[The Jester]

Got the latest one of these coming in the next week or so ...
HP8 with factory cap upgrade and upgraded valves ...
More when it gets here and a bit of running in ...

 

[Coztomba]

Got the latest one of these coming in the next week or so ...
HP8 with factory cap upgrade and upgraded valves ...
More when it gets here and a bit of running in ...

Excellent stuff. What headphones will you be using with it? Are you purchasing brand new?

 

[The Jester]

Yup, brand new from local dealer .. long trip from the UK though..
Headphones are Quad ERA-1 and multi use Sennheiser HD630VB..

 

[Coztomba]

Yup, brand new from local dealer .. long trip from the UK though..
Headphones are Quad ERA-1 and multi use Sennheiser HD630VB..

I also bought mine new last year from Decibel Hifi in Aus and haven't regretted it. Particularly good with the Focal Clear and Grado Hemp's. Looking forward to your impressions!

 

[The Jester]

I also bought mine new last year from Decibel Hifi in Aus and haven't regretted it. Particularly good with the Focal Clear and Grado Hemp's. Looking forward to your impressions!

Luckily I’m only a 15 minute drive from them ..
will be driven from a Chord Qutest/ MScaler or Rega P6 / Reflex M

 

[The Jester]

Just picked it up today,
Manual states upgraded caps are now Mundorf silver gold ... nice ...
just need to install it and get it warmed up ...

 

[The Jester]

Only an hour here and there so far,
12AX7 Is an EH gold which I don’t mind, tried both those and Gold Lion 6992’s in my CJ preamp and slightly preferred the EH ...
2021 here already so Happy New Year and a quick photo ....

 

[The Jester]

Been running for a few days now and opened up a little more, using Quad ERA-1 seems a nice match, the previous amp was an Eximus DP1 and the major improvement is soundstage and detail, not in an analytical way but as the soundstage opens in width but mainly depth it reveals almost hidden levels of low level detail, instrument texture and timbre improved from bass upwards and a nice sparkle to cymbals in the high end without being harsh or “tizzy” , a really “analogue” sound for want of a better description,
Next will be an extended listen to some vinyl and see if there’s a similar improvement or if the gap has closed even further ....
I’ll be happy either way ...
Update:
after a few vinyl albums I think the gap may have closed a little, still a nice improvement with vinyl replay but maybe via digital that last little hint of digital hardness seemed to gone ....

 

[MLGrado]

Well, my second ICON HP8 MKII has died with virtually no customer service from Music Direct.

First one the 12AX7 socket broke. I bought it second hand so no warranty. I understood and moved on.

Second unit was new from Music Direct with full warranty. Still under the two year warranty, and yesterday I woke up, and turned on dead amp.

Yes, changed fuses. Changed tubes, Changed power cord, Changed power strip, tired different outlet. NADA. Dead amp. No sound, no red light, no tube power. no heater etc.

SO I called MD. They said I had to call Icon in Britain.

GREAT. MY product purchased from authorized dealer, wont fix it here in the states. Has to go back to Britain, which is helluva expensive shipping on my part, in middle of a pandemic that means it will take months probably. Even then, China may come into play for parts and service according to Music Direct.

Anyone have experience with Icon support???? This far I am NOT impressed.

 

[shabta]

Well, my second ICON HP8 MKII has died with virtually no customer service from Music Direct.

First one the 12AX7 socket broke. I bought it second hand so no warranty. I understood and moved on.

Second unit was new from Music Direct with full warranty. Still under the two year warranty, and yesterday I woke up, and turned on dead amp.

Yes, changed fuses. Changed tubes, Changed power cord, Changed power strip, tired different outlet. NADA. Dead amp. No sound, no red light, no tube power. no heater etc.

SO I called MD. They said I had to call Icon in Britain.

GREAT. MY product purchased from authorized dealer, wont fix it here in the states. Has to go back to Britain, which is helluva expensive shipping on my part, in middle of a pandemic that means it will take months probably. Even then, China may come into play for parts and service according to Music Direct.

Anyone have experience with Icon support???? This far I am NOT impressed.

That's pretty horrible that Music Direct isn't helping facilitate. I have had dealing with the icon audio people, they respond promptly to emails. There's a good chance David Shaw will personally get involved. I have had my icon for 6 or 7 years w/o problems. I did send it to the UK (pre brexit) to upgrade the caps. I live in france so that was much smoother. Best of luck.

 

[-Darkstar-]

Well, my second ICON HP8 MKII has died with virtually no customer service from Music Direct.

