[johnjen]

One thing that doesn't seem to come up much concerns what I call scalability.
 
When you go for the TOTL headphones, they are by design and intent supposed to be able to present ALL of the details, be they good, bad, or whatever.
Which means you will hear moar of what is being fed them, than 'less than' TOTL phones.
And you willl hear moar of everything, including any choke points, faults, weaknesses, along with the strengths and impressive changes, in other words the whole enchilada.
Which also means unless/until they are fed the 'correct' diet they will reflect with all of their intended precision and accuracy just exactly what that signal is and it may not be wonderful.
 
Sometimes you can 'luck out' and your existing gear is able to feed them a signal that allows the music to blossom in it's presentation.
Hearing your music anew is a good way of describing these sorts of results.
 
Other times you have to work at achieving this degree of 'synergy', regardless of how good the gear is.
 
But when that 'magic' happens and all of the components scale up together and reach a degree of 'cohesion coherence and coupling' (C3), it truly is or can be compelling.
 
And in my case it has taken a fair amount of tweaking to dial my system in.
But sometimes a piece of gear just slides right into the system and it immediately makes itself to home and the rewards can be wonderfull !
My new The Rok (Ragnarok) is performing this magic trick as I type this…
 
But that doesn't mean it can't be MOAR wonderful !!! 

 
JJ 

 

[Sorrodje]

I'm not so experienced in audio but IMO we shouldn't see this business as a vertical ladder we have to climb with more upgrades, time, or money. 
 
The purpose of our quest is more to obtain something "right" in the way our gear reproduces the Music. This "rightness" can be found at many price range and it's easy to loose the 'rigthness" when we try to "upgrade" something in our system. The rightness of the sound is something personal and does not necessarily implies "upgrades" . 
 
Considering upgrades as a necessity is an expensive mistake IMO. Considering audio as a game with winners and losers, world champion and other ********s is untrue. it's not sports after all. I prefer considering audio as cooking : we cook our sound , add a pinch of this , a drop of that and time after time we build the perfect recipe.
 
Then the most interesting part of the business is to see the human being behind the recipe and understand how and why he cooked his sound like that.  My 2 cents

 

[citraian]

You are perfectly right my friend. There is a problem however and that is addiction. When you get a new rig that matches your tastes you get a plethora of feelings from goosebumps, to tears and so on... The thing is that at some point you get used to this sound and those feelings start to vanish. And you want them again. Then you upgrade and you get all the good feelings back. And they vanish again. And so on...
Also, there is the human need to evolve, to have new targets to achieve.
But I fully agree with you. Sometimes we forget that this is about the music and we focus on the gear. We need to remember that it's all about the journey, not the destination.

 

[62ohm]

@Sorrodje
 
Is the Metrum Octave an R2R DAC? I'm contemplating on getting a new DAC, and at the moment the M51 and the Octave Mk.II caught my eyes..

 

[Sorrodje]

@62ohm : Yep R2R NOS.  I feed it with 24/88,1 PCM  (upsampling done by my Operating System)   and its just fine for my ears.  It's IMO a perfect DAC for HD800. It's like Metrum made a tailor-made dac for the Senn. Maybe people will retort than the Metrum won't do justice to HD800 resolution capabilities. I think They're right but I'm a bit reluctant to trade the timbres of the Metrum for more resolving capabilities.
 
The Beresford Caïman mkII is somewhat (IMO) a sidegrade. More resolution, more holographic soundstage but not this marvelous timbres, especially for voices, strings and bass texures . i could live with both DACs but I think I'll keep the Metrum in my HD800 system and put the Caïman mkII in the Electro-Static System I currently build.

 

[Sorrodje]

@62ohm or anyone owns the HDVA600/800.
 
Someone asked me for a good dac for its HDVD800. I answered him that a balanced DAC shoud me more suited for the balanced HDVD800 but does anyone known how the Senn amp is designed ? Does the amp is fully used when we use the SE input ?

