Redo
Headphoneus Supremus
- Joined
- Aug 29, 2006
- Posts
- 2,294
- Likes
- 11
First, Fedex is amazing. I ordered 2-day shipping Fedex option from TTVJ, and the EC/SS ships from Montana at 6:45pm yesterday. It arrives at my doorstep at 11am this morning. That's not even 24 hours!
I open the box, take the wrapping off, and place the EC/SS down on the table to have a look. This thing looks far better in person than in the pictures. The pictures make it look like a solid black box, but the top and bottom are more of a charcoal color in person. The RCA inputs just appear of high quality, big solid gold connections. The included wall wart is among the biggest I've encountered!
I've been listening to music via my X-Fi's analog outputs for near 5 days now, and it was getting depressing. "Negative Bass" syndrome, where heavy bass in music sort of dominates and sucks the life from all other frequencies. The music never came alive, just background music. So I hook the EC/SS to my SCD-CE595, and plug in my Grado SR225's, and start up with some Beatles Revolver. Wow!!! Bass, where have you been all my life. This thing puts some serious chunky bottom end into my 225's. It presents quite a bit more bass impact and extension over my MicroAmp (or it sounds that way). Not the bass supreme dominance like I heard from the DT990's, HD650's, or DT770's, it's still the SR225's tight impacting bass but pushed up a level.
I'm on my 4th album through the EC/SS, so my ears are still adjusting. But the sound stage is wider than my MicroAmp, but not artificial feeling. It's the tight soundstage I love, whereas something like the Zana Deux opens far wider than this. The left is farther left, the right is farther right, but the image stays focused within this range. The bass positioning is more accurate feeling, but it may because of the extra impact that I didn't have before.
The extra “bass chunk” I described earlier extends directly into the midrange. It pushes the audio into this jammin experience to die for. It brings the music into a new, fun dimension. The treble seems to not dominate the music as much as I remember with the MicroAmp, it may be a bit rolled off? The treble extension is there, it's not lacking in any way. Maybe the midrange is pushing the treble out of immediate focus, I'll explore more over the next few days. The EC/SS shifts the focus to the heart and soul of the music. I've heard this amp described as a bit euphonic of a solid state amp, and I do believe it may be. I love the added warmth.
These are all initial impressions, and I'm sure it will change in time. Especially when I hook this up to a more detailed source. As of right now, I'm very happy!
I open the box, take the wrapping off, and place the EC/SS down on the table to have a look. This thing looks far better in person than in the pictures. The pictures make it look like a solid black box, but the top and bottom are more of a charcoal color in person. The RCA inputs just appear of high quality, big solid gold connections. The included wall wart is among the biggest I've encountered!
I've been listening to music via my X-Fi's analog outputs for near 5 days now, and it was getting depressing. "Negative Bass" syndrome, where heavy bass in music sort of dominates and sucks the life from all other frequencies. The music never came alive, just background music. So I hook the EC/SS to my SCD-CE595, and plug in my Grado SR225's, and start up with some Beatles Revolver. Wow!!! Bass, where have you been all my life. This thing puts some serious chunky bottom end into my 225's. It presents quite a bit more bass impact and extension over my MicroAmp (or it sounds that way). Not the bass supreme dominance like I heard from the DT990's, HD650's, or DT770's, it's still the SR225's tight impacting bass but pushed up a level.
I'm on my 4th album through the EC/SS, so my ears are still adjusting. But the sound stage is wider than my MicroAmp, but not artificial feeling. It's the tight soundstage I love, whereas something like the Zana Deux opens far wider than this. The left is farther left, the right is farther right, but the image stays focused within this range. The bass positioning is more accurate feeling, but it may because of the extra impact that I didn't have before.
The extra “bass chunk” I described earlier extends directly into the midrange. It pushes the audio into this jammin experience to die for. It brings the music into a new, fun dimension. The treble seems to not dominate the music as much as I remember with the MicroAmp, it may be a bit rolled off? The treble extension is there, it's not lacking in any way. Maybe the midrange is pushing the treble out of immediate focus, I'll explore more over the next few days. The EC/SS shifts the focus to the heart and soul of the music. I've heard this amp described as a bit euphonic of a solid state amp, and I do believe it may be. I love the added warmth.
These are all initial impressions, and I'm sure it will change in time. Especially when I hook this up to a more detailed source. As of right now, I'm very happy!
