AresHarvest
New Head-Fier
I tried the portable for several hours over the course of yesterday and today.
It has juice. Setting of -20 dB or so would drive my DT990 250Ω, a pair of HD600, and a few planars I had lying around. -16 dB was the highest I had to go with any of them, before it was on the verge of too loud. The headphones I used are all relatively easy to drive, but then again the amp can go 32 dB higher than the maximum I used (after mute, gain runs from -60 dB through +16 dB max).
While my tests are very much unscientific, they do reflect my real-world usage. I heard exactly zero noise outside of any recording. I cranked it to +16 dB when the media player was muted, to see if there was some inherent noise in the amp, and heard nothing. Again, very unscientific, but I did it. I tried this with USB and optical inputs, both with and without the unit plugged into a charger. Maybe my ears aren't sensitive enough to hear the noise, or maybe the noise isn't there. Also, I did not try the 3.5mm analog input, so who knows.
I'm not a fan of the Dirac processing. Folds inward, the low end starts to disappear. The EQ is also not useful to me, because I would need presets in order for it to be worthwhile. It takes way too long just to dial in a single parametric band, and I can't picture doing that every time just to tweak 4 kHz on this heaphone, 8 kHz on that headphone.
Would I spend $250 for it? If I needed the portable form factor, sure. Otherwise no. I would not buy this as a desktop replacement. But I would be tempted if for some reason my phone wasn't enough for the headphones I use on my commute.
It has juice. Setting of -20 dB or so would drive my DT990 250Ω, a pair of HD600, and a few planars I had lying around. -16 dB was the highest I had to go with any of them, before it was on the verge of too loud. The headphones I used are all relatively easy to drive, but then again the amp can go 32 dB higher than the maximum I used (after mute, gain runs from -60 dB through +16 dB max).
While my tests are very much unscientific, they do reflect my real-world usage. I heard exactly zero noise outside of any recording. I cranked it to +16 dB when the media player was muted, to see if there was some inherent noise in the amp, and heard nothing. Again, very unscientific, but I did it. I tried this with USB and optical inputs, both with and without the unit plugged into a charger. Maybe my ears aren't sensitive enough to hear the noise, or maybe the noise isn't there. Also, I did not try the 3.5mm analog input, so who knows.
I'm not a fan of the Dirac processing. Folds inward, the low end starts to disappear. The EQ is also not useful to me, because I would need presets in order for it to be worthwhile. It takes way too long just to dial in a single parametric band, and I can't picture doing that every time just to tweak 4 kHz on this heaphone, 8 kHz on that headphone.
Would I spend $250 for it? If I needed the portable form factor, sure. Otherwise no. I would not buy this as a desktop replacement. But I would be tempted if for some reason my phone wasn't enough for the headphones I use on my commute.
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