Melos.
So, we were determined to find some good XLR interconnects, but to also compare some different brands of interconnects and review them. We didn't get to accomplish all of this, but we did get to do some of it. The problem being that I didn't bring my SP Sq Wave and Apogee mini-DAC, planning to just insert the IC into the signal path and see if the sound was affected like last time. I forgot that this is basically using the XLR IC as a headphone extension cord, and not as an IC. Ooops. Here are some of the cables - forgot pics of the other set of anti-cables and the Pendles RCA and XLR cables.
Scott: Yeah, I don't know what you were smoking there.
Larry: Thanks. So, we also didn't have time to compare a bunch of interconnects like I was hoping to do, having made sure we had a pair of matching XLR and RCA interconnects by Anti-cables, Pendles and mmwwhats from Head-fi. But, we will do better next time. The other main goal of this meet was to see if my WA6 maxed with new tubes could catch up to the Melos SHA Gold or even beat the Zana Deux in a head to head "battle of the ears". I had laid down the gauntlet last time, and my bluff was called.
Scott: Hey, at my house the home team always wins! It seems that every time we think we have a great idea for a comparison two or there more great ideas develop. Maybe next time we'll have to spend less time eating....NOT.
Larry: Hmmmmm... Anyways, at the previous mini-meet on 8/19/08 we had compared my Woo WA6 to the Melos and Single Power using the same IC's and Stello DAC. We didn't have time to do a direct comparison to the Zana Deux with it, although we did compare the Melos to the Zana Deux; but then we pulled out the Zana Deux to install the WA6. In that comparison, we found the Zana deux to have just as big of a soundstage as the Melos and they sounded almost the same, but I wondered if it was maybe missing a little bit of midrange energy vs the Melos (which I put at #1 for Grados by a small margin). At that meet we found the WA6 to have a smaller soundstage than Melos and Single Power; and it lacked just a little bit of body and substance to the instruments that interfered with the illusion of real instruments being in the room with us. That was with Sylvania 6DE7 driver tubes and a Amperex Bugle Boy GZ34 rectifier. Doing research on the WA6 proved that they really thrive on the RCA 6DE7 driver tubes (with the divider between the two halves) and the Sophia Princess rectifier tube. So, I made sure to order a Sophia and pull the RCA out of my spare stock of tubes for this contest between the Zana Deux and Maxed WA6 with Pseudo Dual Power Supply mod.
Scott: The Sophia is a beauty of a tube, I had the Sophia black plates for my Moth 2SiA3 and they sounded great - boy I miss that amp. I was very anxious to see how the Sophia sounded on the WA6, I figured they'd be an improvement for sure.
Larry: After determining that the amps were all warmed up adequately, we did get to compare my "iMod 5.5G > portable Vcap dock > mmwwhats RCA soft dead silver in air tube dielectric > WA6 > HD600 with stock cable and APS V3 cable" with Blutarsky's "Mac mini > Stello DA100 optical DAC > Pendles stranded silver RCA IC > Zana deux > HD600 with APS V3 cable", as well as his Melos fed by Joe Grado Signature Ultra Wideband RCA cable.
The iMod to WA6 rig was only to get the amp warmed up fater with music playing, and the comparison was completely unplanned. I felt the iMod/WA6 system beat the Stello/Melos and Stello/Zana system by a very small margin, proving that at least my mmwwhats built RCA cables with 120 hours of burn-in were doing a great job. I mention this because the XLR IC only showed up on Friday and I was not able to put more than 48 hours on those silver cables, knowing the RCA version that I got a while back needed about 100 to settle down. This will become important later. Another important item was my finding the Melos rig to sound more laid back than the WA6 rig, for which we discovered the cause later in the meet (read on).
Scott: This time we stacked the Zana on the Melos and then placed the WA6 next to the Zana Deux, I thought all of the aforementioned ICs were Pendles quad/quad silver cables connected through a Mapletree LR1 to my Stello DAC. I used the Optical out from my Mac Mini to Stello as source. The Stello was placed on 192 bit upsampling and away we went.
Larry: So, the next thing we did was plug the HD600 with APS V3 balanced cable into the back of the Melos SHA Gold's XLR Pre-amp out to get a feel for the sound again (this cable has female Neutrik plugs and was initially built to plug into the back of the Apogee mini-DAC). It sounded pretty good, and when we inserted the Pendles made stranded silver XLR IC into the signal path the sound was relatively unchanged. Switching to my anti-cables XLR IC's we felt that the sound brightened up a little. Moving on to the unburned-in "mmwwhats" XLR IC's there was a brightness and sheen over the treble that was noticeable, however bass was still good.
