I wanted to say thanks to
@BTD1 for the heads up about the iESL being discontinued. After hearing the Hifiman Shangri-la Junior at the recent CanJam, I was impressed enough to place an order for one a couple weeks ago, and it's currently being held up in US Customs. Since this will be my first e-stat, I needed to arrange amplification, and the iESL seemed to be a fantastic option. Since I already own a couple of powerful Class D amps (which I love driving my Susvara), I was loathe to spend kilobucks on a separate e-stat amp right out of the gate. The iESL is compact, versatile, and reasonably priced, so I ordered one before iFi even confirmed that it was discontinued, and was very fortunate to grab one of the last available units. It arrived a few days ago, and I have been listening to the Susvara through it until my Shang Jr. arrives (hopefully soon).
The iESL is a well-engineered piece of gear. It feels solid and the controls have a nice tactility. Connectors and binding posts are excellent quality as well. My only minor nits would be:
- I could do without the orange "floodlighting" emanating from the top of the unit. It would also be nice to have a dimmer (and/or off switch) for the backlit iFi logo.
- The lettering by the control knobs is hard to read in daylight, impossible in dim light.
- The downside to the compactness of the unit is that the speaker connections are not well-spaced. I'm going to look into locking banana connectors in lieu of spades to mitigate this issue.
So how does it sound with the Susvara? I've been driving the iESL with my NAD M22 V2 on its lowest gain setting (19 dB). The 4-pin adapter that was hanging off the amp is now attached to the speaker outputs of the iESL, which allows me to easily compare the sound directly out of the NAD vs. through the transformer in the iESL. After playing around with the impedance options on the iESL, I settled on 24 ohms as my favorite both for its tonal profile and that its output level is roughly the same as bypassing the iESL. After a few nights of listening, I have to say that I'm very impressed with the
transparency of the iESL. Clearly, the engineering that went into the transformer is paying dividends sonically. I'm not entirely sure I could pass a blind test between the Susvara directly from my NAD amp vs. with the iESL in the chain. I think listening through the iESL yields a
slight increase in bass punch along with a very
slight decrease in treble energy. The imaging may be just a tad more precise directly from the amp, giving the subjective impression that one is
slightly farther from the stage. Which I prefer depends on the music being played and perhaps my mood. Again, these are
not dramatic differences, which is good in my view. It's great to have the option to so conveniently use or bypass the iESL for non-estats. Also, for more sensitive headphones than the Susvara (basically everything), one can simply increase the impedance of the iESL and use a speaker amp to drive them.
I will update this thread when I receive the Shangri-la Junior regarding how it sounds out of the iESL. Based on listening to the Susvara, I'm rather optimistic that the Shang Jr. will also play well with the iESL. Unfortunately, the only amp comparison I will be able to offer in the short term is to the dedicated Hifiman amp for the Shang Jr., and that only from my memory of the CanJam system. In the next few months, I'll probably be able to compare the iESL to a BHSE and potentially other dedicated e-stat amps, and will certainly plan to report on those experiences here.
It really is a shame that the iESL has been discontinued! I hope iFi reconsiders or develops a successor, as there is definitely a strong niche for quality e-stat energizers, particularly with the recent emergence of several new TOTL e-stat headphones.