[JoetheArachnid]

I honestly don't know which is prettier: the headphone stand or the red PS1000s. (Or the combo itself)
Oh, and the Cube looks nice too. It's slightly out of my budget at the moment though, which I'm considering stretching to an M-Stage and a uDac 2 or Musiland 02 US. Looking forward to your review, though - maybe it'll swing me to add another $150 or so to the audio spend...

 

[daltonlanny]

Matrix M-stage + OPA627's + 3.3k Class A biasing = OMG awesome!
I bought a stock Matrix M-stage from a headfi member about 3 weeks ago, and I thought it sounded fairly good with all of my headphones, especially my new AKG K702's. It also sounded good with my Sennhesier HD600's and decent with my Beyerdynamic DT880's. With all the headphones, and compared to my Headroom Micro Amp, it had a smooth, creamy, slightly warm sound, with a slight heaviness in the bass, a slightly glazed midrange, good highs, and a good soundstage. Like all posters have said, there is a great synergy between the M-stage and the AKG's. Not so good with the Beyers.
My HD600's and the Beyers sounded better on the Headroom Micro amp, IMHO.
Both of my Beyer DT880's sounded sort of bland, processed, and sort of boring through the stock M-stage.
I much preferred the sound of the Beyers through the Headroom amp, and I also prefererred the 600's through the Headroom.
The Headroom was more lively, more extended in the highs, and more forward in the mids than the stock M-stage.
I recently purchased a pair of BB OPA627 op amps mounted on a Cimarron Technology Browndog dual-to-single adapter and tried it instead of the stock OPA2134.
The sound improved a couple of notches in some areas, but nothing to justify the high price of the OPA627's.
Compared to the stock op amp, the 627's have a slightly more natural sound that is smoother, richer, slightly more open, and has a wider soundstage. However, the sound seems even more laid-back, and their seems to be even slightly less extension on top than the stock op amp, IMHO. There was also a very slight hardness to the sound somewhere in the upper mids that I really did not care alot for.
Last night I received one of the Cimarron Technology "piggy back" plugs that purrin referred to, and I installed two 3.3k resistors on it for more class A biasing.
I then took the Browndog adapter, with the two OPA627's on it, unplugged it from the M-stage.
I then plugged the adapter into the "piggy back" with the resistors, and then plugged the "piggy back" and the adapter into the M-stage.
BINGO!
Wow, what a difference!
I could not believe my ears. The sound improved across the board.
The soundstage opened up quite dramatically, the highs are more airy, open, and extended, the mids are smooth, very detailed, and natural, and the bass is tight, punchy, and very well defined.
The hardness I mentioned above is gone, and the overall sound is more alive, and much more involving.
I am now VERY glad I purchased the OPA627's on the adapter, the "piggy back" and the resistors.
My K702's sound absolutely wonderful on this set-up. I can now actually listen to the AKG's, and really enjoy them, without getting listening fatigue. The 600's sound absolutely wonderful as well. The Beyers, especially the 2003's, are now in a different league as well.
The Matrix M-stage is now surpassing my Headroom Micro Amp for a change, and I am now preferring the M-stage to the Headroom with all of my cans, except maybe the Beyer DT880/600.
The Beyer DT880/600 sounds alittle better than with the stock op amp, but does not show as much improvement as the other ones, for some strange reason.
I still think I may prefer them with the Headroom amp.
The unit does run slightly warmer, but not as much as I was expecting.
I also have a Schiit Asgard on the way, and I cannot wait to compare them.

 

[kite7]

Quote:

I then took the Browndog adapter, with the two OPA627's on it, unplugged it from the M-stage.
I then plugged the adapter into the "piggy back" with the resistors, and then plugged the "piggy back" and the adapter into the M-stage.
BINGO!
Wow, what a difference!
I could not believe my ears. The sound improved across the board.
The soundstage opened up quite dramatically, the highs are more airy, open, and extended, the mids are smooth, very detailed, and natural, and the bass is tight, punchy, and very well defined.

