snapandslide
1000+ Head-Fier
So mine has also made it. Really like the SS back on mine too!Oh I forgot to mention I got my dx300MAX-EXN back from NPAudio. I really like the back metal-plate instead of the glass-back that he did for me.
So biggest changes has been the sense of stereo-imaging; now contasting with a darker background. Songs have a more concise surround feeling from where different parts of the track pop out from. Less of that positively forgiving analog haze to the mids.
Second change, is there is now a more unforgiving glare to the upper-mids/lower-treble-air area. Which brings the tonality/presentation closer to an amp12 kind of presentation. Over the forgiving amp11mki presentation it had previously.
Bass & subbass presentation seems to depend more on the song tracks than the dap-coloring. No extra coloring or so in tonality. Bass seems to stand out more....like it is more noticable to focus upon with there being tbe darker background; especially noticable for punchiness.
New presentation scales really well with the Focal Utopia headphone ability to present dynamics and depth much better than before; but at the cost of that one glare of the Focal Utopia also comes into play. Quite the high-fi experience.
Overall, the pros/cons of the modification seem to be in balance. Just means now it is synnergizing with different iems/headphones than I had previously before the modification.
Im around 15 hours in. I agree with a lot of your comments. Definitely a darker background and the lack of colouring compared to what it was previously is pretty obvious. I like that a lot.
Soundstage still has the same width but is a lot tighter which adds to the whole coherence.
I'm not really picking up on the glare, but I do like a spicy upper mids. Let's see how burn in goes!