[Leto Dal]

It's a conundrum for sure, because if I were to remove Sus from my lineup, it would change things dramatically for me...but the Sus is indeed so so good on Envy. And I'm planning to add a Utopia to my second-tier and that works better on tubes, IME.

Compromising Sus (compared to performance on Envy) is the biggest piece of the puzzle.

Thanks a lot for the considered response

Another option might be the Cayin HA-300b MK.2 which is only slightly more expensive than Bliss second hand (around 300 eu) but is basically on pair with Envy aside of few shortcoming

Highly advice to look into Caldera if you decide to downgrade

 

[Frankie D]

TLDR: Downgrading from Feliks Envy to Bliss?

I'm exploring the possibility of selling my Envy and upgraded tubes.

There are a few reasons. But basically I love the Envy. Adore it. But having explored some suuper higher end amps/dacs recently, I'm feeling like I'd be happy with a system that's not quite at the level of Envy. Good enough ultimately, and a decent bit cheaper.

The Bliss seems to fit the bill as it seems to sound fantastic, meatier than most SS amps, and will drive my 1266 and Susvara.

There are trade offs here of course. The 1266 relishes tubes. Sus is fantastic with tubes but I'm satisfied this wouldn't be as much of an issue as with the 1266.

The reason for this post, though, is that I currently have an XIAUDIO Formula S and Powerman stack. And I'm trying to figure out how far behind the Bliss it is.

I can't find any impressions comparing both. What leads me to Bliss is its ability to drive Susvara very very well. And the XIAUDIO from experience, doesn't quite get it there. It's still a beautiful headphone on FS+P, but compared to Envy it's a different beast. Exceptional.

I'm not expecting Envy performance for the Sus on a Bliss. But I think it might do better than the XIAUDIO.

But all of this is a wash if the XIAUDIO doesn't really trail that far behind the Bliss. A brief comparison a few days ago confirmed to me that the Envy is indeed miles ahead of the XIAUDIO. I just don't know if the Bliss is miles ahead of XIAUDIO – if at all.

Open to opinions on this.

Cheers!

The Envy is a more tubey or colored sound. If you like that, it will be a sizable difference from the Bliss. My guess is most would want both, not one for the other.

I love my Bliss and hopefully you will as well, but a bit concerned as you really like the sound of the Envy. I do not want to see you make a decision you are not happy about.

 

[idairyou]

The Envy is a more tubey or colored sound. If you like that, it will be a sizable difference from the Bliss. My guess is most would want both, not one for the other.

I love my Bliss and hopefully you will as well, but a bit concerned as you really like the sound of the Envy. I do not want to see you make a decision you are not happy about.

I own both the Bliss and the HA-300MKII, and it's great having both.

It's really nice having SS and tube sound and going back and forth depending on music, headphones or just mood.

For instance, Caldera I enjoy on SS on the AO I enjoy tubes.

If you can afford to indulge and have both I say, go for it.

Of course if you prefer tubes then there is no reason to have both if the SS never gets used.

 

[chrisnyc75]

It's a conundrum for sure, because if I were to remove Sus from my lineup, it would change things dramatically for me...but the Sus is indeed so so good on Envy. And I'm planning to add a Utopia to my second-tier and that works better on tubes, IME.

Compromising Sus (compared to performance on Envy) is the biggest piece of the puzzle.

Thanks a lot for the considered response

FWIW, I've found both Utopia and Susvara to work very well with DNA Stellaris, which costs a little more than double Bliss, but not quite as much as Envy. If I only had Sus, I would probably be perfectly happy with only Bliss, but Utopia practically DEMANDS tubes, and specifically DNA tubes.

That said, based on my fairly extensive research in the past year, if you're looking for the best all-around option capable of driving Susvara under $5K, pretty sure Bliss or Violectric are your best bets, though while both will get you better-than-average solid state performance, neither will truly replace a great tube amp. In isolation, though, your brain will adjust and not hear the difference unless (like me) you would constantly remind it that you're not hearing the ULTIMATE chain. For me, I need both to remind myself what each is doing better than the other, otherwise my brain would just get used to whatever ONE thing I'm hearing and take it for granted.

This is indeed a conundrum - if you find a good answer I think many of us would be really interested to learn what it is.

 

[K3cT]

TLDR: Downgrading from Feliks Envy to Bliss?

I'm exploring the possibility of selling my Envy and upgraded tubes.

There are a few reasons. But basically I love the Envy. Adore it. But having explored some suuper higher end amps/dacs recently, I'm feeling like I'd be happy with a system that's not quite at the level of Envy. Good enough ultimately, and a decent bit cheaper.

The Bliss seems to fit the bill as it seems to sound fantastic, meatier than most SS amps, and will drive my 1266 and Susvara.

