Pictures of Your Portable Rig (part XVI)

[subguy812]

 

[ahammedsojib]

 

[OM hawk]

Alas, as ever, synergy is king, not necessarily the newest rig idea we put together. My Sock Rig concept, with my Neumann NDH20 and iFi Finale, just sounded too neutral (or to my ears analytical). The Finale is a lot less euphonic than the Black Label, the original Go Bar, or the Gold Bar. And the Ranko USB filtering gadget didn't make enough audible difference to justify the loss of physical structural integrity, so I've abandoned it. Also, even though I enjoy the NDH20 on the rather neutral Go Bar Kensei, somehow it sounds distinctly different on the Finale, in a bad way. I've decided the NDH20 sounds best on the Gold Bar, or at least it's most useful for me to have a warm smooth rig to compliment my other more neutral setups.

Me and my friend determined that the Finale is a much better match with her HD600. She did enjoy the HD600 on the warm and smooth Black Label also, but she was getting too fed up with the Black Label's glitches and defects (hilariously, all of its weird problems were things other than what is griped about endlessly in the relevant headfi threads). The Finale works flawlessly, even the volume knob has no channel imbalance BS, and we all know the 600 needs that iFi bass boost, big improvement, we never turned off the Xbass. My heart was filled with terror at the thought of her abandoning proper audiophile headphone gear and resorting to some wireless Bluetooth crap, so I gave her the Finale as a hand me down. I will probably end up with a Valkyrie sooner or later anyway.

We found the benefit of better USB was far less obvious on the Finale than it is with the Go Bars, though it is audible if you listen to how far the treble extends. The bigger thing is the portability, when you use my slanted sock configuration. My friend said this will make her use it more often than she used her Black Label.