[thegeek]

Hi. I recently built 2 cmoy's and I loved it. I had a little trouble but it turned out to be a really stupid mistake, and not actually anything very bad.
I really liked building the amp, and absolutely love how much better my headphones sound.
However, I am not yet content

So, the question is, what should be my next amp?
I currently own a Sennheiser 595 and a Shure E3, so the amp should not be geared towards high-impendance phones.
Right now I'm leaning towards a ppa v2, what are my alternatives?

 

[Fresno Bob]

m3- mint-pimeta....

 

[thegeek]

What amp is considered to be the "best" of the ppav2 and m³ ?

 

[n_maher]

Check the amplifier forum for reviews and comparisons of both amps. I wrote one of them and the long and short of my opinion is if you've got a mid-fi sourece (ipod, budget CD player, computer, etc.) go for the M3. It's less source dependant and sounded great. The PPA V2 was a bit too revealing of my -aps mp3s on my Ipod but really rocked with the Denon CD player that we had (a $600 source).

My 0.02,

Nate

PS. The MINT and PIMETA are also nice projects too, I've built them all

.

 

[thegeek]

The amp will probably be used in combination with a dac-ah from diybiz.com (nos dac, supposedly quite good sound) and bitperfect output from my computer. The amp will probably be used for this use solely. I don't know how you would classify this, but it will probably be used in combination with some high bitrate mp3's but mosly lossless codecs. Since the output from my computer would be digital and assuming the dac-ah is good(and won't barf because of jitter) I guess the equipment would perhaps be mid-fi+ ?

(and I have read several reviews of lots of amps, but it gets very hard to decide on any one, mostly because there are so many opinions and so many ways of describing sound)

 

[n_maher]

Quote:

Originally Posted by thegeek and I have read several reviews of lots of amps, but it gets very hard to decide on any one, mostly because there are so many opinions and so many ways of describing sound

Yup, so in the end the only judge that you can really count on is yourself. I think that Rockhopper Audio (check the Mall Fi forum) has a loaner M3 that's been getting shipped around. I'm not sure how you could get a listen to the others without finding someone to loan you one. For the record, none of the amps that I've built (Cmoy all the way up to a M3) have sounded bad. Some have sounded better than others but all of them have sounded better than just a straight source.

Nate

 

[nikongod]

you may have a chance on speaking up for one of the fiew remaining boards on the millet"ish" hybrid group buy...

 

[n_maher]

who would he talk to about that????

[size=xx-small]p.s. thegeek, if you'd like to purchase a Millett-Hybrid board just send me a PM and we'll work something out.[/size]

 

[skyskraper]

i would hit up a pimeta first then move on to an m3. i havent got a ppa2 here so can't be specific, but i believe the m3 to be incredibly revealing. so much so that its taken over duties from the dynalo for my studio work. i can hear and place instruments in the sound stage and frequency points more accurately then i can with any other monitoring instruments i have on hand (maxed pimeta, stock behringer mixer, dynalo, krk rp8's, etc). some people comment on the perceptive warmth (and imply a slowness) but from a purely monitoring stand point its not warm or slow. comparatively on individual instruments its speed is comparable (as in an inaudible difference between them) to the dynalo and outclasses the pimeta by far. the warmth, well it only seems to exist in warm recordings, put something dry and clinical through it and you wont hear warmth, you'll hear dry and clinical.

i dunno though, my opinions on headphones, amps, speakers, etc, seem to differ greatly from those of most head fi'ers. but i do the bulk of my critical listening when im engineering. the rest of the time its sit back and enjoy the music, which i can do with any of my source/headphone/amp combo's without worrying about anything.