First one the 12AX7 socket broke. I bought it second hand so no warranty. I understood and moved on.

Second unit was new from Music Direct with full warranty. Still under the two year warranty, and yesterday I woke up, and turned on dead amp.

Yes, changed fuses. Changed tubes, Changed power cord, Changed power strip, tired different outlet. NADA. Dead amp. No sound, no red light, no tube power. no heater etc.

SO I called MD. They said I had to call Icon in Britain.

GREAT. MY product purchased from authorized dealer, wont fix it here in the states. Has to go back to Britain, which is helluva expensive shipping on my part, in middle of a pandemic that means it will take months probably. Even then, China may come into play for parts and service according to Music Direct.

Anyone have experience with Icon support???? This far I am NOT impressed.

Sorry to hear this. I bought mine from MD, also. Luckily I haven't had any problems.

 

[The Jester]

Well, my second ICON HP8 MKII has died with virtually no customer service from Music Direct.

First one the 12AX7 socket broke. I bought it second hand so no warranty. I understood and moved on.

Second unit was new from Music Direct with full warranty. Still under the two year warranty, and yesterday I woke up, and turned on dead amp.

Yes, changed fuses. Changed tubes, Changed power cord, Changed power strip, tired different outlet. NADA. Dead amp. No sound, no red light, no tube power. no heater etc.

SO I called MD. They said I had to call Icon in Britain.

GREAT. MY product purchased from authorized dealer, wont fix it here in the states. Has to go back to Britain, which is helluva expensive shipping on my part, in middle of a pandemic that means it will take months probably. Even then, China may come into play for parts and service according to Music Direct.

Anyone have experience with Icon support???? This far I am NOT impressed.

Any update on the Icon Audio warranty support ?

 

[JonT]

It's been fascinating to chronologically read the 41 pages of this thread - across different iterations of the HP8 - with all the distilled experience regarding headphone pairings, capacitor and valve upgrades, and so on.

My HP8 Mk2.2 SE arrived yesterday (Mundorf Silver Gold capacitors; Treasure CV181+; EH GP 12AX7) and I've listened for 5 hours.

My set-up is an all analogue system with HD800S.

In recent months I have had at home: Graham Slee Solo ULDE, Pathos Aurium, IFI Pro iCAN, SPL Phonitor 2.

I arrive at the HP8 following a recent phono stage change (from Graham Slee Accession to Cyrus Phono Signature). The Cyrus was a major improvement - particularly noise floor, detail, and imaging - and while bass articulation was also greatly improved, the overall low end heft was reduced. With HD800S into the Phonitor 2 this trade off was problematic on problematic recordings.

I rather enjoyed the Pathos Aurium which I had in my system last autumn.

(In fact, I had two units and both sadly were defective. On the first, the power inlet separated off the PCB; the second had a major heat problem somewhere, and collapsed into distortion after running for an hour. The UK Pathos distributor can most charitably be described as eccentric.)

In my system, there was good synergy with the HD800S.

The IFI Pro iCAN is something I hope never to listen to again.

The SPL Phonitor 2 I enjoyed for around six-months when the Graham Slee Accession was still in the chain. Excellent detail and dynamic authority. Well-mastered recordings sounded superb. I did a good deal of experimentation with the crossfeed and laterality controls, and found that they invariably made music sound worse.

For now, the Phonitor 2 is side-by-side with the HP8 and so I have been able to A/B.

Certainly, the HP8 restores the body and texture which had atrophied in the Cyrus-Phonitor-HD800S chain. As others have reported, the HP8 does have an impressive way of adding richness without sacrificing detail. At this early stage, what I do miss about the Phonitor are its huge and authoritative dynamic contrasts. Perhaps SPL's 120-volt technology is more than just a gimmick (as suggested by some). On both listening sessions (yesterday and today) I found the HP8 took around an hour before it really sang.

Briefly experimented with interactions between the Cyrus (settings for gain and resistance) and the Impedance setting on the HP8. Initial findings seem to echo what others have observed about the thickening effect on tone when switching from 'M' to 'H' with HD800S. At this early stage, overall I have found the 'H' setting is the most pleasing, and perhaps does make sense given that although nominally 300-ohms the HD800S present 600-ohms at lower frequencies.

Channel matching seems excellent.

Build quality seems excellent. I've no problem with the business model of Chinese manufacturing and UK finishing, tuning, and quality control.

