I sent my wife the Amazon link today and I'm HOPING that she ordered from your store. I asked her too, but ya never know. She's not into this stuff like the rest of us. I'm keeping my fingers crossed to hear when I talk to her.
Let me start with a disclaimer that I'm not really a big believer that hard-to-drive cans cannot be driven portably. I have two decent home amps -- a vintage Marantz 1090 and a Little Dot MkII -- which drive my HD650 and K701 very well.
While I love how these two sound on the Marantz, I have been quite content with how these two cans sound out of an E5. I have also driven them out of a Mustang. The enjoyability of the resulting sound out of a Mustang was not far behind that out of the MkII. And while the Marantz still sounds considerably better, I was pretty happy with how the humble E5 drove both cans.
The E7 does a much better job than the E5 did. And while it lacks the finesse of the Mustang, it had a far more fun sound. The E7 with bass boost 3 on the HD650 is particularly impressive and fun to listen to for pretty much any music and maintains the fullness of body that I love about the HD650. And with the K701 it is able to retain the wide and airy soundstage without sounding reedy thin, and the bass boost makes sure that the low end bass is felt. I do not hear any appreciable distortion doing so and am only driving them at 30 clicks out of the 60 the E7 is capable of.
That's more than good enough for me. I don't listen very loudly though so I'm thinking if you push the volume up to 45 to 60 distortion might start to creep in. For sure you can't get the same quality undistorted high volume out of the E7 as you would out of a monstrously juicy amp like the Marantz -- but I rarely listen at those levels.
Regarding it being the "best buy" ever.... I'm also still relatively green but I do have some experience with a lot of gear from attending lots of meets. I can safely say this is the best value DAC/Amp I have ever seen. It takes its place among such great values such as the PL11, Porta Pros and PX100s.
It is indeed relatively "black" I dunno if it's perfectly pitch black, but it certainly had no hiss whatosever in silent passages and my MP3s and FLACs had more noise than it did. That's black enough for me -- this is both as a DAC out of a Netbook and out of an LOD from a Nano.
And yeah the battery life is amazing. The only amps I have had that have this kind of battery life are the GoVibe Petite -- which I never had to think about charging -- and the Mustang. The Mustang loses out on this one actually because it would last maybe a week and a half of even use before I would need to reach for the charger ... this one I will never reach for a charger because I will use it as a DAC with my netbook at least once in a week, and that usage will be more than enough to juice its battery back up. Just as with the Petite, the E7 is one of those devices that have such wonderful battery life and the convenience of charging while you use it for its intended purpose (DAC) that you will effectively NEVER have to worry about its battery life.
Let me start by saying I am really enjoying my E7 which arrived on my desk this morning and has according to the sys clock 11HRS 52mins run time all of which have been happy listening. I have only tried the DAC and like the results with my 50ohm HD555 but I think its a little underpowered even at full volume as I hit the max quite easily although it still sounded as good as I have heard them . I can't imagine the E7 has enough juice to drive 300ohm cans but I'm sure Mochan can elaborate, on the easily driven HFI-780s at 40/60 vol it nearly blew my ears off. This is my first DAC and can only compare it to my Xonar DX HPO it nearly matches SQ but the Xonar wins due with extra EQ and power to better the still decent e7 bass boost. I dont feel qualified to dip into the audiophile dictionary for a bigger review I'll leave that to the more experienced tho it totally outclasses my CMOYBB that's for sure... oh and it's so shiny its practically mirror finish.
Mochan, what kind of portable players you use? Do you use an Ipod? If so, how much of an improvement from using the line out as compared to the headphone out?
With any amplifier, using the line-out on the iPod will give a performance improvement.
I plan on using my E7 with my iPod Video and UE18s. Some people may wonder why I'm using a relatively cheap amp with my customs, and my thinking is that I don't like carrying a $400+ amp around the place. Lets see how the E7 performs once I get it. Also getting a fuze LOD as well
I use an iPod Nano 2G. One thing I will say: I never amp a DAP without an LOD. Hence why I've stuck with iPods, since they are the only DAPs around here that conveniently have LODs.
That's because using headphone out is a disaster. When I was new to this business I was going to buy a NuForce Icon Mobile because I wanted to try an amp, tried it with an iPod's headphone out and was aghast at how horrible the results were. I stopped having an interest in amps for a LONG time because of this mistake.
Later one I attended a proper meet and got to experience a proper LOD chain and was blown away with the excellent results even just out of a humble E5. Using headphone out E5 was distorted and sounded far worse than just listening unamped. With LOD though it was an entirely different story and I could appreciate what the E5 was doing to my music.
I used to have a Clip which I used without amps to listen to IEMs mostly, but I lost it so I'm back to my iPod.
Ipod headphone out have improved quite a bit in the recent years. But somehow I feel that there's space for improvement. I will see how the E7 and Sflo2 will do justice to the SM3 and FX-700 when they arrives, which should be less than 2 weeks' time.
Awesome nice acquisitions there. 5G Nano has become a very nice device, SQ is a lot crisper and tighter than 2G with less bloat in the low end. But Headphone Out will never compare to Line Out if we're talking about amping.
What is the sound signature of the E7, really? Is it more towards the warm side like its brother the E5?
For a DAC/Amp the E7 is priced very nicely, but I still wanna know whether it'll improve IEMs like the IE8. Normally bassy IEMs like the IE8 will only deteriorate with warm amps.
Yup, it's very similar to the E5, quite warm even without bass boost, but with improved refinement that you'll appreciate particularly in the mids and in the definition of the bass (I always felt the E5 had a hole in the mids)
That's how the amp section generally sounds; when you use the DAC feature these improvements become even more prominent.
Pairing this with the IE8 -- if you don't like adding warmth to the IE8 the E7 is probalby not going to work for you. Best results I got with the IE8 was with stuff that had fluid mids. Like the Mustang. I never liked using the E5 with the IE8, usually paired the E5 with the TF10.
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