After a week of experimenting with 10 amps here and finally getting the Ultravalve 6CA7 amp up and running with a custom voltage divider network I built, I have to say that the results with the new Clear MG Pro's are nothing short of spectacular! It even bests my awesome HPA-1, which is saying alot.
I will make the claim that its "the" best I have ever heard music from headphones....and for me this is a real statement. The match here is well as good as it gets so far...depth of music, layering, imaging, tone, timbre....golly gee its like I have a set of Susvaras here...yes its that good. I could sell all my crap and just keep the Pass Labs HPA1 and the Ultavalve and be done with it period. That marvelous.
Part of the magic is the HPA-1 is the preamp thats feeding the Ultravalve, but the alot of the magic is coming from the amp and its pairing with the headphones.. The amp has three impedance taps, 4, 8 and 16 ohms. Changing between them has a definite affect and I do prefer one over the others. (Using the volume control on the HPA-1).
When I first listened to this setup I thought yes its good but is it good or just different? So I put this away and rotated thru other good amps etc...When I came back to the Clears with the HPA-1 and Ultravalve amp, it was again a big "WOW".
Clarity, accuracy, details top to bottom, very very well balanced sound. Musical. Crystal clear and clean. I did swap out some Russian re-issue signal tubes yesterday with some NOS GE's I had here. This may have impacted the sound somewhat.
These tubes are 6GH8A's.
For a dynamic set of headphones, these indeed take the cake....even the soundstage is wider with this pairing. Yes the other cans I have still have a better or wider soundstage, but its again about as good as it gets for me. The dynamic range, bite, slam with sharp stattcato sounds are stellar.....micro details in the background are not hidden.
The "veil" has been removed!
Test Cable, next step is to build a solid interface box, now that I have the magic formula down.