[Joe Bloggs]

I've got an MG Head OTL and an SR Head at home right now...

Some quick impressions of the meet:

About half a dozen representatives from Fujikon http://www.fujikon.com came along and oohed and ahhed at the gear, and shook their head at the madness of phones that once sold for $4000 (the R10)

Some interchange of business ideas

They also brought two of their phones, one open, one closed. Their designs can best be described as 'shows potential'

I liked the closed model better. Should be pretty good value for the money (whatever the price is?

)

Alas, the Twin Head did not change my opinion of the R10 much--it's still too bright for me, and there's just this part of the bass that seems to be gone--perhaps it really corresponds to the low-freq impedance dip of the R10s, wherever that is.

The HP1s are about as bright as the R10 and I still didn't bring myself to listen to much of it. However Gino bought some flat pads and inverted bowl pads for them and those who heard the Grados with those may have further to say about them.

As it happened I listened to the lower end MG Head OTL and SR Head a lot and was really impressed: both delivered a warm, full sound such that I couldn't take my ears of them (and besides, the other setups were occupied

). No really, I'm really content with the sound, much more than with anything I've got at home

That's why I asked to borrow them home

 

[Joe Bloggs]

The MG Head OTL is a tube amp that sounds very much like a tube amp--warm and full, and not very accurate. But I like it a lot

Now I know what 'the tube sound' is all about, and how even when a tube amp distorts it sounds wonderful

Vocal music is so warm it feels like putting on a blanket and I get, er, warm shivers running through me (although admittedly on a song that often sends shivers running through me whatever equipment I use anyway

)

These comments apply both to OTL mode and transformer mode with no feedback using the Senns (and later, also to the ety 4P using transformer mode w/feedback). On both of these settings, damping factor is barely enough for the Senns and you get a sort of loose sound--and yet to my surprise this is not at all unpleasant--sort of like leaning on the pedal a bit when you're playing the piano

I declare that I'm no longer a member of team 0 ohm impedance

Listening to Iron Maiden, the sound of the distortion guitars (driven by tube amps in the recording no doubt) are driven to a new level of tubey distorrtioon grooovinesss

With the headamp set up transformer mode feedback on, the Senns sober up and sounds more, um, discrete and solid state than in the other settings. I don't know whether I'd like that less though because I haven't listened to that setting with the Senns for long. But with the ER4P this is the only setting that sounds good: OTL mode sounds thin (presumably because of the ~400 ohm output impedance (according to Joe Lau's memory) plus the 23 ohms inline resistor of the 4P stacked against the measly 4ohm impedance of the drivers themselves

) while transformer output is rather noisy without feedback. In transformer mode with feedback, the 4P sounds like what the Senns sounded like in the other modes, as far as that drunken tubiness goes

FR-wise this tubiness seems to be represented in part by a not unpleasant slant towards the bass, but I'm not sure.

Now for the SR Head...

The SR Head also sounds warm, but is, er, more lucid than the MG Head. Sort of like the MG Head in transformer mode with feedback when driving the Senns, but with cleaner transients yet. To a sober observer the SR Head ought to be more accurate than the MG Head, but after the meet, my feelings regarding the SR Head vs the MG Head goes something like 'moore beeer! Er more toobs! Gimme my drunken MG Heead!'

I'm sure that the the more high end tube amps there (OTL32, Twin Head) have more control over the phones than the MG Head. Until I get over this silly drunken toob honeymoon, though, I'm not sure that I'll like that

Joe Lau says that the SR Head contains an amplification section that is similar in design to the Grado RA1 and also uses the JR4556 opamp (but don't know whether other parts used are similar. Perhaps higher quality?

), but it's in a steel case and is going to sell for less than the MG Head. Also the SR head comes with a bypassable DSP crossfeed circuit that converts the analog input to digital, performs calculations based on a variant of SRS, and converts back to analog before sending to the amplification section!

So it may have a similar sound to the RA1 while offering the extra DSP feature!

(Disclaimer: this is based purely on Joe Lau's comments and I haven't compared the schematics myself.)

Will say more about the Staxes I heard later...

 

[bootman]

Thanks for the comments.
Did you try your Senns with the Twin Head?