I had feared that it was too soon to test out the cable, but we'd planned this meet for 3 weeks and the cables came as fast as they could but arrived 2-days later than expected. So, our conclusion was that the Pendles cable was the most neutral and changed the sound the least (if at all), the Anti-cables was still very good and added a slight increase in treble while taking nothing away, and the mmwwhats cable wasn't ripe enough to test without another 50 hours on it. This is important because as I'm sure Blutarsky will attest, the mmwwhats RCA interconnect with solid dead silver with air tube dielectric in my iMod/WA6 rig demonstrated NONE of the sonic qualities that the un-burned-in XLR IC showed.
Scott: I know the mmwwhats cable still needed some burn-in time but I found it to be a very sparkly sounding cable, it was very pleasant to my ears - strictly speaking it is not reference (at this stage in its burn) but so far a fun alternative. I can't wait to hear it in another 100 hours.
Larry: Here is the weird thing - I have since confirmed that the mmwwhats cables (now called Whirly Wisp) do not sound bright when used an an IC, but only when used as a headphone cable extension. I discussed this with Ken at ALO, and he confirmed that some cables will sound different depending on where in the chain they are used.
So, after briefly comparing the iMod/WA6 rig to the Stello/Melos rig and the Stello/Zana Deux rig, we decided to compare the Melos and Zana Deux once more before disconnecting the Melos to fit the WA6 in there. This time the results were swapped and it was pretty clear when comparing them with the Single ended HD600 and APS V3 cable that the Zana Deux was more detailed and handled complex musical passages better, while the Melos seemed to have a blurred midrange. That was weird, because at the last meet the Melos was slightly better than the Zana Deux.
So, we went to move the WA6 from the iMod rig, which we really only used for warm up (which took at least an hour to complete) over to the Blut's rig and make sure his amps and mine had the same DAC and IC's. This was when we discovered the Melos was using some Joe Grado Signature Ultra Wide Bandwidth cables, and not the same silver cables as the Zana Deux. Ooops.
Scott: Yeah, I remembered (a little late) that I bought and installed the JG cables thinking that my HP1000/HP1 and HP2 were JGSUWB and I wanted the path to be the same the entire way from source to phone. Until I discovered that the Pendles IC were far superior to even the Joe Grado cables. A couple of meets ago Larry and I compared a JG standard reference extension I have and found it choked the APS and Silver Dragon cables somewhat but that the Pendles cables were a great match for the APS/Moon Audio (silver based) cabled phones. Makes me wonder if I got my Grado recabled.... Whoops, indeed. I quickly changed the IC out and the setup is pendles quad/quad silver from DAC to AMP. Not an easy task reaching over and behind the amps when the tubes and amps are burning hot!
Larry: Yeah, how we made it through the day without 3rd degree burns is beyond me! So, after we switched out the interconnects we determined the Melos was much better with an identical set of Pendles silver IC to those that the Zana Deux was using. At that point they were so close with the HD-600 that I wouldn't be sure which was which if switching them with my eyes closed.
Scott: This is just amazing! I mean how can these amplifiers be so close to each other that they are indistinguishable? We were changing back and forth for each others listening, not looking and could not guess which was which amp. Stunning. Before we switched the IC, I could easily tell the difference.
Larry: Yeah, it's funny how the difference in sound between the Joe Grado Signature interconnects and the Pendles built silver ones was greater than the difference between the amps! So, we then disconnected the Melos and installed the WA6 to it's power and interconnects, set the WA6 to "high impedance 100-600 ohm" and compared it to the Zana Deux. Again, we could not be sure which amp was which if we were to switch with our eyes closed. So, the Bluts put away the single ended HD600 and grabbed the HP-1000 and switched the WA6 to the "low impedance 8-99 ohm" setting - same result. Scott could not tell when he was listening to the Zana Deux vs the when it was the WA6, and guessed wrong when predicting which one he was enjoying. I didn't do any blind testing but I agreed they sounded very similar, although Scott's wife thought she liked the WA6 better (she didn't say why but maybe the WA6 is just "cuter" or more compact or something
We also tried my -=Germania=- modifed and re-cabled ATH-A900 between the Zana Deux and WA6 - sounded the same. Only by switching to the Grado PS-1 could we finally tell the difference and identify which amp was which - the Zana Deux seemed to control the bass a little better which seemed bumped by a couple of db on the WA6 and made the bass a little too much. So, the Sophia Princess rectifier had clearly solved the "lacking soundstage" and transparency on the WA6 and I won the bet, free Pizza!
