I've a question for anybody with an 846, iPhone 6 (Plus) and amp/DAC. I've been testing the JDS labs C5D and - well, if I had to give my honest opinion on it, based on its performance with the Shure 846, I'd have to say it was a steaming pile of doggy doo doo. And that's being generous. Firstly, there's a very perceptible noise floor with the C5D; with the iPhone 6, it's totally black - I hear no noise floor at all. Secondly, the bass just disappears with the C5D DAC. Kiss that lovely subwoofer goodbye
But wait... there's those bass switches - surely they can save the day?... Nope. These work great on IEMs like the ER-4S, but on the Shure 846 they don't add bass at all, only a very narrow range of sub-bass. The kind of sub-bass you get when you roll the windows down in your car at high speed causing the resonance to bang in your ears - only more unpleasant than that. So with the 846, the C5D gives you three settings: 1) no bass, 2) no bass, but an unpleasant resonant pounding in your head, or (on the lower/medium setting), 3) no bass, but a slightly unpleasant resonant pounding in your head. The C5D sounds so much worse than the direct output from my iPhone 6 that I contacted JDS labs thinking I must have a dud. They said the C5D was never tested with headphones of less than 16 ohm impedance. Seriously?!?
I have not yet heard the Hugo, but am now somewhat nervous about dropping $2500, only to find the output sounds worse than that of my iPhone. (Check out Ken Rockwell's comparison of the internal iPhone 6 Plus DAC/amp vs the Beyerdynamic A200p: http://www.kenrockwell.com/apple/iphone-6-plus.htm#measurements). The problem I have with any external DAC/amp is, even if right now we can detect some small nuance of improvement, it will have a relatively short shelf life. There'll be a new iPhone in another 6 months. Heck, there'll be a new Android phone in another 6 hours. The internal DAC/amp technology in these portable music players isn't standing still. I believe we may already be at the point of not just diminished returns, but no-more returns. I know there'll still be people that believe in 24 bit-depth audio sampled at 240 kHz and other fluff like that, but for those of us not born on the planet Krypton, if the human ear can't hear the difference, or (in the case of the A200p or C5D) if the external DAC/amp sounds WORSE than the internal DAC/amp in our portable media player, what's the point?
Sorry for the rant. I'm just feeling like a sucker now for parting with that $250
If anybody else out there has heard the 846 being driven by a C5D, I'd love to hear your experiences. If anybody else out there has heard ANY DAC/amp that sounds better at driving the 846 than an iPhone 6 (Plus), I'd also be interested to know what product you were using and how it improved the sound.
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