Eaton Liu
Member of the Trade: Luxury & Precision
- Joined
- Nov 1, 2016
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About two months ago, I attended an audiophile meeting hosted in LA. The meeting mainly focused on portable audio gears -- IEMs, DAPs, portable amps, and some sealed headphones. I was not a fan of this subject because I had been a full-stack system user for a decade since the debut of HD800 in 2009.
From Rudi 030 to Manley 300b to Eddie Current 2A3 to Cavalli Liquid Gold, I switched back and forth trying to get "the best overall" sound of my HD800 system. However, I failed to fill the hollow mid-range or balance its bright tonality. Then I was seeking for substitutes like LCD4, Abyss 1266, Focal Utopia and STAX SR009. I was pretty satisfied with my SR009 system driven by Eddie Current Electra and my Utopia rocked by the massive Viva 845. Long story short, I'm not as zealotic as before and sometimes numb to new-released gears (but the MSB Select paired with Sennheiser HE1 could be my next step, they are phenomenal tbh).
As a graduate student who barely has time to relax in a sunny afternoon and have a full listening section for hours, I shifted my focus to portable audio gears which I can bring to my office. It is the main reason I attended that meeting, and I was surprised by the development of portable players nowadays which share a lot of similar architectures as those "desktop boxes." More surprisingly, I was shocked by the price they set: a pair of CIEM can cost me more than 6000 bucks -- the same amount for TOTL open-back planar magnetic headphones. It made me feel like a flagship headphone (which I already have) plus a portable player should be "a more sensible decision in economics" if it can be driven properly. Then I found something quite interesting. A portable player called LP6 Ti, which nearly hits the $6000 bar, claimed to be "the first R2R portable player designed for TOTL headphones like Sennheiser HD 800 or Focal Utopia".
After I read their introduction pages(I will post below), I considered this project must contain some technological breakthrough than just pure marketing strategies based on my basic EE knowledge as a physics grad student. Unlike many manufacturers like Chord and PS Audio who convert everything to bitstream(PCM to DSD), the LP6 Ti accomplish the same task inversely -- it converts DSD and PCM into 20bit PDM and then takes advantage of R2R chip to complete the DA process. The large scale FPGA from Intel provides tremendous flexibility of DSP, upsampling and digital filtering. As a result, the claimed numbers tested at PO looks outstanding. I'm not sure how these titanium/wood finish will be like, and I don't think it matters to the sound. With more than 7V output voltage, man, that's insane.
This is a long journey, but finally, I decided to give it a try with my fingers crossed. Since every single piece is unique and individually customized by using a large scale FPGA, the production takes several months, and I will post reviews once I receive it.
The original introduction slides:
From Rudi 030 to Manley 300b to Eddie Current 2A3 to Cavalli Liquid Gold, I switched back and forth trying to get "the best overall" sound of my HD800 system. However, I failed to fill the hollow mid-range or balance its bright tonality. Then I was seeking for substitutes like LCD4, Abyss 1266, Focal Utopia and STAX SR009. I was pretty satisfied with my SR009 system driven by Eddie Current Electra and my Utopia rocked by the massive Viva 845. Long story short, I'm not as zealotic as before and sometimes numb to new-released gears (but the MSB Select paired with Sennheiser HE1 could be my next step, they are phenomenal tbh).
As a graduate student who barely has time to relax in a sunny afternoon and have a full listening section for hours, I shifted my focus to portable audio gears which I can bring to my office. It is the main reason I attended that meeting, and I was surprised by the development of portable players nowadays which share a lot of similar architectures as those "desktop boxes." More surprisingly, I was shocked by the price they set: a pair of CIEM can cost me more than 6000 bucks -- the same amount for TOTL open-back planar magnetic headphones. It made me feel like a flagship headphone (which I already have) plus a portable player should be "a more sensible decision in economics" if it can be driven properly. Then I found something quite interesting. A portable player called LP6 Ti, which nearly hits the $6000 bar, claimed to be "the first R2R portable player designed for TOTL headphones like Sennheiser HD 800 or Focal Utopia".
After I read their introduction pages(I will post below), I considered this project must contain some technological breakthrough than just pure marketing strategies based on my basic EE knowledge as a physics grad student. Unlike many manufacturers like Chord and PS Audio who convert everything to bitstream(PCM to DSD), the LP6 Ti accomplish the same task inversely -- it converts DSD and PCM into 20bit PDM and then takes advantage of R2R chip to complete the DA process. The large scale FPGA from Intel provides tremendous flexibility of DSP, upsampling and digital filtering. As a result, the claimed numbers tested at PO looks outstanding. I'm not sure how these titanium/wood finish will be like, and I don't think it matters to the sound. With more than 7V output voltage, man, that's insane.
This is a long journey, but finally, I decided to give it a try with my fingers crossed. Since every single piece is unique and individually customized by using a large scale FPGA, the production takes several months, and I will post reviews once I receive it.
The original introduction slides:
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