The discovery thread!

[r31ya]

Cables are one thing, but I’m more interested in dongles at the moment. I’m using this dirt cheap Apple dongle as a DAC out of my xDuoo digital transport and I have to wonder if any other dongle out there could sound different?

My early experience with portable DAC/AMP is a disappointment that Dragonfly Red is not direct upgrade to Dragonfly Black.
Its different in sound sig. Dragonfly Black makes every sounds pop more while feels uncolored. Feels great to watch film, but soundstage feels very left and right without proper middle/center. It feels weird to be used for gaming as one sound jump from the left to the right without proper movement or progression from left, center, to right.

Dragonfly Red is a bit colored, veiled, warmer i suppose, less "pop", but it does have better soundstage with proper middle/center sound.
BTR5 sounds cleaner, clearer compared to Dragonfly Red.

DAC/AMP definitely affect sound quality.
And Andy vault above should be good primer on which DAC/AMP you may want to buy.

 

[AmericanSpirit]

Today

I just rent out many of my collections to a young prospective audiophile.

He is a trainee from Japan to my office.

Young Trainee:
”I love gadgets! In fact I’ve tried Sennheiser’s Momentum, AirPods Pro, Bose, and decided to buy Sony’s XM3 and running with LDAC“

AS:
“Good! Welcome to audio enthusiasts hobby, I will lend you some of my collections. Tell me which one did you feel that would cost few grants“

I rent out following without any pre-info or whatsoever:

-AuR Audio Neon Pro w/ NiceHCK flagship cable DragonScale (and stored in the leather case of Drafon Scale, it looks a lot more high-end than the stock round plain case of NP)

-SoundRhyme DTE500 w/Null Audio Ethos Mkv & SR8

for best EST tribrid and 14BA experience
-7Hz Timeless OG (obviously still the best technical planar)

-My PEQ’d Blessing 3 on LittleWhite (crazy air boost retuning)
For all rounder hybrid experience

-Truthear HEXA
for LCP bass and best cost performance experience

-Anole VX
for best resolution experience

-Audiosense DT200
for well tuned small composition simple 2BA exposure

-Mangird Tea OG
for highly dense mid-range

-L&P W2
for simple solution to get his song library to those IEMs

-Kato
For technical single DD experience


His feedback was
“I feel the blue box IEM has got the best resolution thus I feel that’s the most expensive one. “

“But all of them had different characters, and there was not single one that is clearly “inferior“ to another , well maybe if I had to chose one, the clear shell one in a huge carrying case.

I auditioned these IEMs with just one tracks, so I felt some IEMs could have a better match on other tracks”

”I actually liked the black round and flat IEMs a lot. It sounds lively”

”The square-ish one was not bad too, I was surprised to hear from you that IEM is one of the lowest priced among them“


I’m so happy that a young prospected audiophile can easily tell Anole VX over SR8 and Neon Pro, and was very accurate in telling DT200 is the lowest performing out of all.

Now my second audiophile growing batch will be niche ones. Only affordable range but all high performing.

SHIO, GK100, Lokahi, SR5, AQ4, 41T, P5, Aria, EA500, Wu, Rinko, and incoming PR2

 

[InvisibleInk]

I did a swap between Apple dongle, Hidizs XO and S9, FiiO KA3, Hidizs AP80 Pro X, Shanling M6U, and VE Megatron acting as DAC into the G5 amp a few weeks ago. All tests were done with U12T and SA6II.

Of course, there are a lot of double amping going on here, so it’s not strictly DAC to DAC compare, but there are some noticeable differences:

• Soundstage: KA3 is flat and in your face. G5 DAC as well as Megatron are somewhat similar, flattish but not as bad as KA3. AP80 Pro X is wide but shallow. Great depth, with “holographic” feeling to the stage comes with all other options.
• Clarity and details: Apple dongle is slightly behind all other options.
• Tonality: noticeable warmth with Shanling, the rest is more or less apple dongle-like. The KA3 and megatron sound slightly edgy at the top.

Imho, DAC is for fine-tuning. Apple dongle is adequate, though I like the sound and stage of the hidizs more.

In my use case the dongle does digital to analog and generates a pure single-ended line out signal to my external portable amplifiers from my digital transport, which has no built-in DAC or amp. So in this chain this simple dongle solution does pretty much all I want it to do. I wouldn't consider replacing this link, and simplistic form factor, with anything more capable or feature-rich than it already is. I can't help but think my amplifiers (Little Bear B4-X and iFi xCAN) are where all of the source magic is coming from when it comes to influencing the sound.

