[meomap]

Terrible cellphone pic. But I finally hooked up the SOTA Star back up in my headphone rig, and this time I have the Utopias to join in. Unsurprisingly, the Utopia sounds absolutely amazing from a good vinyl source. That was part of my original motivation for getting them. This is my 2nd string vinyl rig, and it isn't anywhere near as extravagant as my main rig, but it's still comprised of great stuff that synergizes beautifully. One small shortcoming is that there isn't a lot of gain from this phono stage for a low-output MC cartridge, so ideally it can get a little help downstream. Unfortunately the Stax/BHSE has a gain structure better optimized for very hot digital sources, so it can't provide much help. But the Utopia is so efficient that the Gilmore Reference has gobs of gain to spare for it.

With good vinyl...WOW. My old Yggy (analog 1) couldn't compete with this (to be fair it costs a lot less than this vinyl setup). The gear:

• SOTA Star Series III, never refurbished; vacuum hold down hasn't worked for years, but still runs like a champ
• Fidelity Research FR64fx tonearm - Vintage 1980s Japanese, still one of the best. Ortofon wood headshell, but I still have a couple of original FR headshells floating around here. I think about poaching this arm for use in my main rig with Koetsu, but then I'll be out of a headphone vinyl source again
• Ortofon Cadenza Bronze - Great match with the FR arm; some special synergy there. The Bronze isn't as analytical and dry as some of their more expensive models.
• Sonic Frontier Phono 1 SE+ - An old one now, but still an excellent phono stage and there's some unique synergy with the Cadenza Bronze. Hybrid of 6922 tubes and JFETs
• Headamp Gilmore Reference Balanced - 15 years later, still a top-notch headphone amp

Very nice setup.

Mine is
VPI Classic I with regular DV 20X cartridge + Manley Chinook phono stage with four 6922 tubes + ALO Studio Six + Utopia + DHC Comp4 silver hp cable.

OR

Esoteric K5 CD&SACD and DAC all in one connected to ALO Studio Six.

These are personal rig.
Probably bring TT downstair this week to join with McIntosh 275 + Magnepan 3.7i.

I miss my 2 channel rig lately.

 

[Drewligarchy]

I've purchased the Utopias about a week ago from a well known online dealer with a really good (and long) return policy so I am still evaluating whether I want to keep them or not.

I have been running them out of my Violectric v281 single-ended (will have a balanced cable to try shortly), and have been using both a Schiit Yggdrasil and Auralic Vega for DAC duties.

They do a ton right. the tonal balance sounds spot on, the imaging is excellent, the soundstage doesn't feel closed in, the dynamics are great, and micro-detail retrieval is up there with the best headphones I've heard.

My one issue is dynamic grain - and I'm wondering if I am the only one hearing it.

You see, most of my headphones, as you can see from my signature, are Planars, Electrostats, or BA IEMs. Each of these have there strengths and weaknesses - but based on their design - I detect no grain.

I don't listen to a lot of dynamic headphones - so this could be the issue. Also wondering if it's amp synergy, or just because I've become so accustomed to flat planar and electrostatic drivers.

Dynamics definitely have their advantages - and the Utopia is one of the best dynamics. But the grain is bothering me.

The thing is I don't hear it with all recorded music. In rock for instance, it's drowned out if its in there. In classical or acoustic - for instance - it seems to be there to a greater or lesser degree based on the recording (though I don't hear it on other headphones).

First, is this normal? I have lots of highly resolving headphones - but I don't get this. As it's not on all recordings, thinking that something in the Utopia frequency response is emphasizing it - or it's just the physics of the drivers. I hear this in my Focal Clear as well - but to a lesser extent - I think because it's less resolving - but it's close. The thing that's bizarre is some recordings - where it's not drowned out - are completely grainless.

Any thoughts on what I'm hearing and the cause of it?

 

[LCMusicLover]

I've purchased the Utopias about a week ago from a well known online dealer with a really good (and long) return policy so I am still evaluating whether I want to keep them or not.

I have been running them out of my Violectric v281 single-ended (will have a balanced cable to try shortly), and have been using both a Schiit Yggdrasil and Auralic Vega for DAC duties.

They do a ton right. the tonal balance sounds spot on, the imaging is excellent, the soundstage doesn't feel closed in, the dynamics are great, and micro-detail retrieval is up there with the best headphones I've heard.

My one issue is dynamic grain - and I'm wondering if I am the only one hearing it.

You see, most of my headphones, as you can see from my signature, are Planars, Electrostats, or BA IEMs. Each of these have there strengths and weaknesses - but based on their design - I detect no grain.

I don't listen to a lot of dynamic headphones - so this could be the issue. Also wondering if it's amp synergy, or just because I've become so accustomed to flat planar and electrostatic drivers.