The unit does run slightly warmer, but not as much as I was expecting.
I also have a Schiit Asgard on the way, and I cannot wait to compare them.

I can't wait to try biasing when I get my OPA627's, sounds like it makes a great improvement. It'll be very interesting to compare the M-stage against the Asgard. I'm willing to bet there's a lot of people curious about this comparison.
 
How hot is the opamp itself when biased with 3.3k resistors? Can you keep a finger on it?
 

 
Quote:

 
I've got a lot more listening to do, but so far the Cube is quite nice, roughly on the level of the DacMagic and V-DAC, which I consider to be the gatekeepers of the semi-budget DAC world. I'll post more when I can.

 
It'd be great if you could compare the headphone out against the Yulong D100's headphone out or a stock M-Stage with OPA2134 opamp unbiased. I'm quite interested in knowing how they compare.

 

 

[daltonlanny]

Quote:

I can't wait to try biasing when I get my OPA627's, sounds like it makes a great improvement. It'll be very interesting to compare the M-stage against the Asgard. I'm willing to bet there's a lot of people curious about this comparison.
 
How hot is the opamp itself when biased with 3.3k resistors? Can you keep a finger on it?
 

 
 
It'd be great if you could compare the headphone out against the Yulong D100's headphone out or a stock M-Stage with OPA2134 opamp unbiased. I'm quite interested in knowing how they compare.

 

I can easily keep my finger on the unit, even after its been on and playing over an hour.
It runs alittle hotter, but no big deal at all to me for the big improvement in sound that I have achieved!

 

[daisangen]

Has anybody apart from cfg (who unfortunately won't comment on the sound) tried the Audio-GD discretes with this amp? I'd love to hear impressions of them. I'm particularly interested in Earth.

 

[Kuze]

Which OPA627 is this?
 
Quote:

Matrix M-stage + OPA627's + 3.3k Class A biasing = OMG awesome!

 

[project86]

 
Quote:

   
It'd be great if you could compare the headphone out against the Yulong D100's headphone out or a stock M-Stage with OPA2134 opamp unbiased. I'm quite interested in knowing how they compare.

 

I will be doing a detailed review but it will take a while. So far I'm thinking the headphone amp in the Cube is EXCELLENT with IEMs, perhaps better than the M-Stage or the D100. But with regular headphones it is probably not in the same league as those other 2. Again, these are just my initial findings, things could change when I spend more time with it.

 

[purrin]

Quote:

 
Last night I received one of the Cimarron Technology "piggy back" plugs that purrin referred to, and I installed two 3.3k resistors on it for more class A biasing.
I then took the Browndog adapter, with the two OPA627's on it, unplugged it from the M-stage.
I then plugged the adapter into the "piggy back" with the resistors, and then plugged the "piggy back" and the adapter into the M-stage.
BINGO!
Wow, what a difference!
I could not believe my ears. The sound improved across the board.
The soundstage opened up quite dramatically, the highs are more airy, open, and extended, the mids are smooth, very detailed, and natural, and the bass is tight, punchy, and very well defined.
The hardness I mentioned above is gone, and the overall sound is more alive, and much more involving.
 

 
Awesome!  Some of the BB op-amps are known for responding very well to class A biasing.  But yes, my experience was similar to your's.  Kind of like "Holy Cow!"
 

 

[purrin]

 
 
 
Quote:

Which OPA627 is this?
 

It's probably the AU surface mount version if Lanny got it from Cimmaron Tech.  The OPA627SM tin can package is supposed to be even better.

 

[Kuze]

Yeah I've heard about the SM versions for sometime now, but its pretty expensive, i have the OPA637BP that's why i asked. Fake or not I'm going to try getting the SM version for $10 from china and see if it makes a difference.

 

[daltonlanny]

Quote:

 
 
 

It's probably the AU surface mount version if Danny got it from Cimmaron Tech.  The OPA627SM tin can package is supposed to be even better.