I have this (far-from-dogmatic) personal idea:

Transducer > amplifier > DAC > cable (or other negligible factors such as balanced vs. single-ended or lossless vs. lossy files).

So I might be willing to experiment with a different dongle in my portable source chain, but only if the possible alternatives have the exact same physical form factor, which excludes DAPs and fancy DAC/Amp dongles with multiple outputs and buttons, etc.

For me DAPs are another subject. One of these days I will have to consider upgrading my Shanling Q1. May it last forever...

 

[DynamicEars]

”I actually liked the black round and flat IEMs a lot. It sounds lively”

Haha I love my modded timeless (much better bass impact, better detail retrieval and dynamics) especially when I upgraded to Fiio M17, this IEM stretched more than others.
It's crazy with proper source and amping how the $200 Timeless can be somewhat close to multi kilobucks IEMs.

 

[superuser1]

Cables are one thing, but I’m more interested in dongles at the moment. I’m using this dirt cheap Apple dongle as a DAC out of my xDuoo digital transport and I have to wonder if any other dongle out there could sound different?

I am a happy camper with the ibasso DC04 Pro and the Shanling UA3 as also the Quedelix 5K for BT.

 

[W0lrince]

”I actually liked the black round and flat IEMs a lot. It sounds lively”

Lol feature is so strong that you immediately know what it is

“I feel the blue box IEM has got the best resolution thus I feel that’s the most expensive one. “

I genuinely thought it was Blessing 3 (it is Anole VX i know)

”The square-ish one was not bad too, I was surprised to hear from you that IEM is one of the lowest priced among them“

I'm surprise by it performance too, is he talking about Hexa?
No comment on Neon pro or SR8 ?

 

[AmericanSpirit]

Lol feature is so strong that you immediately know what it is

I genuinely thought it was Blessing 3 (it is Anole VX i know)

I'm surprise by it performance too, is he talking about Hexa?
No comment on Neon pro or SR8 ?

You got all quiz correct

Round / Flat = Timeless

Blue Box = Anole VX

square IEM = HEXA

his preference is lean neutral, so SR8’s warmth may not fit his test track.

For Neon Pro, it’s same qdc family, and there is Anole VX standing in front, so it’s no surprise that he prefers VX over NP, as I still see very thin advantages that VX hold against NP. Only a tiny bit of thin slice though. I’m surprised an amateur could tell that faint advantage.

 

[Click]

Got the BLON x HBB Z300 in and my initial impressions are very positive.

Oodles of sub-bass, not as much mid-bass but good enough. Verging on boomy but doesn't bleed much into mids. Decent punch and impact.

Clear mids and highs. Not shouty or peaky. Tuned extremely well to fit most genre of music.

The monitors have heft and solidity to them, but are comfortable and fit well. Nozzles are not too wide, so most eartip will easily slip on and off, but won't fall off.

Cable is extremely nice at this price. They could probably sell the cables for $10-$15 by itself.

Overall, the Z300 just feels premium. Really good sound quality. Solid build. I actually like the Z300 better than Cadenza so far.

BLON and HBB hit it out of the park with this one. Can't believe how good the Z300 is at $30. They could charge $80+ and it'd be worth the price.

 

[Ace Bee]

I have driven this car man nothing special. Mercedes AMG-One is better. Forza Horizon 5 really let you live your dreams

That's like studying the FR curve of an IEM and commenting on its sound

Luck is 10% chance, 90% preparation.
So many chances being thrown around, the issue being do you have what it takes to seize that chance?
---
Oh hey, my PR2 finally ship along with many others delayed PR2.
It seems KZ Global got a new batch of PR2

Nah y'all got it wrong.

It's 10% luck, 20% skill
15% concentrated power of will
5% pleasure, 50% pain
And a 100% reason to remember the name

 

[FreeWheelinAudioLuv2]

Got the BLON x HBB Z300 in and my initial impressions are very positive.

Oodles of sub-bass, not as much mid-bass but good enough. Verging on boomy but doesn't bleed much into mids. Decent punch and impact.

Clear mids and highs. Not shouty or peaky. Tuned extremely well to fit most genre of music.

The monitors has heft and solidity to them, but are comfortable. Nozzles are not wide, so most eartip will easily slip on and off, but won't fall off.

Cable is extremely nice at this price. They could probably sell the cables for $10-$15 by itself.

Overall, the Z300 just feels premium. Really good sound quality. Solid build. I actually like the Z300 better than Cadenza so far.

BLON and HBB hit it out of the park with this one. Can't believe how good the Z300 is at $30. They could charge $80+ and it'd be worth the price.

