arpinnurmela
Head-Fier
A Naim Headline clone can be purchased from multiple sellers on AliExpress. Prices can be under $150 shipped for a Naim Headline clone in which all parts are in a single chassis. Prices can be upwards of $550 shipped for a Headline clone that duplicates the Naim look and feel and two chassis design. This review is for a single chassis 110V Headline clone I purchased from FunKenya World Store for $153 shipped.
I've been an audiophool for a very long time and used to sell hifi part-time for the discount. So like many audiophools, I have certain rules that I play the game with so that I don't go too crazy and spend too much time on the vast product diversity that exists. One of my many rules for solid state amplifiers is the "toroid rule" which simply means to try and always buy solid state with toroidal power supplies. While selling hifi I would often A/B toroid vs EI core receivers, amps, and digital players for customers and other sales associates who wanted to play the game. On blind listening, people would always prefer toroid powered device over the non. At one point it got really silly when Best Buy was selling an Insignia Chinese imported stereo receiver that had a toroidal power supply. I'd run this up against Denons and Marantz that didn't have one, and the $150 Insignia would win every time. It was a silly game, and it's a silly rule. But I still firmly believe it.
Annoyingly, there are few options in the Western markets for toroidal powered equipment. But I knew that AliExpress had a bunch of these since I had already researched this years prior when I bought a LM1875 chip amp off of AliExpress. It's been a stolid workhorse for my bedroom and is well paired with Elac B4 bookshelves creating numerous mesmerizing evenings (I've replaced all the signal carrying wiring with solid core copper on that system inside and outside.). So I began the hunt for something that looked like it could easily handle the current requirements of the Verum One. AliExpress has maybe a hundred or so toroidal designs available ranging from under $100 to well past $1000. My goal: find the cheapest solution that would for sure handle 8ohms (Verum One). Meaning, I wanted the product to be clearly designed for low impedance planars. Nothing was meeting the requirement so I kept increasing my budget. Finally in the $400-500 range I found a single option, the Naim Headline clone in two boxes like Naim sells it. Did a dedicated search to bring up all the Naim clone options and discovered that some sellers were putting the Naim Headline clone board into a single chassis with a toroidal power supply and selling these for less than $150 shipped. But none of them were available for 110V. So I contacted all the sellers and got a response from only one seller who said they would do it and they added a 110V buy option on checkout. All communications on AliExpress are handled by an auto translator chat/message system. Lot's of broken English so I knew to keep my questions and responses very very basic to help the translation process.
So I put another 20 or so hours of time on it, listened again on the Verum One. Grittiness declined a little bit, mids opened up beautifully, and it retained most of that edginess, and I still heard that stranded smearing. So I decided to ruin baseline impressions and skipped my usual 200 hour burn-in process, so that I could eliminate that stranded smearing. I opened it up, unsoldered the stranded runs from the RCAs to the circuit board and replaced them with solid 24ga silver air gapped in 20ga Teflon. Solid core usually takes 1 hour to reach its >90% potential but will have a notable reduction in time smearing immediately.
Plugged in the Verum One, and (because all stranded wire in the chain was gone) I was hearing sublime tone, timbre, better bass (deeper and more harder). Listened a couple of hours later, and the Headline clone in combination with the Verum One was mesmerizing. The Verum One sounded like a different headphone. I was captivated and captive, sitting for three hours having my mind blown late at night while my family slept. The foot tapping and head bobbing (PRAT) you would expect from an actual Naim product were all there. It reminded me of all my scores of hours of listening to really high end Naim systems. Mids so visceral that they almost trap your mind. It's only fault was that edginess. It hadn't fully gone away.
The replacement of this one pair of jacks yielded even better bass than before, and notably more top end detail. It helped give details an air, a sense of depth and space, and I was hearing what felt like soundstage on my head. Truly incredible.
This Headline clone offers up what to me is the Naim sound on a headphone. If you buy one, expect to put 300 hours on it before it settles down into it's optimal performance levels. Sadly, I cannot tell you how this clone would be in this steady state without the silver wire and silver RCA jacks. But I believe that it will sound like an obvious Naim product and burn in will remove that edginess you will hear when you first get it.
Naim designed this headphone amplifier specifically for low impedance headphones and specifically rates it at the too low impedance of 8ohms for 560mW. Other than the Verum One, I don't know another planar that has such a low impedance. Sort of makes this uniquely qualified as a Verum One headphone amplifier. Another option I've backburnered is the Decware Zen Taboo, also designed specifically for low impedance planars. Until I have $2500 that I don't need, the Naim Headline clone is the only headphone amplifier I need for ridiculously and universally great music reproduction on the Verum One.