I guess like everyone else I now need to consider whether to further upgrade the valves (especially the input?) - holding in mind the tonal the particularities of the rest of the chain.

Finally, I've found the noise floor of the HP8 to be very good. There is a slight transformer hum not audible above the noise floor of vinyl even between songs.

Again, many thanks to everyone who contributed to this thread across many years and 41 pages!

 

[The Jester]

Still more than happy with mine too, so far resisted any urge to try different valves as the HP8/ Quad ERA-1 is still my go to pairing for anything more than occasional listening,
There seems to be too much made about sourcing from China and that could stem more from the customer than the supplier, I attended an Automotive trade show a few years ago that had extensive Asian exhibitors and chatting with one of their engineers made it obvious to me, if I said I wanted xx part for $10 in lots of 1,000 I’d have several options, but I could also ask for something to match a detailed spec sheet including any certification I wanted it to pass and be quoted a price on various amounts,
There‘s also the lifespan of average consumer electronics too, How many of us have replaced say a TV because it failed or the picture quality degraded ? …. Something that you want to last longer ?, I recently bought a computer PSU with a 12 year warranty

 

[MLGrado]

I am on my THIRD Icon Audio HP8 MKII.

First was used, purchased here on HeadFi used for a good price. Sounded really good. I ended up over-doing the tube roll and broke a socket. I still have this amp plus replacement sockets for replacement on a rainy day.

Before I repaired that one, I saw MD had a display model for sale at a great price, with full warranty. Sounded even better than the original model I first bought. Its power supply died, luckily for me less than two months before warranty expired.

Finally, 6 months later I got a brand new in box replacement. Never bothered to open the stock tubes. I went straight to 1959 Valvo ECC83 Short Plate I60 code, and using adapters I have a pair of true never opened NOS RCA 6F8G from 1940's. Lucky for me, I also have a second pair never opened, still sealed in its cardboard/tin metal box.

I don't really 'believe' in warm up, but this experience has made me a true believer especially amps with bespoke parts, and brand new headphones with little hours on them.

Really unimpressed at first, no matter what headphone. It sounded fine, but I was still preferring the balanced output (pentaconn) on my Ifi IDSD Pro DAC/Amp. Then after a few weeks, something changed. Please be as skeptical as you like, but suddenly this amp 'opened' up and started pushing out astonishingly good sound. Powerful yet nuanced, with excellent tone. Midrange to die for, smooth treble, Tight bass, but that is to be taken in the context of 'tube bass'.

Then things REALLY kicked up a notch.

I had purchased a FOCAL Clear MG PRO and it arrived at the exact same time as the ICON amp. Similar story. The phones never sounded even close to a $1.5k headphone. Regardless of amp. But I paid a $hit load for me amount of money, so I was going to give them a chance. The sound got better and better. Dynamics and contrasts became more readily apparent, soundstage grew, tone became almost spot on.

Bottom line, between the two I was hearing the very best headphone audio I had every heard since I started this hobby, and I have been through a LOT of stuff in the price range and more (in some cases unfortunately).

I was a previous owner of the FOCAL Clear Pro and used it for hundreds and hundreds of hours with my 'second' HP8 MKII.

I can tell you this without a doubt. That combo really never ever came close to this one. We know the Focal Clear MG is a performance upgrade, but it wasn't an 'OH MY GOD' Moment on my RME ADI-2 PRO FS R.

Which leads me to think the 'OH MY GOD' moment may have something to do with continual improvements with the ICON AUDIO HP8 MKII. This latest version I can honestly say (subjective of course, but I feel SO strong about this) is a major performance boost from the MKII of several years ago.


My reference system is now Audirvana running on Mac Mini with LPS and fan upgrade feeding a iFi iDSD PRO DAC (software 2.08) galvanically isolated from from the MAC with an Intona Isolator. iDSD feeds ICON AUDIO HP8 MKIl, listening via FOCAL Clear MG PRO headphones.

To date, this is THE BEST SYSTEM I HAVE EVER HEARD for headphones. At this time, my upgraditis is cured. (For the moment I say lol)

Its sounds so good, I am debating taking the tiny risk involved in a super easy job replacing the coupling caps with the factory recommended Jensen upgrade.




Today I am cleaning, 'restyling', and re-wiring the system in anticipation of new racks.

THE BEST SOUNDING ECC83 I have EVER heard in the Icon, and that includes the older LONG plate Valvo and Amperex with large foil getter as well. Short gray plate I60 code a KILLER sound

To JENSEN or NOT to JENSEN the output caps, that is the question?!!