[Edited for clarity]
For anyone that saw Masdrop's project to manufacture an Objective 2, I had ordered it.
I gave it several hours of listening last weekend. I am thoroughly impressed with it.
Sure it's ugly. Yes, the cables clumsily protrude from the front of the device. But, it's very transparent and plenty powerful to drive just about anything.
I used my Oppo HA-1 as a DAC to feed the O2 and tried to compare O2's output to that of the HA-1 running everything (basically, HA-1 DAC was common to both outputs and I'm comparing the amp section of the HA-1 to the O2).
When quickly switching back and forth between the two, I thought the O2 sounded thinner and vocals both male and female sounded distant.
Then I began to wonder if it was my own bias. I attempted to remove my bias by having my wife switch the inputs without me seeing it. That too ran into problems. I could hear the clicks from the HA-1 when its output changed. So I knew which amp I was listening to.
Next, I would leave the room entirely while my wife changed sources. I no longer knew the source, but the amount of time that elapsed between having heard a sample, to leaving the room, to having the source changed, to returning to the room, and hearing the next sample was far too long.
I was unable to differentiate between the amps.
I succeeded in not knowing which source I was hearing, but my test environment was terrible. My brain had forgotten too much of the audio I was trying to compare.
However, I think whatever differences exist between the HA-1 and the O2 (acoustically) are not the difference between crossing an ocean and crossing a stream. The differences require close scrutiny.
For $70, this is just remarkable.
NwAvGuy, if you're still out there, you were on to something.
