REVIEW: AT L3000 and DHA3000 digital amplifier.

Jul 22, 2005 at 12:45 PM Thread Starter Post #1 of 52

mbratrud

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Apologia

For many years I was an avid reader of Stereophile and The Absolute Sound. But perhaps a decade ago I drifted away from most professional reviews preferring to poke about Audioasylum , soaking up the unbiased if sometimes pedestrian comments in the forums… And I listened to music, both live and recorded.

At the birth of my first child I decided upon a venture into headphones and stumbled into Headfi and its wealth of information, as well as its esprit de corps. I have taken much from this community since and while I have tried to contribute, I was never really moved to formal disquisition nor did I feel comfortable in the avatar of reviewer.

Recently I acquired the rather novel combination of the Audio Technica L3000 headphones and DHA3000 amplifier and since there exists precious little posted about this rare but still available duo, I decided I’d seek to set to balance those vague scales that measure what one takes from what one gives.

It should go without saying (should, but won’t) that the opinions expressed in this post are my own. As will become painfully obvious to anyone who ventures into even the shallowest waters of this “review”, I am not a professional writer and if brevity is the soul of wit I shall be counted among the witless.

I would like to thank Jason Cha for stewarding the purchase of both the L3000 and the DHA300 for me in Japan. His kindness honesty and indefatigable sense of camaraderie are an inspiration to me when the world seems entirely self-absorbed.


Equipment and Bias

I have been a stereo hobbyist for more than 20 years and have been blessed with the ability to own any number of rewarding high-end pieces of equipment. That said, it would be fair to read my current system as a barometer of my listening biases and that system shall be the baseline for my comments regarding the L3000/DHA3000 combo.

My current system is comprised of a Burmester 001 CD player driving 2 Jeff Rowland model 10 amplifiers via Nordost Valhalla balanced interconnects. The amplifiers in turn drive Wilson Audio Sophia loudspeakers via Nordost Valhalla speaker cable.

For current I use 2 dedicated 20 amp circuits and an Equi=Tech Balanced Power station. My power cords are all FIM Gold PCs and the power umbilicals running between the AC sections of the amplifiers and the DC sections are also custom made FIM Gold umbilicals with NEMA terminations.

I hoped to get as much as possible from the L3000/DHA3000 so I used distinguished ancillary equipment as well. Power to the DHA3000 came from the Equi=Tech via Nordost’s Vishnu power cord. The digital feeds came from either the belt driven CD turntable on the Burmester or from a G5 Macintosh tower (used only to play music) driven into an Apogee Big Ben studio clock (using an FIM Silver power cord) and then via the universally acclaimed XLO Limited Edition data cable into the DHA3000.

I briefly tried a Toslink connection directly from the G5 to the DHA3000 but the sound worsened in virtually every way.

The other system I refer to saw several digital front ends including Accuphase 90/91 transport and DAC, The Accuphase DT 90 transport driving a Mark Levinson 360s and a Wadia 270i, and a Burmester 001. The rest of the system included a Singlepower Maestro ZR voiced to a pair of Sony MDR R-10s. I used several top end NOS 6SN7 tubes, Virtual Dynamics Master Series interconnects and FIM Gold power cords. I also used the Equi=Tech balanced power station.



The Audio Technica L3000 Headphone

There is already a body of information posted here at Headfi about these headphones so I won’t spend a lot of time on their physical characteristics except to say that they appear well built and as luxuriously appointed as any headphone I have owned including the Sony MDR-R10 and the ATH W2002, both of which maintain a reputation for eye candy. Comfort too is concomitant with the MDR-R10 and W2002 if slightly heavier than the W2002. Both the MDR-R10 and the ATH W2002 come packaged with flight cases and the L3000 comes packaged with a rather garish florid blue crushed velvet display box.


The Audio Technica DHA3000 Amplifier

The DHA3000 is a combination DAC, amplifier and digital EQ packaged in a well constructed and attractive stainless chassis with wooden end-caps and wood trimmed input jacks of the same color as the leather L3000s. The DHA3000 sports 3 inputs (all digital) – 1 RCA coaxial and 2 Toslink, as well as 3 digital outputs – same as the inputs and I assume they are there to allow you to daisy chain your headphone amplifier into your digital chain.

The metal color is the about the same champagne as Accuphase gear. The front offers knob style selectors for Inputs, EQ, Impedance (hi, medium, low and auto), Bass +/-, Treble +/- and a large, very smooth turning volume knob. An amber to green light indicates power is engaged and digital signal is locked. All very classy – my wife said,” my it certainly is prettier than all the rest of the headphone stuff you’ve tried”.