There are trade offs here of course. The 1266 relishes tubes. Sus is fantastic with tubes but I'm satisfied this wouldn't be as much of an issue as with the 1266.

The reason for this post, though, is that I currently have an XIAUDIO Formula S and Powerman stack. And I'm trying to figure out how far behind the Bliss it is.

I can't find any impressions comparing both. What leads me to Bliss is its ability to drive Susvara very very well. And the XIAUDIO from experience, doesn't quite get it there. It's still a beautiful headphone on FS+P, but compared to Envy it's a different beast. Exceptional.

I'm not expecting Envy performance for the Sus on a Bliss. But I think it might do better than the XIAUDIO.

But all of this is a wash if the XIAUDIO doesn't really trail that far behind the Bliss. A brief comparison a few days ago confirmed to me that the Envy is indeed miles ahead of the XIAUDIO. I just don't know if the Bliss is miles ahead of XIAUDIO – if at all.

Open to opinions on this.

Cheers!

Why not get the Cayin HA-300 mk2? Same midcentric, lush tuning as the Envy and is really not that far behind (90-95% as good maybe?) but so much cheaper. Build quality is similar and probably slightly better with the Cayin. You can even reuse your Envy tubes for the Cayin since they run the same driver and power tubes.

 

[MrHaelscheir]

Here's my experience with Bliss, got one shortly after it was released... Soft, no. Vivid, dynamic, transparent, immersive, holographic, neutral without being sterile, engaging, pitch black background, yes. But I only achieved that fully after controlling AC line noise in my abode. Then I started hearing amazing texture and tactility. I began to hear subtle plucks and vibrations of strings, the texture of rosin on the bow, something dropping on the floor yards away, musicians breathing, that kind of detail. Guitars became visceral, with intoxicating texture I never knew existed. Listening to even old studio recordings brought me closer to the feeling of a live performance. Instruments and vocals sound strikingly REAL. That level of detail seems easily obscured by noise, at each stage along the chain, source being probably the most critical. I've found Bliss to be very revealing of any defects in the chain, part of the trade off and blessing. So for instance, when it sounded a bit lean, I worked with cabling to my cans, found silver coated copper returned the body that I wanted. I discovered that synergy of components is important. As discussed further back in this thread, because of the lack of harshness, it's easy with Bliss to listen at volume levels that probably aren't good for our hearing, so there's that...

Currently my chain is an AMD laptop with Realtek HD sound>Qobuz ASIO>OFCC USB>May KTE>Hapa Ember (copper) XLR>Bliss KTE>silver coated copper XLR to HD660S2, so that's my reference. If you use the ESS Dac in your amp, looking at a good R2R Dac might help reduce harshness. To my ears, ESS chips sound very detailed but tend towards treble brightness, but that could have been an implementation issue in ones I sampled. I haven't heard a TOTL ESS Dac, but once I heard a good R2R Dac, there was no looking back for me, ha. It's whatever sounds best to your ears...

Seems a good tube amp may also give you the qualities you are looking for, with more flexibility in tweaking the sound... I've tried a tube preamp with Bliss, and eventually returned to just Bliss. When fed with clean power, signal and cabling, it checks all my boxes, no harshness at higher volume, no sonic adjustments are needed. I just get lost in music.

"Vivid (depends on the recording and sometimes the time of the day), dynamic, transparent, immersive (also depends), holographic (with well-mixed recordings in the sense of things actually imaging in logical spots ahead of me except for extreme pans), neutral without being sterile (all warmth and richness in the recording comes through), engaging (depends on the recording and my mood), pitch black background (for recordings with a visibly low noise floor in their FFT spectrum analysis)" are terms I can use to describe great recordings played out of my FiiO K9 Pro ESS straight into the mains plug when combined with good EQ or binaural DSP. "Amazing texture and tactility" for me depends on the recording and sometimes the time of the day, my having sometimes while at classical concerts sworn that my at-home system rendered even more string texture or vivid imaging of a clapper than the live sound, though that doesn't always happen. I can hear "subtle plucks and vibrations of strings, the texture of rosin on the bow..." For the rest, I would need you to link to me the recording. For guitars, it depends on the recording, but I can hear plenty of pluck weight and incisive tactility plus the details or microscratches of a pluck in recordings that present such. I am again curious as to what you specifically had heard as "noise".

https://www.head-fi.org/threads/rec...nely-curious-objectivist.972411/post-18078699 (post #9) covers my latest experience with more closely A/Bing some other amps and DACs in decently quiet shop settings. In short, the different amps or DACs are neither taking me closer nor further away from the sound I am looking for. Of course, it may be truly a different story with actually heavily demanding headphones like the Susvara, though I have my reasons for being content with the EQed Meze Elite and HE1000se. I may still be ever curious of the Holo stack or drool over their looks and build, envying simply possessing such, but it would not be ideal for me to spend thousands and come back to you folks with every excruciating detail of how they sound when volume-matched.

