trappedintime
100+ Head-Fier
- Joined
- Aug 27, 2015
- Posts
- 163
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- 45
In addition to what's been said, you can buy an optional remote (though it doesn't have power or source selection controls). It's the same one that the m903 uses. It weighs a ton. The only thing worth complaining about on it is that it has an "exit setup" long-press command printed on it, which I guess is from the old m903, as it does nothing on the m920, but that's not a big deal.
The m920 has a true bypass on the unbalanced outputs (I do wish that they had one on the balanced outputs as well), but if you're comparing to a balanced setup, it will have less output, so using it as a HT bypass could be complicated unless the whole home theater setup is single-ended, or it could be as simple as setting the balanced volume to auto-set to unity gain when powering up the unit (so not a true bypass, but very close), or if your power amp has trim adjustments on it, use those.
One thing to keep in mind is that the HA-1 was designed with the audiophile market in-mind, while the m920 was designed with both the pro audio and audiophile markets in mind (and probably leaning a bit towards pro, since that's Grace Design's bread and butter, plus the product is marketed as a monitor controller), and the needs and features of both markets differ a bit.
Yeah, I'm not trying to downgrade the m920. I've done some listening on it and although I own the HA-1, I think Grace makes some wonderful products and anyone who buys the m920 will be satisfied. I just didn't like the comment about the m920 being superior in every way. As you mention, it is an audiophile/pro crossover product, which explains the TRS and some of the other features. My understanding is that to enable HT bypass on the m920, the line output for a given source has to be set to a gain of 90. This doesn't seem as convenient or user friendly as the HA-1's HT bypass. The menus and navigation for the m920 certainly seem more convoluted than the HA-1. I can also see some instances where the pairing of the HA-1 with balanced headphones would be superior to a pairing with the m920. I also have found with my TV's functionality that the BT connection on the HA-1 is beneficial for connecting the TV when I'm not using a secondary source (i.e. aTV). I don't have Amazon on my aTV (as it doesn't exist), but I can connect my TV over BT and watch 4K Amazon content while still having the aTV feed as a source to the HA-1 if I want - or use the optical from my bedroom DAC for listening across rooms. For some consumers at a slightly lower price point the HA-1 might be a better fit with quite a bit of feature parity. I don't think either product would be unsatisfying if you're upgrading from a <$500 DAC.