All in, I've spent $150 for the amp and $30 for the upgrades. It's a mind-bending value proposition. I need to bring this setup to a headphone meetup to make sure I'm not crazy.
Desparate Times
I'm a very happy owner of the Verum One. I was initially powering the Verum One using a Schiit Hel. After hearing the engagement factor jump quite a bit on my brother's Schiit Asgard 3, I knew that I needed to upgrade my headphone amplifier. After some careful listening, I felt that despite The Ass having notably better engagement and life over the Hel, that The Ass was not substantially hitting harder on the Verum One.I've been an audiophool for a very long time and used to sell hifi part-time for the discount. So like many audiophools, I have certain rules that I play the game with so that I don't go too crazy and spend too much time on the vast product diversity that exists. One of my many rules for solid state amplifiers is the "toroid rule" which simply means to try and always buy solid state with toroidal power supplies. While selling hifi I would often A/B toroid vs EI core receivers, amps, and digital players for customers and other sales associates who wanted to play the game. On blind listening, people would always prefer toroid powered device over the non. At one point it got really silly when Best Buy was selling an Insignia Chinese imported stereo receiver that had a toroidal power supply. I'd run this up against Denons and Marantz that didn't have one, and the $150 Insignia would win every time. It was a silly game, and it's a silly rule. But I still firmly believe it.
Annoyingly, there are few options in the Western markets for toroidal powered equipment. But I knew that AliExpress had a bunch of these since I had already researched this years prior when I bought a LM1875 chip amp off of AliExpress. It's been a stolid workhorse for my bedroom and is well paired with Elac B4 bookshelves creating numerous mesmerizing evenings (I've replaced all the signal carrying wiring with solid core copper on that system inside and outside.). So I began the hunt for something that looked like it could easily handle the current requirements of the Verum One. AliExpress has maybe a hundred or so toroidal designs available ranging from under $100 to well past $1000. My goal: find the cheapest solution that would for sure handle 8ohms (Verum One). Meaning, I wanted the product to be clearly designed for low impedance planars. Nothing was meeting the requirement so I kept increasing my budget. Finally in the $400-500 range I found a single option, the Naim Headline clone in two boxes like Naim sells it. Did a dedicated search to bring up all the Naim clone options and discovered that some sellers were putting the Naim Headline clone board into a single chassis with a toroidal power supply and selling these for less than $150 shipped. But none of them were available for 110V. So I contacted all the sellers and got a response from only one seller who said they would do it and they added a 110V buy option on checkout. All communications on AliExpress are handled by an auto translator chat/message system. Lot's of broken English so I knew to keep my questions and responses very very basic to help the translation process.
The Basics
I purchased it and waited around 5 weeks to receive it. Arrived in a brown unmarked box, wrapped securely in a lot of wrapping material. It has a volume knob with pretend numbers around it, a single 6.3mm output, and power button with green LED on the front. It has a single RCA pair for input on the back with a basic power plug socket. There are no gain options/settings on the outside or inside. Like the actual Naim Headline, this clone has no features or frills.Initial Impressions
After burning it in for a few hours using my old Grado SR60, I picked up the Grados and they sounded pretty much like they always have. "Not good," I thought. Starting to panic a bit I immediately went to get my Verum One from the other room and hooked them in. HOLY COW. A very very different Verum One experience was immediately evident from the first note. Zero mistaking the difference. The Verum One were hitting on bass notes unlike I had ever heard them before. A broad smile grew on my face, tempered however by a bit grittiness, edginess in the sound. Plus I was clearly hearing what I call stranded smearing. Stranded smearing, is my name for the effect of time smearing caused by stranded signal carrying wire. Once you've gone solid core on 4 separate systems, in small steps, getting in around 20 or so good to imperfect A/B experiences, your brain is easily able to identify the sonic signature of time smearing. I feel that it is unmistakable in its presentation and is wholy unlike anything else I've discovered in hifi. (If you've never heard a solid core cable of pure copper or silver air gapped in teflon in direct comparison to a comparable or more expensive stranded wire, then you ain't heard nothin' yet. Yes, you will feel like you've lost your mind until casuals and children tell you that they are also hearing the same obvious difference. And yes, no one will believe you until they hear it for themselves.)So I put another 20 or so hours of time on it, listened again on the Verum One. Grittiness declined a little bit, mids opened up beautifully, and it retained most of that edginess, and I still heard that stranded smearing. So I decided to ruin baseline impressions and skipped my usual 200 hour burn-in process, so that I could eliminate that stranded smearing. I opened it up, unsoldered the stranded runs from the RCAs to the circuit board and replaced them with solid 24ga silver air gapped in 20ga Teflon. Solid core usually takes 1 hour to reach its >90% potential but will have a notable reduction in time smearing immediately.
