[nakedtoes]

I compared the LPG with my hm901s and still very much prefer hm901s. LPG sound slightly muddier and too clinical to me. However it is more dynamic then hm901s and has more raw power. In the end Its all abt sound preferences.. Hm901s is much cheaper plus the different amp cards is like different DAP each time u try a new card. Yes the mini box gold card is the closest SQ with LPG. The balanced card is the one with the best 3D spacious Soundstage I heard. All my comparison is done with TG334.. As different Iem and headphones u might get different results.

 

[dbatti]

Hi guys!
 
 
Well I think, I’m in trouble. I bought my 901S second hand, don’t have any reciepts or papers, but the whole original box and accessories. It worked relatively fine for a while (I think the problems until then were just software problems, freezed sometimes, or made stops in playback mainly after changing bitrate).
 
I used it daily, on the charger as well. I read now, that is not too wise, but now the trouble has already happened. One day the battery did not charge back fully at work. Then it didn’t charge at all overnight. I was not paying attention to the chargers LED colour. It still played music on the charger, and the LED was always GREEN. Now it is dead, as I unplug the charger, it shuts off completely.
Moreover – what troubles me most – booting is OK, but as soon as I hit play, there is a GIANT POP on the output, and I can hear the chargers hiss. The UI shows everything as it supposed to be (playtime, song title, etc.), but there is only the hiss. Even pausing the play gives the hiss. Removing the charger gives a POP again, and the hiss goes away, as the player shuts down almost instantly after a quick warning.
 
Now I do not know if it is „only” a battery problem, or is there some much bigger circutry issue…? :S
The multimeter says, that between the two battery poles on the right is 8.25V voltage, the two on the left are dead 0.00V. Measuring them with the healthy side gives zero Voltage as well. The charging pins produced 8.46V (Right pair) and -0.2V (?) (Left pair).
 
Please, if you have some experience with the same, respond. Any advice is welcome here. Thank you!
 
Cheers!
Attila

 

[LarsHP]

I would expect that it's the battery. Contact HiFiMan customer service and ask what they think. Anyway I would start with buying a new battery and trying it out before sending it in for a repair.

 

[qrtas]

Has anyone use the 901s with the focal Elear headphone?

 

[LarsHP]

I use my HE-6 with HM901S and Balanced amp card and it sounds wonderful. No sign of excess treble and good strong bass.

Except perhaps high impedance headphones, I would expect HM901S with Bal. amp to drive anything.

 

[qrtas]

I use my HE-6 with HM901S and Balanced amp card and it sounds wonderful. No sign of excess treble and good strong bass.

Except perhaps high impedance headphones, I would expect HM901S with Bal. amp to drive anything.

Thanks, but I am not so sure it can drive anything. I have an lcd3 and it sounds congested with the 901s with balanced card. But, when I connected to my woo wa22 It! opens up significantly. The treble is almost non existent with the 901s. My point is that I am planning to sell my lcd3 and woo amp. I just want to keep the 901s and since the focal Elear is more efficient, I might get that one instead. I just want to know if someone has experienced this combination.

I wish I could demo the Elear before purchasing it, but it has to be a blind purchase.

Hope someone can help me here with some insights.

 

[LarsHP]

I just checked the specs of the Elear and LCD-3. They are 80 Ohm and 110 Ohm respectively and 104 and 102dB in sensitivity. On paper they require roughly the same, but then the question is how do they sound with a specific amp?

I find it very interesting that the LCD-3 looses treble with HM901S & Balanced amp card. This could be the same regarding HE-6, but in this scenario it's welcome.

 

[coolcat]

Do you think Andromeda and HM901s make a good match?

too bright, even the HM901 is so bright to me when paired with andromedra (btw my brightness threshold end on K10)

 

[Nishy]

I just checked the specs of the Elear and LCD-3. They are 80 Ohm and 110 Ohm respectively and 104 and 102dB in sensitivity. On paper they require roughly the same, but then the question is how do they sound with a specific amp?

I find it very interesting that the LCD-3 looses treble with HM901S & Balanced amp card. This could be the same regarding HE-6, but in this scenario it's welcome.

 
Hi LarsHP,
 
I've had HM901 and 901s (and 801) Balanced and found my LCD3 [a well respected headphone of course] also not sounding that great on these for my ears (with Darkstar). Specially a lack of adequate treble in jazz and narrower soundstage (but HE-6 was fine all through, perhaps a tad bright but I like a brighter more trebly sound and loved it). HD800 sounds very fine too. And 901s is spectacular on SR-009 with a good amp. 
 
