[KKNAYANA]

Isn't 3K Eur for the bundle MRSP? like buying straight from their website? I know MRSP in USD is 3190. a good price has to be lower than MRSP

I've been listening to the stack for about 24 hrs now. There is no doubt that oor+h is solid. But I've heard iCAN Signature which is at least as good if not better and has a lower price point.

How about GT? check out @Tubewin's post

https://www.head-fi.org/threads/bur...re-amp-w-sub-out-10w-xlr.959796/post-16705954

What's up with that?

I've never listened to 13R or 23R so I can't say. but how about iCAN Signature, GT, GSX-mini? How does oor+h compare to them? SQ+price wise

I currently use Susvara with GSX-mini+Chord Hugo2, and I am planning to buy Oor+Hypsos for an upgrade. IMHO, GSX-mini drives Susvara to fairly sufficient volumes at 60~80% of volume knob. It also has some pleasant warmth in the sound signature. However in some music that demand some punch in the bass or music that sound weaker than others, GSX-mini falls short. I tested my Susvara on an Oor+Hypsos demo unit, and was very satisfied with its strong output (almost twice of GSX-mini), and very clean, balanced sound. But that pleasant warmth of GSX-mini isn't there in Oor. I think it is difficult to have best of both worlds..

 

[krude]

I currently use Susvara with GSX-mini+Chord Hugo2, and I am planning to buy Oor+Hypsos for an upgrade. IMHO, GSX-mini drives Susvara to fairly sufficient volumes at 60~80% of volume knob. It also has some pleasant warmth in the sound signature. However in some music that demand some punch in the bass or music that sound weaker than others, GSX-mini falls short. I tested my Susvara on an Oor+Hypsos demo unit, and was very satisfied with its strong output (almost twice of GSX-mini), and very clean, balanced sound. But that pleasant warmth of GSX-mini isn't there in Oor. I think it is difficult to have best of both worlds..

Have you tried putting your Hugo 2 on the red filter setting and H+O on 22v? That should make the sound a lot warmer and a bit wet.

 

[KKNAYANA]

Have you tried putting your Hugo 2 on the red filter setting and H+O on 22v? That should make the sound a lot warmer and a bit wet.

No, I haven't. Just on the Hugo 2 default white filter setting and default voltage on Hypsos. I'll try your suggested settings when I get mine. Thank you

 

[krude]

Ok, got my Hypsos + Oor, first impressions time (actually bought it because I had an evaluation set for a week before)

O+H party trick is the fact that it let's you choose from very wide voltage to power Oor (22v to 30v). Most amps usually can take +/- 1 to 2v from their nominal voltage. Oor seems to be built to take a lot more.

I'm evaluating H+O with 1266 TC, EE Odin (also decided to get a Susvara demonstrator in ... my 2nd approach to this set). I will talk about the extremes at 22v and 30v, you can walk from 22 to 30 in 0.1 increments and settle on what you want, or switch between extremes. I go for extremes at the moment to enjoy different signatures, also for different sets. The impressions come from Apple Lossless | HQ Player -> Holo May L2 -> Oor + Hypsos, all fully balanced.

TC (my main daily) :
- 22v - soft and spacious sound. Really good clarity and ample bass. No shout, really smooth sound (not easy on TC as it's a spiky headphone by nature), spacious and deep stage.
- 30v - a lot sharper presenation, midrange and top end become ultra crisp with insane levels of texture information. The sound stage can shrink depending on the recording. If recordings (electroncia mainly) have issues with how reverbs were applied it throws imaging off, because it is ultra precise. For example parts of drums can appear really close because the producer didn't apply appropriate reverbs to blend them into the space of the mix (I've made this mistake myself many times ... that's how I know). Most systems don't reproduce transients that quick so on most monitoring setup you will never hear this. When the mixing is done properly by the book (which in this regard is a lot easier for acoustic recording because you don't have to fake the space with effects by hand) the space sounds amazing, its fully appropriate and ultra detailed. Sound at 30v can become shouty and tiring after some time, but it does provide most micro-details I find.

TC tested on high gain with volume at noon. Plenty of power, amazing macro and micro dynamics and detail. Loads of headroom.

EE Odin :
22v - again, softer but very detailed and spacious presentation.
30v - not as much shout because Odin is tuned in a very neutral and non offensive way. The sound at 30v can get a bit tiresome after some time because of how many details it pumps out at any one point.