Listening

One of the first things I listen for in reproduction is transparency or the ability to hear clearly into the stage. In merely passable reproduction, low noise floor and proper resolution of timbre can make music sound “clear”. But I am talking here about the “air” and “space” around each instrument’s voice and the harmonic envelope that is allowed to develop in that space.

For a number of years now I have had a Yamaha C2 concert series grand piano in my dedicated listening space. When an acoustic instrument is struck there is an excitation of the air around the instrument. We experience the edge of these transients, or the “attack”, and behind the attack, the harmonic “decay”. This decay, like dissolving foam of harmonic derivatives, suggests an experience that is organic as opposed to Hi-Fi.

Yet another aspect of attack is speed. Fail to articulate attack properly and your system sounds slow.

The L3000/DHA3000 is transparent on a par with the Sony MDR R10/ Singlepower Maestro ZR. The stage is slightly smaller on the L3000s but the individual instruments themselves seem bigger and more dimensional.

I would give the nod to the R-10 for harmonic development but this may be merely a function of how the R-10 is voiced with respect to its stage. For those of you not familiar with the Sony MDR R-10, this headphone is voiced much further back in the hall than any headphone I have ever heard. The fallout from this voicing is that there is a greater apparent space for the attack/decay envelope to develop. An added advantage to the R-10s perspective is that its stage tends to remain coherent in the face of complex passages where there are multiple instruments or where instruments are massed – more on this later. Still for all the advantages of this presentation they come at a cost. The R-10 lacks the speed, sense of presence and slam or weight of the L3000.

No headphone can convey a stage, or even the semblance of a stage, the way a high end loudspeaker can. It is true that headphones have incredible timbrel resolution - the ability to resolve the differences between varied instruments playing the same note. Still, when instruments are correctly and coherently separated in perceived space – as on a stable stage as projected by loudspeakers, or for that matter in a live performance – hyper-resolution seems less necessary and almost certainly less “real”. For this reason absolute resolving power, while nice, is not the most important aspect of an organic listening experience to me. I would note, however, that the Wilson Sophia loudspeakers are clearly more resolving than either the R-10s or the L3000s.

Nonetheless, we are talking about world class dynamic headphones here so suffice it to say that both the R-10s and the L3000s are convincingly resolving. The R-10s are certainly sweeter with better treble extension and slightly better balance across the frequency spectrum than the L3000. And the L3000s driven by the DHA3000 retain the “convex mirror” or midrange forward AT house sound.

The L3000 has better bass than both the R10s and the W2002s. Now I know a lot of people want to make a quality/quantity bifurcation with bass but even after waxing on about harmonic envelopes, I maintain that a deep bass wave takes so much distance to develop in reality that we really don’t normally experience much of the harmonic development associated with its decay. Sure, resolution of timbre is still important as it is essential to be able to tell what instrument is playing as well as what progression of notes or chords are being played. Both the L3000 and R-10 are resolving enough to make these determinations. The L3000 has better bass!

The Midrange of the R-10 / Maestro affected me on a headier level than any headphone system I have heard. It delivered emotional impact whenever I went looking for it, which was every time I listened. Colored? Sure! The L3000 too, but the L3000 is not as blatantly romantic as the R10s and can often seem the fresher for it.

Coloration is an oft misunderstood phenomenon in my opinion. I have heard the same session’s guitar player play the same slide riff back to back on a Fender Stratocaster and a Gibson Les Paul. I suppose you could say the Les Paul sounded “colored” but I’d rather not give up Duane Allman for the sake of neutrality….and for that matter Keith Jarret said most Jazz pianists, himself included, preferred the Yamaha pianos to the Steinways because they were “brighter”, a coloration by definition….In my opinion music would be the less for the lack of all coloration.

A real problem with headphones is the ability to suggest a coherent sense of instrument placement. I have heard $2,000 monitors put virtually any headphone to shame when it comes to keeping instruments separated in space and of uniform size. As I mentioned previously, the R-10 accomplishes this more facilely than any other headphone I have heard owing largely to the perceived distance between the listener and the players. And the R-10 remains coherent with regard to this “stage” even during complex passages where many instruments are playing at once. Where most headphones appear to have players moving toward you or back – becoming larger or smaller – as the mix dictates, the R-10s tend to keep all the instruments of the same relative size or distance from the listener. This quality, along with an overall sense of tonal balance, is the principal reason I think I prefer the Sennheiser HD650 to the Grado RS-1 in the next tier of headphones down despite the HD650s notorious and ever present “veil”. For all its immediacy and resolution the Grado RS-1 would often present a group of instruments so dissonant in size – the nearness of an instrument or its distance from the ear changing so rapidly – that complex passages often became incoherent.

