[26point2j]

Hi all,

To preface: I'm a long term Head-Fi lurker but newbie poster so please take it easy on me.

I'm in the process of moving from a high-end speaker system to headphones and I could use some advice. My rig will be centered around my Berkeley Alpha DAC Reference MQA. I'm trying to pair this DAC with a SS amp that has "tube-like" sonic characteristics without the tubes (practical reasons). I currently have JHAudio Laylas, Sennheiser HD-1s, and Focal Utopias so an amp that is adept at driving the full spectrum of headphones is a must. Single-ended and balanced outputs would be required and a fully balanced mono architecture would appeal to the engineer in me (but of course, the latter is secondary - the proof is in the pudding).

Any recommendations?

Thanks!
J

 

[Whitigir]

I don’t ever think there would be a solid-state that carries “tube-like” presentations. Transistors work different than tubes, hence they have different signatures. Even so, tubes have different signatures. The only way to get SS to sound tubes like is to “color it up” by how much ? I don’t know. Going through all of that, may as well getting a tube amp instead.

 

[26point2j]

I totally understand your point Whitigir. Perhaps I can best explain what I'm looking for with my experience tuning my speaker rig. I've always loved the result of pairing a tube pre-amp with a SS power amp with full range speakers. It gives you that "soft"/"liquid" characteristic of the mids and highs (even-order harmonics?) and authority/"slam" in the lower register. Would you recommend taking the same approach with a headphone system? Or is there a great "hybrid" amp out there?

 

[chimney189]

Violectric V200

 

[26point2j]

Thanks chimney189.

I had never heard of Violectric before your reply. I'll definitely check their offerings out!

J

 

[26point2j]

What are your opinions Cavalli and Wells approaches?

 

[26point2j]

I should also mention chimney189 that I own the DragonFly Red (updated to the MQA firmware) and I'm a huge fan.

 

[26point2j]

The Cavalli Tube Hybrid Amp is also interesting. Have you guys tried it with a SOTA DAC?

 

[SeaWo|f]

Outside of KG amps idk of other designers who favor dual mono for headphone applications.

Other than super power hungry headphones balanced really doesn't make a difference.

If you do decide to do tubes a lot of the nicest tube/tube hybrid headphone amps are SET or other single ended designs. It would be a shame to write them off.

Edit: a lot out single ended amps will have balanced connections for convenience or deception depending on the builder..

Same goes for dacs

 

[yong_shun]

I think hybrid amps are getting popular now such as ALO Audio Continental V5 and Pathos Aurium. They perform pretty well and I like CV5 a lot

 

[yage]

I don't find the performance of Cavalli amps particularly compelling - the Liquid Gold's gain is too high which makes it difficult to work with headphones of different sensitivities. The Liquid Glass is decent, but I feel you could get the same performance from a Schiit amp and the output also might be too noisy for sensitive headphones. The Carbon's single-ended output is subpar (most say it's present for 'convenience'). I've no experience with the CTH. But, there are plenty of people that love 'em, so YMMV etc. etc.

The Simaudio Moon 430HA reminds me of a tube amp - but only when the chain is fully balanced end-to-end.

The HeadAmp GS-X mk2 is a balanced version of an amp I own (GS-1 w/ Dynalo+ modules). I think the GS-1 is competitive with any amp out there, tube or solid state. It's also quiet enough to work with IEMs as well as full-size headphones. There are other versions of the Dynalo circuit out there - the single-ended Gilmore Lite (also from HeadAmp) and the dynamic headphone amps from Mjolnir Audio.

There is one boutique maker that rarely gets mentioned on these forums but is worth some research and that's ECP Audio. Sometimes there's odds and ends for sale.

Hope this helps!

 

[Rhamnetin]

Ray Samuels Dark Star if you're willing to drop that much cash. Tuned to sound less bright and forward than other solid states, stellar build quality and incredible power output... really a top tier amp that might be exactly what you're looking for, but a hard to swallow price.

Solid state amps with a JFET input stage are usually trying to sound like tubes.