Dynamics definitely have their advantages - and the Utopia is one of the best dynamics. But the grain is bothering me.

The thing is I don't hear it with all recorded music. In rock for instance, it's drowned out if its in there. In classical or acoustic - for instance - it seems to be there to a greater or lesser degree based on the recording (though I don't hear it on other headphones).

First, is this normal? I have lots of highly resolving headphones - but I don't get this. As it's not on all recordings, thinking that something in the Utopia frequency response is emphasizing it - or it's just the physics of the drivers. I hear this in my Focal Clear as well - but to a lesser extent - I think because it's less resolving - but it's close. The thing that's bizarre is some recordings - where it's not drowned out - are completely grainless.

Any thoughts on what I'm hearing and the cause of it?

I think you should defer judgement until you get your balanced cable. I have a v280, and I've got a couple balanced cables for my Utopia. But when I first received them and only had the stock SE cable, I was not thrilled. I'm not sure that what I heard was 'grain' (not even sure what that is), but to me, the balanced output of the v280 is much preferred to SE. There's lots of chatter on the v281 thread about preference for balanced output. When you read the whole 'is balanced better than SE' discussion on pretty much any audiophile forum, you always get 'depending on implementation, SE can be better'. I think the Violectric implementation is focused on/biased towards balanced output.

Utopia certainly highlight any weakness in source material or chain. Also, given how dissimilar the rest of your headphone inventory is from the Utopia, it's not surprising that you hear something very different from them.

I will say that both my planars (HEKv2 & EFO) are smoother than Utopia. I have picked up a different DAC and amp to try to soften the Utopia output a bit. Denafrips Ares helped, but cost too much detail. I've just gotten a Denafrips Pontus, and a Bryston BHA-1 -- we'll see how that works.

Honestly, right now, I'm leaning toward keeping my ZMF Auteur and selling the Utopia -- depending on what I hear from the new source chain.

 

[kvn864]

something stupid happened yesterday. at home I have Audio GD R2R-11 and run Utopias with that. so yesterday I brought home Asus xonar u7, mid class if you can call it, dac/amp combo with ok performance, used it with Porta-Pros, HD650/700 at work on and off. so plugged it in, got drivers, and started listening, and .. expected to be memeed, it was not bad at all. unit gets all its power from the usb port its plugged in to, so perhaps it was a bit under-powered, but I didn't feel like something was bothering me or lacking, felt so strange, I expected to listen to it a minute or two, and say, yea, confirmed, u7 is not up to league. that's not what happened. it actually made me think twice before investing my fortune to somewhat expensive gear. i am still upgrading R2R-11 but 2 things:
- Utopias sound great on anything
- will think twice to what I want to upgrade, cause more then likely sacks will remain intact ..

 

[PeteSTRADAMUS]

I wrote a longer impression in the Hugo 2 thread, in case you're interested. Long story short, to my ears, an upgrade in every way over my Mojo and Bimby/Asgard 2 stack.

https://www.head-fi.org/threads/cho...official-thread.831345/page-775#post-14112961

Sweet, I'm going to read into it now.

 

[Allanmarcus]

something stupid happened yesterday. at home I have Audio GD R2R-11 and run Utopias with that. so yesterday I brought home Asus xonar u7, mid class if you can call it, dac/amp combo with ok performance, used it with Porta-Pros, HD650/700 at work on and off. so plugged it in, got drivers, and started listening, and .. expected to be memeed, it was not bad at all. unit gets all its power from the usb port its plugged in to, so perhaps it was a bit under-powered, but I didn't feel like something was bothering me or lacking, felt so strange, I expected to listen to it a minute or two, and say, yea, confirmed, u7 is not up to league. that's not what happened. it actually made me think twice before investing my fortune to somewhat expensive gear. i am still upgrading R2R-11 but 2 things:
- Utopias sound great on anything
- will think twice to what I want to upgrade, cause 'cuz more then likely sacks will remain intact ..

Yep. IMHO, for the most part, the differences, for most people, between any old DAC/amp and very high end equipment, is very very subtle. Sure, there are exceptions, especially when the equipment colors the sound. Audiophila is much about perceptions and very much about the law of demising returns. Also, people hear differently, so what obvious to one person may not even be noticeable to others. There are very few, if any, absolutes in audio perception. There is that that is easily measurable, but beyond that, perception and preference takes over.

Moral of the diatribe above? If if sounds good, enjoy it and don't fall into the "audiophile nervosa" trap.

 

[SilverEars]

I think you should defer judgement until you get your balanced cable. I have a v280, and I've got a couple balanced cables for my Utopia. But when I first received them and only had the stock SE cable, I was not thrilled. I'm not sure that what I heard was 'grain' (not even sure what that is), but to me, the balanced output of the v280 is much preferred to SE. There's lots of chatter on the v281 thread about preference for balanced output. When you read the whole 'is balanced better than SE' discussion on pretty much any audiophile forum, you always get 'depending on implementation, SE can be better'. I think the Violectric implementation is focused on/biased towards balanced output.