Scott: I disagree with Larry, I say that the WA6 was not improved with the Sophia rectifier - it was transformed into another amp all-together. The upgrades Larry has made in the last several weeks incrementally improved the amp but this rectifier opened the soundstage, improved instrument separation, tightened the bass and greatly improved the midrange. I can not overstate how impressed I was with this little beast - my hats off to Jack Woo.
Larry: You had me going there for a second
Scott: Well, it seems we have another challenge for our next meet. I want to hear the Germania mod'd ATH-900 and the D2K side by side. That said, I did REALLY like this phone, I am a big fan of the ATH feel and sound but her mods rectified the darkness that I always felt marred my ATH-W11R and even Larry's ATH-D1000. I felt the bass was as large as the D2k (from memory - but we'll test that) but either the cabling or perhaps the dampening vastly improved the mids from other ATH cans I've heard - not that I've heard them all. Of course you may say that if the mods take the ATH and change them so a Grado fan can better appreciate them they aren't ATH anymore... I can say I compared them briefly with my Ebony DBV3C and I like them very much in comparison - shoot maybe more. I'd like to spend some more time with them, wonder what woody cups would do for them?
Larry: Wow, woodie cups would be cool! But I have to say they still sound like an ATH to me, as there is a characteristic upper mids coloration that I hear in them all, but these and the ATH-D1000 are the first ones that the upper mids didn't bug me.
Then there was the Creative X-fi Xmod USB DAC amp, with crystalizer and crossfeed/3D enhancement (I have over 500 hours on it). Without any of the optional sound processing turned on it does a good job for transparently reproducing computer audio on a $60-80 budget, especially with lossless files thru Grados on the Mac with iTunes. And, the crystallizer and 3D sound processing really seems to wake up dull sounding streaming internet radio music and low bit rate music. My only complaint so far has been the hiss with my Livewires IEMs, which is resolved with using a Shure volume attenuator with the volume turned about 3-4mm.
Scott: Okay, I am going to stop inviting you over if you keep bringing these gadgets - every time you come over you show me a new doodad and I want it. I'm glad I didn't get around to buying the USB DAC you showed me last time because I loved this thing, the size is right, the sound is impressive and the price is a no-brainer. It may take the place of my Apogee Duet in my laptop bag.
Larry: Yeah, the USB DAC I showed you the last time was the iBasso D2 Viper, which did a great job as a pre-amp feeding the TTVJ Portable Millett Hybrid - I felt the D2/TTVJ combined were as good as the Duet for driving headphones on the go (the iBasso opamps were LMH6622 main/THS4032 ground). But, I sometimes hate having to charge the battery on the DAC and the amp. The Duet is nice in that it runs off the firewire bus power, and the Xmod has that same advantage - no battery to charge. So, having done A/B comparisons before, the Creative Xmod isn't on the level of the Apogee - but with efficient Grados like MS-1, HF-1 and RS-1 it is pretty darn good and sounds like a $200 DAC amp to me. And we can't forget how good the iPhone with Punnisher low profile dock sounded through the WA6 with Infected Mushroom "Dancing with the Kadafi". It turns out Scott was a trance-virgin and really liked it. I think I was also able to prove that the HD600 really can rock out with the best of them.
Scott: *Blushes*
Larry: Finally, there was the Klipsch Image X10 that I forced on Scott. I still feel these beat the Super.fi 5 Pro and Triple.fi 10 Pro, and remind me a lot of my SE530 before I put them in a custom shell.
Scott: I am still in love with my Westone ES2 and even Ety ER-6 for that matter but these were very nice. No comparison to the Westies but then they didn't cost anywhere near them either. My ear canals are too big for the large ear pieces (precisely why I'm a custom fan) so maybe if they fit better I'd like them more...
Larry: Yeah, the biggest single flange tip also seems a little small for me too, which is why we both had to wear them with a shallow fit in the boney portion of the ear canal instead, where it is narrower. Fortunately, my Westone UM-56 custom vinyl tips work with the Image and I get a perfect seal without any itching or sound leaking in.
Larry and Scott: Well, that's it for this installment of The Headphone Guys. Stay tuned for next time when we pit a Millett Starving Student Hybrid in a Jeff Gordon Nascar 24 candy box vs Zana Deux and Melos SHA Gold (-=Germania=- better hurry up the build). As a bonus, in between songs when we're hungry we can open it up and eat some double crisp chocolate.
Larry: PS: Maybe we should start doing beer reviews with our mini-meets, like Kevin and Alex on the diggnation podcasts?
