I've never been big on reviewing products but have to make an exception today.
Michael and Stacie were kind enough to have my Hifi-M8 with Combo jacks delivered to me at RMAF today. I immediately connected it to my iPhone 5 with an ADL Ligtning cable from Moon Audio. The iPhone has somewhere between 45 and 50 GB's of 192/24 files on it - Stan Getz, Fun, Metallica, Stone Sour, Dusty Springfield, The Eagles, The Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Eminem, The Righteous Brothers, Sam Cooke and whatever else.
Well, my personal verdict is in. This thing is fantastic! I used it with the Fostex 900, all of the Audeze including the two (2) new ones, The Beyerdynamic T1, Mr. Speakers and so on. The M8 can drive any of them to earsplitting levels and has none of the upper end grain when playing FLAC files - quite unlike like so many of the other devices to which I compared the M8 using the same iPhone as source.
I tried the new closed Audeze using their new DSP/DAC/Amp and was so unimpressed. Then, I plugged them into the Centrance and the headphones were great!
I did try the HD-800 with the M8 and really didn't care for them, but I've always found them to be sterile anyway. I can live with balanced Fostex 900's, the T1 or the closed Audeze with the M8.
At this moment, I've got my HE-500's on listening to Dusty Springfield. Normally, I prefer the HE-500's with the Schiit Lyr and Bifrost combo. The Centrance as a desktop amp / DAC is working just as well.
I apologize for not being able to write the kind of reviews which so many of you do, but I'm just a music collector and don't understand electronics as most of you. So, I just have to say, I have some 50,000 digital songs and videos (obviously I love music) and I love the way the M8 allows me to enjoy my music.