The Z300 kick the Cadenza's @z$ all over the playground and into the school. I spent time this morning with both, and it's not even close. Here's to hoping the Quartet overtake the Z300, but so far, the Z300 is indeed a high performer in the budget realm. Still, when I listen to the Aure's, they make the Z300 sound like Big Lots Sentry IEMs. lol

 

[gadgetgod]

That's like studying the FR curve of an IEM and commenting on its sound

Talking about graphs, look what I am playing with today

Here is the graph of hexa from this coupler, I guess I am doing something wrong looking at its high-frequency band.

I am just trying to learn this, getting a coupler for myself as well, will surely help in describing the sound better. I guess i will find help here from people who are already using one.

 

[Click]

The Z300 kick the Cadenza's @z$ all over the playground and into the school. I spent time this morning with both, and it's not even close. Here's to hoping the Quartet overtake the Z300, but so far, the Z300 is indeed a high performer in the budget realm. Still, when I listen to the Aure's, they make the Z300 sound like Big Lots Sentry IEMs. lol

I still like the Cadenza though. So lightweight and versatile. Z300 is better though.

Not fair to compare a kilobuck IEM to a $30 IEM.

Edit: Don't know much about the Aure and didn't know it was $350-$400?

 

[Asakurai]

Today

I just rent out many of my collections to a young prospective audiophile.

He is a trainee from Japan to my office.

Young Trainee:
”I love gadgets! In fact I’ve tried Sennheiser’s Momentum, AirPods Pro, Bose, and decided to buy Sony’s XM3 and running with LDAC“

AS:
“Good! Welcome to audio enthusiasts hobby, I will lend you some of my collections. Tell me which one did you feel that would cost few grants“

I rent out following without any pre-info or whatsoever:

-AuR Audio Neon Pro w/ NiceHCK flagship cable DragonScale (and stored in the leather case of Drafon Scale, it looks a lot more high-end than the stock round plain case of NP)

-SoundRhyme DTE500 w/Null Audio Ethos Mkv & SR8

for best EST tribrid and 14BA experience
-7Hz Timeless OG (obviously still the best technical planar)

-My PEQ’d Blessing 3 on LittleWhite (crazy air boost retuning)
For all rounder hybrid experience

-Truthear HEXA
for LCP bass and best cost performance experience

-Anole VX
for best resolution experience

-Audiosense DT200
for well tuned small composition simple 2BA exposure

-Mangird Tea OG
for highly dense mid-range

-L&P W2
for simple solution to get his song library to those IEMs

-Kato
For technical single DD experience


His feedback was
“I feel the blue box IEM has got the best resolution thus I feel that’s the most expensive one. “

“But all of them had different characters, and there was not single one that is clearly “inferior“ to another , well maybe if I had to chose one, the clear shell one in a huge carrying case.

I auditioned these IEMs with just one tracks, so I felt some IEMs could have a better match on other tracks”

”I actually liked the black round and flat IEMs a lot. It sounds lively”

”The square-ish one was not bad too, I was surprised to hear from you that IEM is one of the lowest priced among them“


I’m so happy that a young prospected audiophile can easily tell Anole VX over SR8 and Neon Pro, and was very accurate in telling DT200 is the lowest performing out of all.

Now my second audiophile growing batch will be niche ones. Only affordable range but all high performing.

SHIO, GK100, Lokahi, SR5, AQ4, 41T, P5, Aria, EA500, Wu, Rinko, and incoming PR2

so which one with clear shell and huge case? blessing 3?
anole vx still one of the best resolution, it's absolutely endgame for someone who seeks microdetail, it's all around you and smooth with sometimes glare around lower treble

and I just received my endgame 20BA with 3 switch IEM from my favorite builder, it cost 8000 RMB, but i think it's worth, it's much better than any TOTL i've tried (i tried a lot, including u18t /u12t/ext/phonix/z1r and many more)

Spoiler: Endgame IEM

now i'm waiting for your impression of W10

 

[Click]

Kiwi Ears and Linsoul will have a livestream later today showing the Quartet.

They also said what the switches do, because I asked.

 

[W0lrince]

so which one with clear shell and huge case? blessing 3?
anole vx still one of the best resolution, it's absolutely endgame for someone who seeks microdetail, it's all around you and smooth with sometimes glare around lower treble

and I just received my endgame 20BA with 3 switch IEM from my favorite builder, it cost 8000 RMB, but i think it's worth, it's much better than any TOTL i've tried (i tried a lot, including u18t /u12t/ext/phonix/z1r and many more)

Spoiler: Endgame IEM

now i'm waiting for your impression of W10

Will you graph it? Or let neptone graph it? Just want to know if it better or not