Odin is famous for picking up noise from the chain very well. It is noisy on most systems I've tried. On Oor the only noise it picked up was electromagnetic noise from my environment (old block of flats), when I moved it around the room it became dead quiet on low gain. That's the best performace I've heard so far from an amp with this much power.

Will test Utopia soon.

Story so far, H+O is very clean, very detailed. I hear new nuances in every track I listen to, even though I prefer the 22v more open and a bit less detailed sound. It is easily the most detailed and cleanest amp I've heard. Super impressed with it.

 

[FooFighter]

@krude
Thx for these extensive impressions.
You motivated me to play around more with the voltages in Hypsos.
A bit off-topic:
Can you please share your source setup with Holo Audio May playing Apple Music?
I am thinking about getting a Holo Audio Spring 3 KTE but afraid of the rabbit hole of additional dedicated Streamer, reclocker, galvanic isolation of USB input, etc
Or are you running directly out of a Mac and are having no issues?
IOS isn't supported on the May, is it?
I am playing Apple Music mostly from my IPad via camera connection kit to my DAC as this is by nature bit perfect in contrast to MacOS always being limited to the preset sample rate set in the Audio Mixer.

Are you planning to keep both GT and Ferrum stack now?

 

[krude]

@krude
Thx for these extensive impressions.
You motivated me to play around more with the voltages in Hypsos.
A bit off-topic:
Can you please share your source setup with Holo Audio May playing Apple Music?
I am thinking about getting a Holo Audio Spring 3 KTE but afraid of the rabbit hole of additional dedicated Streamer, reclocker, galvanic isolation of USB input, etc
Or are you running directly out of a Mac and are having no issues?
IOS isn't supported on the May, is it?
I am playing Apple Music mostly from my IPad via camera connection kit to my DAC as this is by nature bit perfect in contrast to MacOS always being limited to the preset sample rate set in the Audio Mixer.

Are you planning to keep both GT and Ferrum stack now?

I have a heretic setup you could say. May L2 has a very high quality USB implementation, check Goldensounds review for more details on that. Software wise I use AudioHijack on OSX to route and resample. Im setting the output manually to 2x sampling frequency which in most cases is 44.1 x 2. I also use EQ and metering in AudioHijack. Its not a purist setup but it's the best I found so far.

I decided to return the GT for various reasons. It needs stating that it is a great amp for the right person.

 

[FooFighter]

Will check that software - it seems to be able to adopt the sample rate according to the song played in Apple Music, that's what prevented me from using my MacBook for Apple Music so far.
A pity though that many high end DACs don't support IOS, I remember T&A was the same.
I suppose it's due to custom driver development for the custom DACs vs standard drivers for the of-the-shelf delta sigma DACs

 

[FractalSound]

I don't have a massive high driving power amp experience tbh.
I just got a good offer below the MRSP, read and asked in numerous threads about amps in that price region and after owning and selling Flux FA-10 I wanted to try something else just for another experience plus needing a small footprint on my working desk.
Ferrum checked all these points and I ve not looked back since owning it - thank god.
I ve also considered IFI Ican Pro before but was reported about shutdown issues running high loads and Xbass turned on with Susvara.
That plus it's comparably larger footprint were the decision factors for me to stay away from it.
So for me in that price region I find following alternatives interesting
- Volot
- Benchmark AHB2 (too large for my desk plus speaker TAPs required)
- GT (fan noise, can be an issue or not, dunno but I am sitting really close to my amp at my working desk)

Generally I found this Susvara amp review which was mentioned before in this thread very solid and it shows that Volot and OOR are some of the top dogs of pure headphone amps before moving to some selected massive sized speaker amps.
https://soundnews.net/headphones/full-size/the-ultimate-hifiman-susvara-review/

But of course there are more amps as in that review like the before mentioned 13R / 23R but way more expensive...

I'm with you! If you get a good price then it's golden. Let's not forget Sound News highly recommended oor+h. oor+h is ranked highest of all some 22 headphone amps. Volot has the same high score but like you said it's way too big.

https://soundnews.net/headphones/full-size/the-ultimate-hifiman-susvara-review/

22. Ferrum OOR + Hypsos PS

One of the best headphone amplifiers, specially tailored for Hifiman Susvara. It has an amazing tonality, sounds lush, alive and very engaging, hits hard and fully preserves dynamics. Has a lot of power to spare and it was specifically designed with Susvara in mind. It sounds smaller than Flux Labs Volot, but it improves dynamics and transient response. If you don’t like experimenting with speaker amplifiers, this is good as it gets. I’m beyond impressed by this pairing.

