[IBJamon]

Awesome. I may get this (though temp out of stock at amazon, but I have gift cards) and get a D30 dac down the line when the funds refresh and be at a more or less endgame state for me.

I have emo amp in my HT so it will kinda match anyway.

Has anyone rigged a good trigger off of usb or something? I was thinking there must be a better way than the auto detect. (My apologies for not reading all 12 pages yet.)

 

[garbulky]

Awesome. I may get this (though temp out of stock at amazon, but I have gift cards) and get a D30 dac down the line when the funds refresh and be at a more or less endgame state for me.

I have emo amp in my HT so it will kinda match anyway.

Has anyone rigged a good trigger off of usb or something? I was thinking there must be a better way than the auto detect. (My apologies for not reading all 12 pages yet.)

It may be easier for you to just get a smart plug from amazon like the $16 Eva logik smart plug. Hook the amp up to it and leave it turned on. If you have an echo dot which goes on sale for $30 on black friday and prime day you can just say things like "alexa turn off my amp". And the plug will turn off, turning off the amp. And the same for on. If you don't have an echo, you can just turn it off using your phone.
However the amp consumes very little power. I would just leave it on the whole time. It allows an amp to reach its most stable operating temperature. I leave all my amps on the whole time except for my XPA-1 gen 2 simply because it consumes about 600 watts a pair in class A mode at idling.

I went a slightly expensive route.
The way I use my XPA-1 gen 2 to turn on and off is that I got an Emotiva ET-3. You can sometimes get it pretty cheap on their emporium section if you post a want to buy (WTB) ad on their forum.
The nice thing about it is it sends an on signal when the power is activated and an off signal when it loses power from the outlet.
So I plugged that in to the smart plug and it worked the same way. But for something of low power like the mini-x, just attaching it to a smart plug would work fine. It won't hurt it to turn on and off that way.

 

[IBJamon]

Ordered. I will see how much the auto thing bothers me. It's not like I can't trick it to be on with a 5 second play or anything.

Now to just wait for Amazon to get in stock again...

 

[garbulky]

Ordered. I will see how much the auto thing bothers me. It's not like I can't trick it to be on with a 5 second play or anything.

Now to just wait for Amazon to get in stock again...

Let us know what you think. What headphones do you plan to drive?

 

[IBJamon]

I have Monoprice M1060s, Fostex T50RP Mk3 (which I still need to fix! blah) and some KZ IEMs and Pioneer SE-A1000s.

They are all modded in some form or other.

 

[IBJamon]

I just realized I do have the Fiio D03k DAC, so if I need to kill some noise I can start there. It's not fancy or high end, but it should have a lower noise floor until I pony up for a nicer DAC.

 

[garbulky]

I just realized I do have the Fiio D03k DAC, so if I need to kill some noise I can start there. It's not fancy or high end, but it should have a lower noise floor until I pony up for a nicer DAC.

Oh no, that wont affect the noise floor.
On very efficient headphones or IEMs you may hear the noise floor of the amp itself (with the jumpers in mode only) - a slight hiss at silence. That won't be affected by your DAC. In regular mode you likely won't hear any noise. You want a dac with volume control so that you can lower the volume with it. In direct drive mode you tend not to be able to control the volume much because it quickly becomes loud with a small turn due to the amps power. So lowering the volume upstream can help you have more realistic control for every day use. Once again that is ONLY for direct drive with the jumpers in mode. In regular mode that's not really a consideration.

 

[IBJamon]

I just meant that I am more or less DAC free at the moment, and will be connecting this fancy amp to my laptop directly. If it's too noisy or whatever, I could try the D03k which I forgot I had.

I also could use my portable DAC which is no doubt better but I'm tired of connecting and disconnecting it constantly. My headphone out jack is already starting to wear out, as it disconnects with the slightest touch... (not sure if I will bother contacting the manufacturer but that's probably for another thread.)

 

[garbulky]

I just meant that I am more or less DAC free at the moment, and will be connecting this fancy amp to my laptop directly. If it's too noisy or whatever, I could try the D03k which I forgot I had.

I also could use my portable DAC which is no doubt better but I'm tired of connecting and disconnecting it constantly. My headphone out jack is already starting to wear out, as it disconnects with the slightest touch... (not sure if I will bother contacting the manufacturer but that's probably for another thread.)

Oh I gotcha.