The trade off with the R-10s is that one had to close one’s eyes and listen in relative quiet to sustain the illusion. Why? Because the instruments are…..well, smaller. When I listened to the R-10s in a quiet, dark room with my eyes closed I could imagine myself in a room with music as opposed to listening to music with headphones on. Turn up the lights or even open your eyes and the feeling was gone. The L3000s are voiced better for me now that I have learned to listen to headphones. The sense of scale on the L3000 remains largely coherent and the added slam allows me to listen with my eyes wide open if I so desire. The DHA300/L3000 did, however, have a tendency to compress during complex passages with massed instruments in comparison to the R-10s remarkable aplomb in this area and the Maestro ZR’s always effortless sense of power and dynamics.

Voiced closer to the ear than the R-10s, the L3000s will appeal to the Grado lovers out there and the L3000s are vastly more coherent in their presentation of stage as well as their coherency across the frequency spectrum than are the Grados. The L3000s are not quite as refined as the R10s but they are lordly compared to the Grado RS-1s and every bit as textured and fun.

Everything I liked about the W2002s is there in the L3000s and much of what the W2002s gave up in all around performance to the HD650s is there as well. I’ll admit to spending a few evenings with the HD650s and Moon Silver Dragon headphone cables strapped to a fully tricked out Maestro ZR hearing the veil truly lift, and liking them better in those moments than the W2002s – but only in those moments. The L3000s driven by the DHA3000 are just more fun, more textured, more organic, warmer, more refined, more to my taste than the HD650s.

It is difficult to think of success in building a high end loudspeaker based system without achieving the moment when all of your equipment and tweaks get out of the way and suddenly you have music. I have yet to experience this moment with headphones. There is always the microscopic artifact, the bad mix, the pesky imbalance of stage, of frequency, of color, of balance and all presented in a manner so intimate that they are impossible to ignore. Frequency extension in either direction does not seem as open as when those transients are allowed to unfurl in real space. And you are, after all, alone, the guy with the machine strapped to his head tethered to his amplifier.

Without the benefit of psychoanalysis it is difficult to confront ones neuroses, but all in all the L3000s cause me less anxiety with regard to the whole “Headphone” dilemma for some amorphous collection of reasons.

The DHA3000 is designed to drive a single headphone. Many of the people here with high end systems have an array of headphones and require a combination of qualities and versatility which can only be had with a bespoke amplifier costing many thousands of dollars.

But sometimes, as Scott Fitzgerald suggested, “life is most successfully lived through a single window”. While not inexpensive the DHA3000 / L3000 combination still forwards the argument that headphone systems are a real value when compared to loudspeaker based systems and in that regard is a standard bearer for higher end equipment. Even relative to the vastly more expensive Singlepower/Sony gear the AT L3000/DHA3000 proved to be a remarkable value.

I had meant to avoid the rather morbid fascination with price I see played out in these forums preferring to let the marketplace parse value. Diminishing returns are a part of this hobby and it begins at the beginning and doesn’t end until the end. Worth would appear to me to be as subjective as our own choices of music yet it is often argued in far less becoming terms. So at the risk of sounding fetishistic, I will admit that the XLO LE digital cable, the two power cords and the Big Ben together cost more than the amplifier itself.

Nonetheless, I have found happiness with this system and those compromises it represents. Warm, textured, fast, resolving, musical with instrument placement among the most convincingly rendered of any of the systems I have heard. The dynamics and rise time of the Maestro ZR / R-10 are better and the midrange more seductive if relentlessly romantic by comparison to the L3000s. Yet these headphone systems are quite comparable to each other in terms of quality and a satisfying listening experience…..and if looks matter you would be hard pressed to name a more luxurious looking rig than the Audio Technica L3000 headphones driven by the DHA3000 digital amplifier.
 
Jul 22, 2005 at 1:04 PM Post #2 of 52
Simply incredible, competent and professional at the highest level!

Congrats!

Best!
Nicola
 
Jul 22, 2005 at 1:10 PM Post #4 of 52
Great, informative review!

Is the DHA3000 a digital (switching, PWM) amplifier or «just» a solid-state amp with built-in DAC?

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Jul 22, 2005 at 1:11 PM Post #5 of 52
Marvellous review, one of the best written I've read. If all the professional wrote so...

Now I really want to hear the Leatherheads!

Bye
Andrea
 
Jul 22, 2005 at 1:16 PM Post #6 of 52
Fantastic review mbratrud. I am glad you found satisfaction in a headphone system again. Transparency is also the first thing I look for when evaluating reproduction and the R10/Maestro is tough competition in that regard. Did you find the L3000 to maintain that transparency using amplification other than the DHA-3000?
 