• Resolution/Details: 8
• Transient Response: 9
• Dynamics: 9
• Tonality: 8.5
• Power/Control: 9
• Stage size: 8
• Overall score: 8.58

So both your reasoning and conclusion are right on.

We talked about drawbacks already
1. QA issues
2. Lack of power from my use case (susvara)
a. Volume to the max with high gain still not too loud for Susvara
b. GT draws 67W from Hypsos, Oor draws 14/15 w

 

[FractalSound]

What DAC are you running into Oor + Hypsos to power the Susvara please? What amp would be more powerful than Oor with your setup that you have experience with?

I'm very new here so I don't think I'm qualified to recommend anything.. So far I've only used A90, iCAN Signature and oor+h. I have RME ADI-2 DAC FS. RME is a company making equipment for the professionals... people who put music tracks together commercially. If you read their users manual and watch their youtube videos, they really take a rather practical view about the whole audio performance thing. They don't want to spend time and energy on diminishing returns or as they say "to improve audio distortions that can only be heard by expensive tools" I feel that they know what they are doing and they treat their customers in a straightforward and honest way. It's very important to a noob like me. Something I'm trying to get a sense of with oor+h

With that said I also want to try Gustard X26 Pro because Soundnews highly recommended it.

In terms of more powerful Amps.... like I said oor+h is not very powerful and I don't know why. If GT can draw 67W from Hypsos why oor only draws 14-15W? Maybe I don't know how to use it. iCAN signature feels much more powerful for me.

Now you can try to jack up input power to oor with a more powerful DAC or add a preamp between DAC and oor. Then we really get to the technical side I'm not very familiar with. In other words, I don't know what the linear range for oor. and I shouldn't have too

 

[krude]

I'm very new here so I don't think I'm qualified to recommend anything.. So far I've only used A90, iCAN Signature and oor+h. I have RME ADI-2 DAC FS. RME is a company making equipment for the professionals... people who put music tracks together commercially. If you read their users manual and watch their youtube video, they really take a rather practical view about the whole audio performance thing. They don't want to spend time and energy on diminishing returns or as they say "to improve audio distortions that can only be heard by expensive tools" I feel that they know what they are doing and they treat their customers in a straightforward and honest way. It's very important to a noob like me. Something I'm trying to get a sense of with oor+h

With that said I also want to try Gustard X26 Pro because Soundnews highly recommended it.

In terms of more powerful Amps.... like I said oor+h is not very powerful and I don't know why. If GT can draw 67W from Hypsos why oor only draws 14-15W? Maybe I don't know how to use it. iCAN signature feels much more powerful for me.

Now you can try to jack up input power to oor with a more powerful DAC or add a preamp between DAC and oor. Then we really get to the technical side I'm not very familiar with. In other words, I don't know what the linear range for oor. and I shouldn't have too

Ok, interesting, I know RME well from my studio days. It is indeed a benchmark company in the studio space. I think I even had their interface once.

Here are some facts :
1. Oor was developed with Susvara as the main reference in their design and testing, so it absolutely has to have enough to drive it well I would think.
2. Soundnews rated it as one of the best pairings for Susvara, pretty much on par with best speaker amps in his comparison, so I would think he was happy.
3. Oor is rated at 9.5W per channel, Soloist 3XP at 8W, Soloist 3GT at 10W, and from what I've seen it has similar power to the GT in my stack.
4. RME is known for having A TON of settings in their gear, and I bet your DAC is no exception, so I would think that probably you don't have the output configured for high performance. I had a quick look at RME forums at it looks like there is a bunch of settings for each output, including output gain, levels, EQ and all sorts.
5. It doesn't matter how much power an amp draws, it matters how it uses the power. A lot of power goes to waste in certain amp designs. It's not bad, it's not good, it just means that power draw doesn't necessarily have much corelation with power output.

I would say that your DAC settings probably need tweaking. From my calculations you should be getting hearing loss levels with Susvara at around 1-2 o clock high gain, with normal listening around 11-12. I should get a pair in this week so I'll let you know how it works on my stack. Also make sure you're running balanced with Susvara, single ended won't cut it on this stack.