 

[ra990]

Wow, I just put a Chord 2Qute into this amp and it sounds really great. I'm not using any preamp and controlling volume directly on this amp, driving my HE1000 with full power. I've now tried 3 different DACs with this amp and it's very easy to tell them apart, which shows how transparent the amp is. Highly recommended to anyone on the fence.

 

[torifile]

Anyone compare this to the Lyr 2?

 

[IBJamon]

Just looking it up, they aren't really the same thing. The Lyr 2 can be a tube hybrid amp, whereas this is an end-game solid state amp. The Lyr 2 has about half of the power this does (though that's still quite impressive!) in direct drive mode.

Based on the specs alone, the noise and crosstalk is Much better on this BasX.

I cannot compare the sound quality through listening as my BasX is on order but has not arrived and I have not heard a Lyr 2.

This one is much cheaper, and doubles as a very powerful, real 50Wpc desktop amp. (Most receivers that claim even 100Wpc rarely hit a proper 50Wpc fully driven like this one does.)

You could probably find a decent tube buffer/preamp if you want to turn this amp quasi-tubey, but whether there is any point to that is certainly up for debate.

I hope that helps.

 

[sanvara]

Don’t have the 600s, I have the 650s. Haven’t tried anything yet other than the AKGs and speakers. I’ll get there...got caught up in listening and enjoying a Police album without analyzing it. If it makes me forget it’s there it’s a good piece of gear!

Headphone Apple MacPro -> Schiit Eitr -> Audio-GD R2R 11 -> MrSpeakers Alpha Dog | Fostex TH-X00 Ebony
Speaker/Headphone Apple iMac -> California Audio Labs Sigma II -> Emotiva A-100 -> JBL L-1 | Sennheiser HD-6XX

I see you have A-100 and R2R11. Those are the exact two amps I'm looking at buying. The R2R11 is about $150 more. Can you compare your experience with each amp? I know R2R11 has a DAC and A-100 does not. I use HE560, HD650. I have a Modi 2 multibit to use if I decide to buy the A-100.

Also how much of a difference does the Eitr make for you?

 

[iamjaymo]

I see you have A-100 and R2R11. Those are the exact two amps I'm looking at buying. The R2R11 is about $150 more. Can you compare your experience with each amp? I know R2R11 has a DAC and A-100 does not. I use HE560, HD650. I have a Modi 2 multibit to use if I decide to buy the A-100.

Also how much of a difference does the Eitr make for you?

So I use the A-100 primarily as a speaker amp for low-level background music in an office environment. Occasionally, when the mood strikes, I do listen to the Emotiva as a head amp maybe once or twice a week. The R2R is my primary headphone amp and I’m on it most of the day.

I run the A-100 with resistors in play (not in full power mode) as my cans are not all that difficult to drive, save the Alpha Dogs, but even with resistors the Emotiva can get those to ear splitting levels. I did try the A-100 with the jumpers in but I didn’t hear that much difference (perhaps I didn’t give it enough of a listen to be fair) but I didn’t feel I was missing anything on my particular headphones YMMV.

Both the A-100 and R2R are great amps. My opinion of the A-100 may be a bit swayed as I am running it from a tube DAC - a real nice sounding one. The sound I hear from the A-100 is very open, detailed and smooth. The A-100 has great dynamics and very nice bass with a smooth top end.

The R2R, in my opinion, is a step ahead...there really is something to the whole “Ladder DAC” thing IMO. The R2R just offers a bit of a more smoothness and has a more natural sound that is somewhat more analog-ish in it’s delivery. The bass is a bit softer perhaps through the R2R but it sounds more realistic and not so hard edged as in the A-100 (again, could be the DAC in play here).

I have the fortune of having both amps and they offer something a bit different but both sound fantastic. The A-100 has more power/drive than the R2R for sure so if you are looking for something to drive power hungry headphones that is something to consider. I will say, however, the R2R drives everything I have just fine.

In the end, and this is just from my experience, I would say choose the A-100 if you have nice DAC as it’s pretty transparent to the source. Choose the R2R for an all-in-one solution and a smoother more analog sound.

As for the Eitr… I felt it did make a difference. A positive one. If you have the change to spare, get it - that’s about all I can say. For the price, it’s just worth it. Simple as that.

 

[torifile]

I’ve got the A-100 and PT-100 en route. How does one control the volume in this setup? I’d like to be able to use the remote that comes with the PT-100. Is that possible?