Utopia certainly highlight any weakness in source material or chain. Also, given how dissimilar the rest of your headphone inventory is from the Utopia, it's not surprising that you hear something very different from them.

I will say that both my planars (HEKv2 & EFO) are smoother than Utopia. I have picked up a different DAC and amp to try to soften the Utopia output a bit. Denafrips Ares helped, but cost too much detail. I've just gotten a Denafrips Pontus, and a Bryston BHA-1 -- we'll see how that works.

Honestly, right now, I'm leaning toward keeping my ZMF Auteur and selling the Utopia -- depending on what I hear from the new source chain.

I do not understand what you mean by grain. Can you expand on this? Perhaps what I think of grain compared to what it means to you differs. I thought headphones that are less resolving have more of thicker treble to be considered grain for lower treble frequencies as the treble is bold. Could your meaning of grain be the treble sticking out a bit much, seemingly like a over-sharpening of images? Like for example, if an image is over-sharpened that is noisy, the noise becomes more visible, increasing the intensity of it. This is what i feel that Utopia is able to do. It's treble sounds like it's thinner than less resolving headphones, but also there seems to be bit of emphasis or over-sharpening that makes details stand out at a greater scale than natural, and perhaps that is what you mean by grain. Like for example, if there were static noise in a retro track, you hear it stick out more.

Curious what you think of the ZMF Auteur. I wish Zach would provide a tour so that more people would be exposed to it. I know Auteur is more of semi-open compared to their previous cans. One of their previous models, I've heard cup resonance which stood out, and hopefully, Auteur reprimanded that aspect with the more open design.

 

[LCMusicLover]

I do not understand what you mean by grain. Can you expand on this? Perhaps what I think of grain compared to what it means to you differs. I thought headphones that are less resolving have more of thicker treble to be considered grain for lower treble frequencies as the treble is bold. Could your meaning of grain be the treble sticking out a bit much, seemingly like a over-sharpening of images? Like for example, if an image is over-sharpened that is noisy, the noise becomes more visible, increasing the intensity of it. This is what i feel that Utopia is able to do. It's treble sounds like it's thinner than less resolving headphones, but also there seems to be bit of emphasis or over-sharpening that makes details stand out at a greater scale than natural, and perhaps that is what you mean by grain. Like for example, if there were static noise in a retro track, you hear it stick out more.

Curious what you think of the ZMF Auteur. I wish Zach would provide a tour so that more people would be exposed to it. I know Auteur is more of semi-open compared to their previous cans. One of their previous models, I've heard cup resonance which stood out, and hopefully, Auteur reprimanded that aspect with the more open design.

I only mentioned ‘grain’ in response to @Drewligarchy’s comment, and I said ‘not even sure what that is‘, so ...

I’ve commented on the Auteur over in that thread. If you have specific, Auteur-related questions, please post them there.

 

[mulveling]

Yep. IMHO, for the most part, the differences, for most people, between any old DAC/amp and very high end equipment, is very very subtle. Sure, there are exceptions, especially when the equipment colors the sound. Audiophila is much about perceptions and very much about the law of demising returns. Also, people hear differently, so what obvious to one person may not even be noticeable to others. There are very few, if any, absolutes in audio perception. There is that that is easily measurable, but beyond that, perception and preference takes over.

Moral of the diatribe above? If if sounds good, enjoy it and don't fall into the "audiophile nervosa" trap.

Absolutely, the relatively subtle difference between DACs has frustrated me time and time again over the years. I owned the Yggdrasil for 3 years, and it sounded very good, but in that time I read so much overblown hype about it that it turned me off -- it wasn't THAT good lol; I downgraded to a smaller, older Delta-Sigma DAC that I even like slightly better. I find there to be potentially much more difference between headphone amps, though to be fair most of the mid-fi solid-state amps do tend to sound extremely alike. At the high-end of amps though, there are some that can really WOW you. For certain, the Utopias are easy to drive, and so the entry level of incredible sound is much lower (once you can afford the Utopias themselves, haha).

Speaker rigs and vinyl rigs is where you will find much larger differences in the sounds of various gear, and god help you if you can't help yourself there (like me). Utopias sound incredible downstream of a good vinyl rig, btw.

 

[baiyy1986]

Utopia sounds great with my Objective 2

 

[Whitigir]

Absolutely, the relatively subtle difference between DACs has frustrated me time and time again over the years. I owned the Yggdrasil for 3 years, and it sounded very good, but in that time I read so much overblown hype about it that it turned me off -- it wasn't THAT good lol; I downgraded to a smaller, older Delta-Sigma DAC that I even like slightly better. I find there to be potentially much more difference between headphone amps, though to be fair most of the mid-fi solid-state amps do tend to sound extremely alike. At the high-end of amps though, there are some that can really WOW you. For certain, the Utopias are easy to drive, and so the entry level of incredible sound is much lower (once you can afford the Utopias themselves, haha).