 

[FractalSound]

Ok, interesting, I know RME well from my studio days. It is indeed a benchmark company in the studio space. I think I even had their interface once.

Here are some facts :
1. Oor was developed with Susvara as the main reference in their design and testing, so it absolutely has to have enough to drive it well I would think.
2. Soundnews rated it as one of the best pairings for Susvara, pretty much on par with best speaker amps in his comparison, so I would think he was happy.
3. Oor is rated at 9.5W per channel, Soloist 3XP at 8W, Soloist 3GT at 10W, and from what I've seen it has similar power to the GT in my stack.
4. RME is known for having A TON of settings in their gear, and I bet your DAC is no exception, so I would think that probably you don't have the output configured for high performance. I had a quick look at RME forums at it looks like there is a bunch of settings for each output, including output gain, levels, EQ and all sorts.
5. It doesn't matter how much power an amp draws, it matters how it uses the power. A lot of power goes to waste in certain amp designs. It's not bad, it's not good, it just means that power draw doesn't necessarily have much corelation with power output.

I would say that your DAC settings probably need tweaking. From my calculations you should be getting hearing loss levels with Susvara at around 1-2 o clock high gain, with normal listening around 11-12. I should get a pair in this week so I'll let you know how it works on my stack. Also make sure you're running balanced with Susvara, single ended won't cut it.

Agree with all your points. and thanks for taking the time to explain.

I think your calculation is close to what I'm experiencing. I actually don't have any problem with the SQ as I may appear to

I guess I was going into this thing with too much expectations (OOR, the only headphone amplifier with a soul, join the revolution etc... ) So I was expecting to be wowed. Although I was able to find the SQ very solid, so far I have failed to see the uniqueness of the stack. Like @GoldenOne has discussed, nowadays most of the amps sound decent.

 

[krude]

Agree with all your points. and thanks for taking the time to explain.

I think your calculation is close to what I'm experiencing. I actually don't have any problem with the SQ as I may appear to

I guess I was going into this thing with too much expectations (OOR, the only headphone amplifier with a soul, join the revolution etc... ) So I was expecting to be wowed. Although I was able to find the SQ very solid, so far I have failed to see the uniqueness of the stack. Like @GoldenOne has discussed, nowadays most of the amps sound decent.

I think you should also be getting really good power, dynamics etc. with lots of headroom without ever thinking if the amp has enough for Susvara ... but I will check this out first hand soon. Anyway, I would say Oor is a very crisp, clean and detailed amp, but it doesn't mean it's the sound everyone will enjoy the most. Maybe try something with more character like Soloist 3XP or GT. From my experience you loose a bit of detail but you get a lot more "character" which may be exatly what you're looking for. I have my Cayin HA6a with Utopia for character duties xD

 

[krude]

H+O Utopia impressions time.

Low gain 12 o clock has loads of volume and headroom for Utopia, zero noise, amp is dead silent.

22v - again smooth and enjoyable sound, wider than usual sound stage and very deep with really good imaging and great detail. Soloist GT I had the pleasure to test is even wider, but not as deep and imaging is not as precise. All in all a really good pairing.
30v - again sound gets really sharp with a hint of midrange shout, but that depends on the recording. This feels like pushing Utopia to their peak performance details wise. 1266 TC on those settings felt a bit more resolving, but Utopia is no slouch. Microdetails gallore, reverb tails, sound reflections, all the good stuff.

Again I prefer 22v softer sound for regular listening. Utopia doesn't cease to amaze me, it scales so so well. On this stack it's pretty much on par with 1266 TC in all regards.

I didn't mention one important thing in my previous post, Oor sounds very natural, in contrast to some other amps out there. Especially upper midrange and treble is seriously impressive. All cymbals, string instruments etc. sound amazingly real. No glare, no shimmer, just natural and crips sound. This is especially highlighted on Utopia which also has a natural but crips presentation. Cymbals (especially jazz) on this pairing are some of the tastiest cymbals I've heard

 

[cplus44]

Do you have to be careful with what you set the V to? For example if you set the V to 30V on certain headphones can you damage it or does it not matter?

 

[krude]

Do you have to be careful with what you set the V to? For example if you set the V to 30V on certain headphones can you damage it or does it not matter?

Nah Im pretty sure it just influences the internals of the amp.