Does anyone know what format one formats a Lexar 256GB SDXC cards for the 901 if used with an iMac OS 10.12/Disk Utility? Is it MsDOS FAT or EXFAT? Journaled or not?? I seem to get varying views and stuff works but I want to have the best indexing possibility - HM901 is not so strong on this front and I am tired of long reindexing waits on 128GB and messed up files when you view your albums on an iMac screen (I am constantly rearranging by Name to tidy up as something messes them up in between HM901s and iMac transfers/updates). 
 
Thanks.

 

[LarsHP]

Hi LarsHP,

I've had HM901 and 901s (and 801) Balanced and found my LCD3 [a well respected headphone of course] also not sounding that great on these for my ears (with Darkstar). Specially a lack of adequate treble in jazz and narrower soundstage (but HE-6 was fine all through, perhaps a tad bright but I like a brighter more trebly sound and loved it). HD800 sounds very fine too. And 901s is spectacular on SR-009 with a good amp. 

Does anyone know what format one formats a Lexar 256GB SDXC cards for the 901 if used with an iMac OS 10.12/Disk Utility? Is it MsDOS FAT or EXFAT? Journaled or not?? I seem to get varying views and stuff works but I want to have the best indexing possibility - HM901 is not so strong on this front and I am tired of long reindexing waits on 128GB and messed up files when you view your albums on an iMac screen (I am constantly rearranging by Name to tidy up as something messes them up in between HM901s and iMac transfers/updates). 

Thanks.

I heard an early LCD-3 some years ago and felt it was way too dark (just as the HD800 was way too light), so I can understand why a HiFiMan DAP won't fit a dark sounding headphone. The HiFiMan headphones tend to be brighter than the Audeze's.

Regarding re-scans on your HM901S: Remove all tags except standard (album, artist, genre, year, track title, track #, disc #, comments) from your files and the problem is solved (in my experience).

Also, if you have albums with various artists, the DAP will present one album per artist. This unfortunately is not uncommon (the same problem on my phone). The way I have fixed this issue is by renaming the artist to "Various Artists" and either put the correct artist name in the file name or in the track title like this: "Beat It (Michael Jackson)".

 

[Nishy]

Hello LarsHP,
 
Thank you for your comments and advice. I will look at the tag issue. I can report that my Lexar 256GB SDXC card seems significantly faster in use than my Kingston 128GB Class 10 cards - indexing and general retrieval within the 901s (while in use) is notably zippier. I am using ExFAT format. Reindexing of about 210 GB worth of music takes about 23 minutes; once it is done, new bootups are of course only a few seconds (phew).

 

[LarsHP]

You are welcome. I should perhaps add that I not only remove the uncommon tags, but delete the tag containers altogether.
 
If you should choose to remove the card at some point, then make sure you have played a song first and then use the "Eject SD card" function. This way the DAP won't do a complete re-scan after inserting the card again. However, if you delete folders with songs, it might do a complete re-scan anyway.
 
What's the read speed of the two cards you compare?

 

[b0ssMax]

Hello LarsHP,

Thank you for your comments and advice. I will look at the tag issue. I can report that my Lexar 256GB SDXC card seems significantly faster in use than my Kingston 128GB Class 10 cards - indexing and general retrieval within the 901s (while in use) is notably zippier. I am using ExFAT format. Reindexing of about 210 GB worth of music takes about 23 minutes; once it is done, new bootups are of course only a few seconds (phew).

Thats weird. Mine doesn't do a 20+ mins rescan on a 256 lexar card. Will check what format i have on it later.

 

[Nishy]

Hi mrmax,
 
I used the card-formatted format ExFat that came with the Lexar card.
 
Hifiman Customer Service did advise me to use MS-DOS format (that advice came after I had done a test run of a few GBs transfer to my card from an iMac and 901s digested this fine AND then I transferred some 210GB of owned jazz CDs to it and it still works fine!). My 901s firmware is the latest ie last year's 2.004. Bottom line: I am using ExFat....
 
For what it is worth, I have used 11 Kingston SDs of 64GB and 128GB (Class 10 bog standard cards) for years. They work fine BUT are slow to reindex. My 128GB cards were taking a good 20 mins to reindex and this pushed me in frustration to consider the faster UHS-2 Lexar which probably is not operating at its optimal level in a HM901s. However if it is reindexing 256GB when you first insert the SD after say adding stuff (and taking 23 mins), that is better than my past experiences! 

 

[b0ssMax]

Hmm from cold boot, around 40 seconds to turn on and then around 2mins to index the db.

I'm using lexar 256 1000x card formatted using exfat.. With around 80gb free.