Speaker rigs and vinyl rigs is where you will find much larger differences in the sounds of various gear, and god help you if you can't help yourself there (like me). Utopias sound incredible downstream of a good vinyl rig, btw.

Surprisingly, I agree about this statement very very much true

 

[Justin_Time]

something stupid happened yesterday. at home I have Audio GD R2R-11 and run Utopias with that. so yesterday I brought home Asus xonar u7, mid class if you can call it, dac/amp combo with ok performance, used it with Porta-Pros, HD650/700 at work on and off. so plugged it in, got drivers, and started listening, and .. expected to be memeed, it was not bad at all. unit gets all its power from the usb port its plugged in to, so perhaps it was a bit under-powered, but I didn't feel like something was bothering me or lacking, felt so strange, I expected to listen to it a minute or two, and say, yea, confirmed, u7 is not up to league. that's not what happened. it actually made me think twice before investing my fortune to somewhat expensive gear. i am still upgrading R2R-11 but 2 things:
- Utopias sound great on anything
- will think twice to what I want to upgrade, cause more then likely sacks will remain intact ..

- Utopias sound great on anything

I wish that was true.

I like the Utopia very much, actually enough that I am (almost) willing to get rid of several HP's I own.

The Utopia sounded incredible with the GS-X Mk2 (generally acknowledged as an outstanding SS amp): the bass was perfect; guitar sound had crisp attack with nice decay; the sound stage was deep but with good separation; most of all the visceral impact of the Utopia was truly astounding. By comparison, the HD800S, an excellent HP in its own right, sounded very dynamic but slightly thin with just a touch of sibilance.

When I switched to the Apex Teton, generally accepted as an excellent (tube) amp as well, the reverse happened. The HD800S sounded dynamic, with tight bass and very wide sound stage; the midrange was liquid but still nimble with nary a trace of sibilance--overall a truly glorious sound. By comparison, the Utopia sounded a little bass-heavy; the soundstage was small with unclear separation between instruments and a touch too much reverberation, all possibly the result of a slow decay. ( I used the same source for this comparison: the Oppo 205 with ModWright modification and the PS Audio Perfect wave).

Now, to be perfectly clear, the sound differences I described above were small but they were definitely audible. I have not put these HPs through other amps (yet--I will) but I am reasonably sure that each will sound great on some amps but not so much on others. That is the nature of the beast.

Allenmarcus's advice on not getting caught up in that never-ending search for the perfect sound is a very good one. Unfortunately, it may have come too late for many of us. After all, how sensible is a person who spends $3000-$4000 on a pair of headphones? Mea Culpa!

 

[Justin_Time]

Moral of the diatribe above? If if sounds good, enjoy it and don't fall into the "audiophile nervosa" trap.

Great advice. Unfortunately, it may have come too late for many of us. After all, how sensible is a person who spends $3000-$4000 on a pair of headphones? Mea Culpa!

 

[Justin_Time]

Speaker rigs and vinyl rigs is where you will find much larger differences in the sounds of various gear, and god help you if you can't help yourself there (like me). Utopias sound incredible downstream of a good vinyl rig, btw.

I found that the Utopia LOVES the GS-X Mk2! It sounded good on the SimAudio Moon 450-HA, and the V281 as well. Strangely, it did not sound great with the Apex Teton...go figure. I may try the Woo WA5 next.

I second your conclusion about Utopia with vinyl: absolutely glorious sound!

 

[mulveling]

I found that the Utopia LOVES the GS-X Mk2! It sounded good on the SimAudio Moon 450-HA, and the V281 as well. Strangely, it did not sound great with the Apex Teton...go figure. I may try the Woo WA5 next.

I second your conclusion about Utopia with vinyl: absolutely glorious sound!

Yep! For the past few weeks I've switched to running my Utopias from a Headamp Gilmore Balanced Reference, which is the circa-2003 predecessor to the GS-X Mk2. It's got a bigger PSU that's chock full of (now unobtanium) black gates caps, and has a couple other exotics like silver wiring, but it lacks the later audio circuit refinements of the GS-X (the newest dynalo 2 modules are excellent). I've compared these two amps at Purk's before, and there's a lot of similarity there, so I'm sure we're hearing the same good things. The danger with the older Gilmore Reference is that it's a little brighter than the GS-X Mk2, and that can be problematic with HD800 (which I don't like anyways), but it hasn't been a problem with the Utopias and my sources. Sounds amazing!

Since my phono stage is single-ended, I use Jensen ISOMax transformers to convert the signal to balanced before the Gilmore Reference.