acguitar84
100+ Head-Fier
The Phonitor X looks intriguing. Love that picture in the above post of Luckbad's system!!
I'm definitely going to put it on the list of "to buy" items for this fall or the first part of next year. It's seems it would be either the Phonitor or Benchmark for a nice SS amp. Currently on my headphone rig, I'm using the RME Adi-2 DAC (I also have mimby hooked up) to the Jotunheim and mostly the Grado PS1000E (Sometimes my trusty HD650 as well).
Impressions so far of the Adi-2 are mostly positive. I did take it to the downstairs speaker rig and see how it fared against Yggy A1 (hooked up with Lynx Soundcard AES). I had another person listening as well, and we both agreed the Yggy was best on the speaker system. One caveat though, I hadn't (and still haven't) had much time on the Adi-2, there's a lot to learn. I think I've figured out pretty much everything up to the EQ menus after working with it for a few hours Sunday, but hadn't figured out much of anything by Saturday night, it only showed up a day earlier (I got it Friday)! So I hooked it in straight away and just went with the "out of the box" settings when comparing it to Yggy.
More impressions in comparison to the Yggy, the Yggy seemed punchier and more resolving and the Adi-2 more compressed maybe? We didn't spend much time comparing, and in hindsight, I was only using one of the filters in the Adi-2, the default one. This weekend, I tried all of the filters over headphones on the upstairs system, I think it was the "slow" one that I enjoyed the most. Those differences seem really subtle though (switching between filters). I didn't try any of the other filters on the speaker system.
On the headphone rig, I really like the Adi-2. I compared it with the mimby, and while the mimby holds it's own, I was really enjoying the Adi-2. It was fun to use the PS1000e on the Adi-2. On mimby to Jotunheim, it seemed that the PS1000e had too much high end (this is over the past year or more, in fact I had put the PS1000e away for a long time, and just used HD650 because the high end brightness between the 3 of them kept getting worse), but with the Adi-2, it was fun to listen on those cans again. HD650 sounded good too.
I can only begin to imagine what the Phonitor X might sound like. It must be a pretty big step up from the Jotunheim. The only thing that worries me about the Phonitor, other than the price tag, lol, is they seem pretty touchy. Stuff about the 1/4 inch headphone jack and turning down the volume or you can burn up the amp! I also read a recent post from a guy that had his VU meters stop working. So, I'm going to keep monitoring posts to see how people's Phonitors hold out.
In any event, back to the Adi-2. It's a keeper. Maybe it's not on par? with Yggy ,or at least wasn't in the first brief "shootout" we had Saturday night over the downstairs speaker system (using Freya as the preamp), but it's certainly great fun over the headphones. It's fun to dabble around with the settings too. The differences between Jotunheim and Adi-2 as far as headphones, it seems like plugging directly in Adi-2 with the PS1000e results in a cleaner, maybe more sterile? sound, where the Jotunheim has a teeny bit more punch and umph behind it, but isn't quite as clean. From what I've read about Phonitor X, (and I presume the Benchmark) they'd have the best of both worlds.
I'm thinking of sending in my PS1000e to get a balanced cable put on, so I can hook into Jotunheim balanced. I already have a balanced cable for the HD650 and I like it! I'll just get an adaptor for when I want to go single ended, for instance when I want to play guitar using the Focusrite Scarlett, and I want to use PS1000e or HD650 to monitor.
I'm definitely going to put it on the list of "to buy" items for this fall or the first part of next year. It's seems it would be either the Phonitor or Benchmark for a nice SS amp. Currently on my headphone rig, I'm using the RME Adi-2 DAC (I also have mimby hooked up) to the Jotunheim and mostly the Grado PS1000E (Sometimes my trusty HD650 as well).
Impressions so far of the Adi-2 are mostly positive. I did take it to the downstairs speaker rig and see how it fared against Yggy A1 (hooked up with Lynx Soundcard AES). I had another person listening as well, and we both agreed the Yggy was best on the speaker system. One caveat though, I hadn't (and still haven't) had much time on the Adi-2, there's a lot to learn. I think I've figured out pretty much everything up to the EQ menus after working with it for a few hours Sunday, but hadn't figured out much of anything by Saturday night, it only showed up a day earlier (I got it Friday)! So I hooked it in straight away and just went with the "out of the box" settings when comparing it to Yggy.
More impressions in comparison to the Yggy, the Yggy seemed punchier and more resolving and the Adi-2 more compressed maybe? We didn't spend much time comparing, and in hindsight, I was only using one of the filters in the Adi-2, the default one. This weekend, I tried all of the filters over headphones on the upstairs system, I think it was the "slow" one that I enjoyed the most. Those differences seem really subtle though (switching between filters). I didn't try any of the other filters on the speaker system.
On the headphone rig, I really like the Adi-2. I compared it with the mimby, and while the mimby holds it's own, I was really enjoying the Adi-2. It was fun to use the PS1000e on the Adi-2. On mimby to Jotunheim, it seemed that the PS1000e had too much high end (this is over the past year or more, in fact I had put the PS1000e away for a long time, and just used HD650 because the high end brightness between the 3 of them kept getting worse), but with the Adi-2, it was fun to listen on those cans again. HD650 sounded good too.
I can only begin to imagine what the Phonitor X might sound like. It must be a pretty big step up from the Jotunheim. The only thing that worries me about the Phonitor, other than the price tag, lol, is they seem pretty touchy. Stuff about the 1/4 inch headphone jack and turning down the volume or you can burn up the amp! I also read a recent post from a guy that had his VU meters stop working. So, I'm going to keep monitoring posts to see how people's Phonitors hold out.
In any event, back to the Adi-2. It's a keeper. Maybe it's not on par? with Yggy ,or at least wasn't in the first brief "shootout" we had Saturday night over the downstairs speaker system (using Freya as the preamp), but it's certainly great fun over the headphones. It's fun to dabble around with the settings too. The differences between Jotunheim and Adi-2 as far as headphones, it seems like plugging directly in Adi-2 with the PS1000e results in a cleaner, maybe more sterile? sound, where the Jotunheim has a teeny bit more punch and umph behind it, but isn't quite as clean. From what I've read about Phonitor X, (and I presume the Benchmark) they'd have the best of both worlds.
I'm thinking of sending in my PS1000e to get a balanced cable put on, so I can hook into Jotunheim balanced. I already have a balanced cable for the HD650 and I like it! I'll just get an adaptor for when I want to go single ended, for instance when I want to play guitar using the Focusrite Scarlett, and I want to use PS1000e or HD650 to monitor.
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