When I was looking at the WA6, I definitely wanted the 1st generation. It has the 6DE7 sockets; with adapters, I can use the 12AT7s or the 6SN7s. The 2nd generation has 13DE7 sockets - fewer alternatives to work with.
When I was looking at the WA6, I definitely wanted the 1st generation. It has the 6DE7 sockets; with adapters, I can use the 12AT7s or the 6SN7s. The 2nd generation has 13DE7 sockets - fewer alternatives to work with.
The Woo WA6 works tremendously with the Clear (OG). With the right rectifier tube (Mullard GZ34) and driver tubes (Brimar CV4033), the Clear is like an electrostat but with bass and it has no metallic “sheen”. (I would love to see a high impedance Clear: 200+ ohms to use with an OTL h/p/a. If ZMF can make their Verites etc 300 ohms, why not Focal?...)
While I have not tried the (55 Ohm) OG Clear with my Feliks Echo (mk I), the Elears and Radiances pair exceptionally well with it… and the lower-than-25-Ohm LCD-XCs did too.
There seems to be pretty strong consensus among the Feliks faithful that Elears pair well with those OTLs, at least. Of course, we all hear differently and our tastes vary too.
While I have not tried the (55 Ohm) OG Clear with my Feliks Echo (mk I), the Elears and Radiances pair exceptionally well with it… and the lower-than-25-Ohm LCD-XCs did too.
There seems to be pretty strong consensus among the Feliks faithful that Elears pair well with those OTLs, at least. Of course, we all hear differently and our tastes vary too.
I have a profile to boost the bass a bit. It approximates the frequency response behavior of my old Titanium HD, which had a 35 Ohm output impedance.
To my ears, Clear sounds a bit too cold/distant when driven directly.
You can find the settings somewhere in this thread, me thinks.
Today I received my Focal Clear Pro. I am playing directly from the output of my Xiaomi smartphone, which has a very bad SQ ... tomorrow I get the OTG cable from Amazon to use it with iFi micro iDSD Black Label.
I've had my pair of focal clears for roughly 1.5 months now and I've been listening to via the iFi micro iDSD (as the DAC) paired with a matrix M-stage HPA3B. It's been really amazing but last week I decided to run them directly from the headphone out of the iFi. By all accounts the matrix amp is a step up from the internal amp in the iFi, as i feel it just has a blacker background and everything is sharper with a slightly wider stage. The internal amp on the iFi is a bit warmer and closed in but still enjoyable.
Just for fun, I toggled on the 3d and bass boost settings on the iFi, which I generally never used with my Audeze LCD2C'S before purchasing the Focals, as I just felt it made the sound a bit wonky when widening the stage, and as a result I've never used the setting again.
But for some reason, with the clears it sounds absolutely amazing. I totally understand this is personal preference here, and I can definitely hear a slight increase in certain frequencies in order to enhance the soundstage size, but it doesn't change the tonality of the clears significantly. The soundstage size increases dramatically and makes instrument seperation and detail come through even better than it already does.
Again, it's probably veering away from "natural" in terms on timbre, but dammit it's subjectively soooo enjoyable to my ears.
For anyone that's got an iFi micro iDSD (I've got the OG silver one, not the BL but it shouldn't be too dissimilar) give it a shout and let me know your thoughts. It's not for every song or genre, but for the first time since owning the iFi I can say it's a great option to have.
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