Yes, it is indeed the AU version of the BB OPA627 that I am using.
Lanny
 

 

[LokiS]

Hello, sorry if this is a major bump on the thread but would appreciate some info and assistance regarding a M-stage problem I'm having. Basically I'm having a distortion issue on the AMP when increasing volume on my PC, I can't have the volume setting any higher then 40-50% or distortion will occur. I changed the sound cards out with a new card and the same problem was there. I was told this
 
Quote:

The distortion experienced on problem 1 is likely due to over sensitive input circuit in your amp as the distortion comes in at higher volumes. If it was a ground loop the the sound would have a lot of noise when little or no signal is present such as a loud hum or buzz. Problem number one is most definately a problem with your amp not the card.

I'm pretty much buggered.. Is there anyway I could try manually fix this on the M-Stage inside?, and also how can I prevent this happening in the future when buying amps?, is it located within the specs?, any help is much appreciated, thank you.

For note, a more detail description on the problem I'm having is here in my thread (http://www.head-fi.org/forum/thread/511616/essence-stx-into-dedicated-amp-two-problems-ran-out-of-options

 

[ninjikiran]

Be careful when messing with the volume on your sound card settings.  You can actually go over 100% which could distort on an amp if you overdo it.
 
I have an x-fi prelude, but only use the digital outputs which bypass any kind of volume control(except for the one on the audio player which is set to not modulate either).  If your card has ASIO drivers, give it a whirl~ See what happens.  That will cut out everything from the equation by default.
 
I just connected my X-Fi Prelude via analog out to my Matrix M-Stage(I had before with my Maverick D1 as well) and in Audio Creation mode with Bit-Matched playback I get no distortion.
 
On a side note Daisy chaining amps results in static and/or pops.  I also don't pop in games.
Quote:

Hello, sorry if this is a major bump on the thread but would appreciate some info and assistance regarding a M-stage problem I'm having. Basically I'm having a distortion issue on the AMP when increasing volume on my PC, I can't have the volume setting any higher then 40-50% or distortion will occur. I changed the sound cards out with a new card and the same problem was there. I was told this
 
Quote:
I'm pretty much buggered.. Is there anyway I could try manually fix this on the M-Stage inside?, and also how can I prevent this happening in the future when buying amps?, is it located within the specs?, any help is much appreciated, thank you.

For note, a more detail description on the problem I'm having is here in my thread (http://www.head-fi.org/forum/thread/511616/essence-stx-into-dedicated-amp-two-problems-ran-out-of-options

 

[LokiS]

Thanks for the reply.

I did try bypassing the amp via (analog out?, line out? not sure what the correct term is) connection on the STX instead but the distortion was still present. The older card I also tried was a X-fi gamer that has no added amp on it and was getting very bad distortion even when the volume on the creative panel was only at 25%.  Using the X-fi card isn't really an option when using the amp, the volume has to be low to avoid distortion and the only way to increase the volume is pretty much maxing the amp which is to risky to the headphones and the amp itself I'd imagine.

I'm tempted to just grab the Heed Canamp but want to be absolutely sure that its the amp thats the issue. It only does this when the amp is in, without I can max the volume like normal without issue. Any ideas?
 

 

[project86]

 
Quote:

Thanks for the reply.

I did try bypassing the amp via (analog out?, line out? not sure what the correct term is) connection on the STX instead but the distortion was still present. The older card I also tried was a X-fi gamer that has no added amp on it and was getting very bad distortion even when the volume on the creative panel was only at 25%.  Using the X-fi card isn't really an option when using the amp, the volume has to be low to avoid distortion and the only way to increase the volume is pretty much maxing the amp which is to risky to the headphones and the amp itself I'd imagine.

I'm tempted to just grab the Heed Canamp but want to be absolutely sure that its the amp thats the issue. It only does this when the amp is in, without I can max the volume like normal without issue. Any ideas?
 

 
We need to figure out definitively if the problem lies in the sound card/PC configuration or in the amp itself. Have you tried the amp with any other source? You probably have a DVD player or some other piece of audio gear around the house. Connect the M-Stage to that and see if the problem persists. If not, then you have some issue with your PC setup. The worst thing you could do is rush out and buy another amp, only to find that the problem still exists.