Jul 22, 2005 at 1:32 PM Post #7 of 52
Wow, what a great, comprehensive review. Should be published, but at least included in the reviews section. Makes me want to run home now and listen to my new L3000s, more, more, more!

thx, walkman
 
Jul 22, 2005 at 1:33 PM Post #8 of 52
Wonderful review, Michael!

These two sentences really grabbed me ...
Quote:

The L3000/DHA3000 is transparent on a par with the Sony MDR R10/ Singlepower Maestro ZR. The stage is slightly smaller on the L3000s but the individual instruments themselves seem bigger and more dimensional.

The Midrange of the R-10 / Maestro affected me on a headier level than any headphone system I have heard. It delivered emotional impact whenever I went looking for it, which was every time I listened. Colored? Sure! The L3000 too, but the L3000 is not as blatantly romantic as the R10s and can often seem the fresher for it.


While I have not heard my L3000's from the DHA3000, I can still directly relate to your comments, having also owned the Maestro/R10 combination.

Thanks for a professional level review that (for me at least) conveys the sense of what the L3000's and DHA3000 sounds like.
 
Jul 22, 2005 at 1:39 PM Post #9 of 52
Awesome review! As an L3000 owner I know exactly what you were talking about everytime you described each aspect of its sonics (even though I don't have experience w/ R10 yet) - only you did it in so much more of an articulate manner than I ever could. Now I wonder just how much better your L3000 experience is due to that lovely DHA3000. Have any other amps to compare it to? Maybe someone should send you an amp or 2; it would be worth it for another post like this!
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Jul 22, 2005 at 1:50 PM Post #10 of 52
Quote:

Originally Posted by Canman
Fantastic review mbratrud. I am glad you found satisfaction in a headphone system again. Transparency is also the first thing I look for when evaluating reproduction and the R10/Maestro is tough competition in that regard. Did you find the L3000 to maintain that transparency using amplification other than the DHA-3000?


Brian: Speaking for myself, I can say that the L3000's have sounded wonderful from any amp I've used with them. This includes the Stealth, Maestro, Raptor, SR71, EarMax Pro, and Grace m902. I have noot had the pleasure of hearing from the DHA3000, so cannot directly compare to that apparently wonderful amp. I can say, though, that as I read Michael's terrific descriptions of what he heard, I was nodding my head in agreement.

I experienced transparency and articulateness of the individual instrument and voice sources including precise placement with each of the above amps, with the Grace m902 being the most precise, the Earmax Pro being the most lush. In this context, precise and lush are both good things.
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Jul 22, 2005 at 2:15 PM Post #11 of 52
Whoa dude. It's time to drop the puck on this one. That was a great review. Even though your opinion and mine on the R-10's are on complete opposite ends of the spectrum it was nice to have a comparison phone for base reference to the L3000's.

But surely someone who owns a set of wilson sofia's and Burmester Cd player would have a digicam to take some pics...and don't don't forget the "on head" shots.
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Jul 22, 2005 at 2:30 PM Post #13 of 52
Thanks for the excellent review that also includes an interesting discussion of headphone listening at a more general level than the reviewed components.

I only feel uncertain about one issue, is the L3000/DHA3000 combination synergistic and maybe necessary and how does the headphone work with other amplifiers?
 
Jul 22, 2005 at 2:31 PM Post #14 of 52
Gee thanks for the support! In answer to some of the questions:

I have not had the opportunity to listen to the L3000s with any other amplifer save the headphone out of the G5 tower (and then only using a grado adaptor) - but my suspicion is that the L3000s are themselves very transparent and the limiting factor was more the amplifier/DAC than the transducer.Agile_one has heard them with a few amplifiers and I would defer to his comments here.

Jazz, I am sorry to be a dummy but I just do not know the answer to your question.

As I pointed out in the review, many of you here keep large inventories of headphones and costly bespoke amplifiers (such as those by Singlepower and others) are the only way to go to get the kind of all around performance required from so many differing demands. Of course I do not know for sure since Wayne now owns the Maestro ZR I had built (and refer to in my review) ......I will speculate that there is no resaon to believe your Maestros or Stealths or Rudistors or whatever could not drive these fine headphones equally well.

I was drawn to this arrangement due to some very favorable comments about this gear along with the fact that I intended to use the L3000s. Since I only aspire to a single set of headphones (other than portables), it seamed reasonable to try it out. Additionally, it gives me the opportunity to split my systems into two rooms if I so desire, using a computer source for the DHA3000. I am glad it worked out so well.
 

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