 

[Timbuk2]

"Vivid (depends on the recording and sometimes the time of the day), dynamic, transparent, immersive (also depends), holographic (with well-mixed recordings in the sense of things actually imaging in logical spots ahead of me except for extreme pans), neutral without being sterile (all warmth and richness in the recording comes through), engaging (depends on the recording and my mood), pitch black background (for recordings with a visibly low noise floor in their FFT spectrum analysis)" are terms I can use to describe great recordings played out of my FiiO K9 Pro ESS straight into the mains plug when combined with good EQ or binaural DSP. "Amazing texture and tactility" for me depends on the recording and sometimes the time of the day, my having sometimes while at classical concerts sworn that my at-home system rendered even more string texture or vivid imaging of a clapper than the live sound, though that doesn't always happen. I can hear "subtle plucks and vibrations of strings, the texture of rosin on the bow..." For the rest, I would need you to link to me the recording. For guitars, it depends on the recording, but I can hear plenty of pluck weight and incisive tactility plus the details or microscratches of a pluck in recordings that present such. I am again curious as to what you specifically had heard as "noise".

Oh yes, I experience variations in sound quality as well, depending on the time of day, night being best overall, in spite of my efforts to clean up the AC line here... All the sound qualities we are talking about can vary depending on the source you are using and the music itself. So what I hear comes from the synergy of the system, as I've made tweaks over time. If you are looking for feedback on the May/Bliss combo, I'd say it's quite neutral and balanced, no frequencies stand out to my ears that detract from enjoying the music. It gets me closer to the feeling of a live performance. My intention is to get lost in music and forget about tweaking and the gear.

Noise may be a misnomer here... Sometimes it's actual noise that you hear, like a grounding hum. Perhaps a better word might be distortion. It's the distortion that's introduced by all the electric devices along the line to your gear that obscure the finer details, where you find the sound qualities we are describing. The distortion can be heard by the loss of texture, finer details, and such. In other words, you don't know it's there until you clean up the distortion and hear it. It wasn't certain recordings. It improved the sound quality of everything I listen to. That was my experience. The best sound quality I get out of my system is later at night, and I unplug all devices in the circuit before the gear at the end of the line. Some go to the extreme and put in a dedicated AC line from the fuse breaker box, just for their audio system. No matter what system you have, if you can clean up this distortion, your system will sound better. I hope that helps. If you'd like to discuss this further, feel free to PM me if interested, so we don't detract the Bliss thread.

 

[ethr]

Had my Bliss for a year now and it's my daily driver. Best quality for me is the soundstage. Hope to try Susvara on it soon.

 

[mfgillia]

I own both the Bliss and the HA-300MKII, and it's great having both.

It's really nice having SS and tube sound and going back and forth depending on music, headphones or just mood.

For instance, Caldera I enjoy on SS on the AO I enjoy tubes.

If you can afford to indulge and have both I say, go for it.

Of course if you prefer tubes then there is no reason to have both if the SS never gets used.

I have both of these amps too and enjoy them immensely. Can't recommend either of them enough. Also a very versatile combo - one or both will drive most anything very well from IEMs to Tungstens.

 

[UseThe4s]

Hello guys, I am sorry for this OT question here but I did not really know where to post it and figured here I can find a good advice (plus Bliss is my highly desired amp).

Can you please check my gear and advise what component/cable (or combination of components/cables) upgrade / exchange will bring me a sound extension/increase to more bass / mid-bass region and create more thick / meaty sound (without compromising it's texture too much)? Secondly a more pronounced midrange / vocals - but that is really a secondary goal as I don't really want to exchange my whole gear at once...

At the moment a few things that I think could help are:
a) exchange the silver XLR interconnects for a quality copper ones (like Neotech NEMOI-3220 / NC-06612 G)
b) different headphones (preferably planar), not sure which ones though, at all
c) EQ, but I have no experience in this field at all and maybe would like to avoid it and rather go with a route of better component pairing

I am aware that I might have to reach to a higher price tier for a reasonable upgrade.

Thank you for all your suggestions!

 

[MrHaelscheir]

Hello guys, I am sorry for this OT question here but I did not really know where to post it and figured here I can find a good advice (plus Bliss is my highly desired amp).

Can you please check my gear and advise what component/cable (or combination of components/cables) upgrade / exchange will bring me a sound extension/increase to more bass / mid-bass region and create more thick / meaty sound (without compromising it's texture too much)? Secondly a more pronounced midrange / vocals - but that is really a secondary goal as I don't really want to exchange my whole gear at once...

At the moment a few things that I think could help are:
a) exchange the silver XLR interconnects for a quality copper ones (like Neotech NEMOI-3220 / NC-06612 G)
b) different headphones (preferably planar), not sure which ones though, at all
c) EQ, but I have no experience in this field at all and maybe would like to avoid it and rather go with a route of better component pairing

I am aware that I might have to reach to a higher price tier for a reasonable upgrade.