 

[bargyu]

This is just my fourth post here, so be careful. As far as I know the ESS Sabre 9018 chip has 8 channels, so in balanced mode the HDVD-800 processes the left and right channels separately. I am now moving up to a balanced setup and looked around, whether it really is balanced. However, with my unbalanced stock cable and Calyx 24/192 DAC even the Nordost Valhalla XLR did not make any improvement over studio XLR or a pair of good RCA. But, many says that the balanced headphone cable does make a difference, especially in soundstage. And probably with that, there could be some improvement with the balanced XLR connection, too. Probably because the Sabre chip will work in balanced mode then. It would be interesting to know, when the chip works in balanced mode.
 
I will upgrade both cables in order to squeeze out some 1-2% from this magnificent headphone, which I fell in love after the first listening.
 
I can also confirm that DAC is very, very important. After Arcam irDAC and John Kenny Ciunas, Calyx 24/192 brings out details without harshness and they still have the $7k priced Femto product or there is the closely priced MSB. My tube amp is for sale now, I dont need its smoothing, warming effect anymore. For classical music I like precision, now for other type of musics I also have a non-fatiguing, but precise reproduction of the record. Just my 2 cents, as you say in the Anglo-saxon world.

 

[kazsud]

@62ohm
or anyone owns the HDVA600/800.

Someone asked me for a good dac for its HDVD800. I answered him that a balanced DAC shoud me more suited for the balanced HDVD800 but does anyone known how the Senn amp is designed ? Does the amp is fully used when we use the SE input ?

People who have it have said there is no difference from single/balanced inputs. Just a big difference in output.

 

[62ohm]

Yep I don't find any difference at all between the single ended and the balanced input.

 

[ubs28]

Balanced mode only reduces the noise floor? So if you got a good chain which doesn't have any noise, balanced mode doesn't offer anything?

 

[Sorrodje]

@62ohm & @kazsud : thks mates.

 

[johnjen]

  Balanced mode only reduces the noise floor? So if you got a good chain which doesn't have any noise, balanced mode doesn't offer anything?

 
Without getting all technical n'stuff… and oversimplifying a bit…
 
Balanced mode means that a differential signal is used that does not use ground as a source of reference for the signal itself.
 
What this means is 'one half' of the circuit 'pushes' while the other half 'pulls'.
While single ended has the whole circuit both pushing and pulling.
 
Balanced mode allows for 'cleaner' signal 'processing' by the whole circuit, because the output is independent of the electrical ground for the device.
 
Single ended is tied to the device ground as a reference to the 'active' signal.
 
And since the balanced circuit is not tied to ground it isn't 'influenced' by small ground voltage fluctuations as is the case with a single ended circuit.
 
And using a balanced circuit also improves 'common mode rejection' which means the circuit tends to cancel unwanted signals that can be added due to the common use of the ground for both channels (among other technical issues).
 
Balanced mode also doubles the maximum output voltage when compared to a single ended circuit with similar voltage rails from the power supply.  This means there is greater 'headroom' in terms of dynamic range potential.
 
JJ

 

[Blackmore]

Dont get me wrong, but there are amps that have XLR out, but in fact are not balanced build, so, not sure if that may be the reason that some folks dont hear any differences? Just saying...
 
THX

 

[Sorrodje]

I get that. That creamy sound. Very relaxing. If I want all the details, I just crank up the volume. I doubt if cranking up the volume using HD800 would be nice.

Yes. That's why I asked the question for hdvd600/800 since I don't know how the amp is designed.

 

[bargyu]

Thank you johnjen!
 
I understand now why unbalanced output is 2.1VRms and balanced output is 6.8VRms on my Calyx dac. I hope the fully balanced setup will make a noticable difference at the end as I am planning to spend quite a lot of money on high quality cables, both XLR and headphone. I am trying to squeeze out as much as possible, now running Windows Server 2012R2, MQn, JPlay, split silver usb cable only for data transfer, external power supply for the dac, upgraded power cord and apart from different amp/dac combo I don't see what I can do more. I heard good reviews about Audiophile Optimizer for €100, the only problem is that there is no trial period. Don't misunderstand me, I love this setup and this headphone is magnificent, I listen it for hours almost every day, I am just addicted to get 1% more quality. Have a nice day!