Plugged in the Verum One, and (because all stranded wire in the chain was gone) I was hearing sublime tone, timbre, better bass (deeper and more harder). Listened a couple of hours later, and the Headline clone in combination with the Verum One was mesmerizing. The Verum One sounded like a different headphone. I was captivated and captive, sitting for three hours having my mind blown late at night while my family slept. The foot tapping and head bobbing (PRAT) you would expect from an actual Naim product were all there. It reminded me of all my scores of hours of listening to really high end Naim systems. Mids so visceral that they almost trap your mind. It's only fault was that edginess. It hadn't fully gone away.
Time Heals
I kept this up for a few weeks, but the edginess was really getting to me. There were two possible things causing this problem that I could think of. One was that I hadn't done a >200 hour burn-in. Two was that I had not replaced the gold plated RCA jacks with silver plated RCA jacks. Since I hadn't yet done an A/B for a single jack replacement (I had done an A/B for a jack and connector replacement which was really great, but that's two things replaced, not one.) I decided to do a hardcore burn-in for two weeks straight. After about 10 days of this silliness, the Headline clone finally settled down and softened up in its signature. The "edginess" (whatever that means) was gone! But now I was hearing a sort of "glare". I'm not really sure how to describe this any other way. It's like the glare from a windshield when the sun reflects onto you. It elicited a sort of mental wincing at times. It was not something I was hearing prior to the burn-in, but as things settle down and improve in audio, it's not uncommon to then be able to hear some other quality, that was less than the previous more noticeable "thing". This glare wasn't over the top, but I couldn't deny that it was a weakness of my setup. So I replaced the jack with a pair of ultra thick (10x the normal) silver plating. Not only did this completely eliminate all of the glare, but it was fairly shocking on its own part.The replacement of this one pair of jacks yielded even better bass than before, and notably more top end detail. It helped give details an air, a sense of depth and space, and I was hearing what felt like soundstage on my head. Truly incredible.
Final Listening Impressions
Listening to the Verum One on the solid core Naim Headline clone is incredible. Simply stunning. Album after album shocks me and blows my mind. I'm drawn to listen to the setup even though I have three separate hifi systems in my house. It's that damn good. What can I say about the Naim Headline clone now? It's ridiculously good. I don't know what an actual Naim Headline sounds like, but this might be better just for the solid core treatment I've given it. I can't find any faults. Bass is now so good that it is at times ridiculous, where the Verum One can actually vibrate on my head and there is not even a hint, not even a whisper of distortion. I'm playing Seefeel Polyfusia presently and I can't hear any faults. Truly amazing performance, with bass extension that is solid, clear, present, and ear compressing across the volume range. I am using a 1V source, so that could explain why I'm getting zero distortion even at max volume. It has that Naim maximal PRATtiness. Top end is deliciously smooth and offers up as much detail as your source can offer. Vary the source and it's totally a pass through affair revealing every nuance of the source. Mids are superb and have been from the beginning. Noise floor? I can't hear noise on it unless I touch the volume knob with no source playing. When the source plays it seems to eliminate that noise, or at least I cannot hear it any volume level on any music selection.This Headline clone offers up what to me is the Naim sound on a headphone. If you buy one, expect to put 300 hours on it before it settles down into it's optimal performance levels. Sadly, I cannot tell you how this clone would be in this steady state without the silver wire and silver RCA jacks. But I believe that it will sound like an obvious Naim product and burn in will remove that edginess you will hear when you first get it.
Naim designed this headphone amplifier specifically for low impedance headphones and specifically rates it at the too low impedance of 8ohms for 560mW. Other than the Verum One, I don't know another planar that has such a low impedance. Sort of makes this uniquely qualified as a Verum One headphone amplifier. Another option I've backburnered is the Decware Zen Taboo, also designed specifically for low impedance planars. Until I have $2500 that I don't need, the Naim Headline clone is the only headphone amplifier I need for ridiculously and universally great music reproduction on the Verum One.
All in, I've spent $150 for the amp and $30 for the upgrades. It's a mind-bending value proposition. I need to bring this setup to a headphone meetup to make sure I'm not crazy.