Thank you for all your suggestions!

I would say that cables would be the least likely or reliable (as far as going the route of using likely psychological suggestion to create the perception of more bass and whatnot) way to get that much increase in bass and midrange. "Thick/meaty" kind of makes me think of the Meze Elite with hybrid pads both subjectively and per measurements of its frequency response. What headphones are you currently using?

If you go to https://www.head-fi.org/threads/mez...eadphone-official-thread.959445/post-18094382 (post #5,603), you will see my measurements of the Meze Elite as compared to a "neutral bright" headphone like the HE1000se. The HE1000se has more treble while the Meze Elite elevates the bass all the way to the midrange while still having a reasonable amount of treble for texture and detail. The Audeze LCD-2, LCD-3, LCD-4, or LCD-X (in increasing order of midrange levels) may also have the upper midrange to lower treble relaxation allowing the bass and midrange to feel more elevated while maintaining decent treble, else look for other headphones with similar frequency response graphs.

For the EQ route (which is completely free other than the minutes spent on figuring it out), if you are using a Windows system, I would highly recommend trying out https://sourceforge.net/projects/equalizerapo/. As a start, you would add a "low-shelf" filter with a center frequency of 1 kHz (so that we largely raise frequencies below that), a gain of around 6 dB (how much we want to raise those frequencies), and a Q factor of around 0.8 (higher Q factor means a sharper rise around the center frequency). You would also want to add a "digital preamp" of -6 dB to prevent digital clipping since boosting the bass can increase the amplitude of the digital signal. A similar EQ filter can be applied using Roon or any other "minimum-phase" (this type of EQ can be used to correct phase response errors with headphones in tandem with tonal corrections) "parametric EQ" software. Hardware EQ with the same flexibility of setting the frequency, gain, and Q factor as software EQ is probably quite expensive and may rather well introduce more harmonic distortion than you would get out of a good software EQ like Equalizer APO. I at least in my experience have found Equalizer APO to sound completely transparent, solely making tonal changes as expected.

The only reliable way I know for amps to influence frequency response without resorting to psychological suggestion or improper volume matching is when measurably having a bit of treble roll-off or when pairing a high output impedance amp like an "OTL" tube amp with a dynamic headphone with a nonlinear impedance curve, but that is like limiting yourself to just one peaking or shelf filter when software EQ gives you limitless possibilities.

 

[UseThe4s]

Thank you MrHaelscheir for your comprehensive reply. Before any EQ I guess I will rather test the recommended headphone sets which can obviously bring the biggest change in my listening. My gear is listed in my signature.

 

[Frankie D]

Hello guys, I am sorry for this OT question here but I did not really know where to post it and figured here I can find a good advice (plus Bliss is my highly desired amp).

Can you please check my gear and advise what component/cable (or combination of components/cables) upgrade / exchange will bring me a sound extension/increase to more bass / mid-bass region and create more thick / meaty sound (without compromising it's texture too much)? Secondly a more pronounced midrange / vocals - but that is really a secondary goal as I don't really want to exchange my whole gear at once...

At the moment a few things that I think could help are:
a) exchange the silver XLR interconnects for a quality copper ones (like Neotech NEMOI-3220 / NC-06612 G)
b) different headphones (preferably planar), not sure which ones though, at all
c) EQ, but I have no experience in this field at all and maybe would like to avoid it and rather go with a route of better component pairing

I am aware that I might have to reach to a higher price tier for a reasonable upgrade.

Thank you for all your suggestions!

I cannot. I do not have any direct experience with your kit. My only thought would be as the HP, in my view, makes the largest impact on the sound, trial a more bass heavy HP ( that is also easy to drive so no equipment issues ) that will give you the quality of sound you desire and work from that point forward.

 

[UseThe4s]

I cannot. I do not have any direct experience with your kit. My only thought would be as the HP, in my view, makes the largest impact on the sound, trial a more bass heavy HP ( that is also easy to drive so no equipment issues ) that will give you the quality of sound you desire and work from that point forward.

Will do, thank you . Maybe I find something at HIGH END Munich, at 11. - 12. May.

 

[walterboss]

Thank you MrHaelscheir for your comprehensive reply. Before any EQ I guess I will rather test the recommended headphone sets which can obviously bring the biggest change in my listening. My gear is listed in my signature.

In order of impact to sound it's headphones, amp, DAC, cables. There may be disagreement about l degrees when it comes to cables and power supplies etc, but your headphones are going to go most of the way to what kind of sound you're getting.

Cables are last and provide the smallest difference. You'll only hear those differences with highly resolving headphones or chains.

It's my understanding that Edition XS are fairly neutral headphones. You should start there imo.