Dear audio friends,
I am new to this forum and I am German, sorry for my bad English skills
and sorry for my long first post
.
I have some struggles and looking for help in this forum! My current set-up is an old Harman Kardon integrated amp and CD player, Dynaudio Contour, Focal Elear and an old Acer Multimedia Notebook I am using for streaming.
When I bought the Focal Elear three years ago I compared several other models (different models from Audeze, Hifiman, Beyerdynamic, Stax, Sennheiser, B&W…, and also the Focal Utopia). I tested the Elear with a Naim CD-Player (do not know the model), Marantz DAC and Hugo TT1. I was quite happy with the sound. Everything sounded well to my ears, deep punchy bass, clear mids and highs, no sibilance and even the negative reviews about narrow soundstage and incorrect female voices (because of upper mid (?) dip) I did not really recognize (but did not focus on that), even when I compared with the Sennheiser HD800s. At home: the Elear directly plugged into my more than 10 years old Acer Multimedia Computer, I very much appreciate and enjoy listening to music sometimes 4 hours in one go and listening to a wide range of music (pop, rock, classics, film music, covers, …), with nearly the qualities I enjoyed when testing the Elear in the Hifi shop. I am listening via Spotify and even via Youtube videos it sounds great. The Elear sounds also great when directly plugged into my old Samsung Galaxy S7, full bass, clear voices, good soundstage, no sibilance. With my old Harman Set-up: full, deep and punchy bass, good sound stage, clear voices but unfortunately slightly sibilant sometimes, especially with older recordings.
Because I do seldom listen to my old CDs nowadays, I am looking for a new set-up with streaming/download functionality, serving both, listening with my loudspeakers and headphone. On my short list was the Naim Uniti Nova which I have not heard yet but I experienced the Uniti Star (and Atom) intensively in several occasions. A friend bought the Unit Star and I auditioned it with a Lynn loudspeaker (which I disliked), with a Monitor Audio loudspeaker (which I disliked), Focal Kanta (which I disliked), Focal Sopra (great), T&A Talis (great) and Avantgarde Acoustic Zero and Fino. Finally he bought the Avantgarde Acoustic Zero.
Yesterday I visited my friend and plugged my Focal Elear into his Uniti Star for checking if I am happy with the sound for potentially bying the Naim Uniti Nova. The result was very shocking unfortunately! No deep bass, no punch, narrow soundstage, 2 dimensional, metallic, hard, sibilant. The complete spectrum simply sounded very bad. I recognize the same bad sound when I plug the Elear in my business notebook from HP, while the Elear strangly sounds nearly perfect with my old Acer Notebook. Is there any kind of special switch within the Star I need to apply?
So my question is: does someone have experience with Focal Elear/Clear/Utopia and
Uniti Atom/Star/Nova
? It cannot be that a 1.000 EUR headphone and a very well-reviewed Naim product sounds that bad. Additionally, do these headphones sound great with other integrated amps like Supernait 3, McIntosh, Accuphase, others with headphone socket?
Thank you!
Best
Dirk