Burson SS V5 Opamps
For those of us who are not electrical engineers who can build entire systems from scratch, but love music and love playing around with our gear, we are basically limited to opamp rolling.
Here are a list of opamps I have played with. The jellybean JRC 2114D that originally populated the Xonars. The opamp that first started the drive to find something better.
Sure, the Xonar sounded better than any onboard audio but it wasn’t perfect. Something was missing. And so now we have threads with thousands of posts where we recommend this or poo-poo that. And so I bought some OPA2107, some 134’s, some LME 49720’s, some, NJM4556's, some 49860’s and then some 49720HA and some 49710HA and some 49713HA (for my headphone amp, not the Xonar) and some 827’s and some 627’s and some LT1363’s and some LT1028 and some LME49990 and even the 5534’s and of course the AD797 and many more that just went in for a short while to come out and be forgotten again.
The process of elimination left me with the AD797BRZ and the LME49990 as the best all-around opamps. However, they both sound anemic unless bypassed with a 10uf Silmic II which is, for me, now a standard practice with those two opamps. They have good detail retreival, good soundstage and no weird tonal issues such as sibilance or flabby bass. I figured, this was as good as it got with the equipment I have.
Well, as Ronda Rousey learned, there is always something out there that just kicks more ass.
After reading about discreet this and discreet that for too long without ever trying it, the time was ripe to see what discreet is all about.
The unboxing
The Bursons are well packed in a custom protective case for safe transport and storage.
Makes you feel like you are holding something special. They are tall but don’t really have a much
larger footprint than a regular browndog adapter.
They both fit side by side on in a Xonar.
How do they perform?
Out of the box, they are peaky and will quickly fatigue you. These, per the manufacturer’s recommendation, need a minimum of 100 hours of burn in. I hate waiting….
Fast forward two and a half work-weeks of burn-in and it’s time to start listening and comparing.
What you will notice first are the details. They are clear, they are everywhere.
I attribute this virtue of the Bursons to their speed. They resolve everything – perfectly. To hear the shimmer on the cymbals in such exacting detail is fascinating. It sucks you into the music.
At first it seems like work to listen so closely to micro details that you haven’t heard before but before you know it, you are just staring off into eternity swaying to the music.
Take Kat Edmonson “Just like Heaven” as the best cymbal example of this. The cymbals are left and right and the clarity that the Bursons provide give it a more pure, metallic and melodic presentation.
Another Kat Edmonson example would be “I don’t Know”. I always thought this was a type of afterthought recording because the brush on the snare was just too “shhh” and low-fi sounding.
That’s not what is going on.
With the Bursons, you hear one of the musicians slightly coughing. I have never heard that before. You hear the creaking of a chair that someone is sitting on. You hear each strand of the brush as it is being pulled over the snare drum.
Secondly, there is a sense of space. There is a 3D aspect that starts with the instruments. The 49990 soundstage is much like an oval. The 797 is more like a pyramid or trapezoid.
It feels closer to the ear with straight walls and this is one of the reasons why I prefer the 49990 to it. Both those opamps have a soundstage that is big enough to place all instruments where they belong, like pictures on a wall.
I suppose Bas Relief would be a better description. You hear the instruments coming from the wall, etched into the wall.
This is where the Bursons really add something I have not experienced yet.
There is no soundstage per se. There are no walls. The instruments are in the correct location but standing in space and you can hear not just the front of the music but the back too. I don’t know how to put this experience into words. We all know that artificial soundstage of the 49720 where things feel pulled apart wider than they should be. Well, the Bursons sound wide because there is nothing behind the instruments. No perceived limit. It’s like looking up at the stars in the desert on a clear night. If someone is standing 10 feet from you in a room with their back to the wall playing the guitar or standing 10 feet from you in the desert under the stars, the distance from the music to you is the same but what’s behind it is different. This is felt more in acoustic recordings than electronic.
This also can bring the music much closer. Some opamps put the music in your head, these put you in the music.
Listening to Kat Edmondson you expect to feel her breath as she sings to you. Seeing how I love Kat this is a great experience. Sometimes this can be .. interesting.
As you guys know from my previous posts, I have started adding 10uf capacitors to the opamps to try to mitigate any shortcomings they might have. I believe one of these shortcomings are in the capacitor choices that were made by manufacturers when they put the DAC, Soundcard, Headphone amp… whatever together. The power that is fed to the opamps is like the raw ingredients that go into cooking. Either you use the best and freshest you can find or you used frozen and canned. The cook is the opamp. No matter how good the chef, if the ingredients are not great, the result is not great.
So with the AD797 and LME 49990 I found that Elna Silmic II 10uf is what is needed to bring out the best. This gave it a black background, better dynamics and much better bass. I love good bass.
Silmic on the Bursons?
I did not want to start soldering onto these beauties, especially since I need to put on and remove the caps multiple times to verify what I am hearing. So I just took a dip8 adapter and soldered the caps to these. This way I can have it on and off in just seconds.
While the Silmics were a night and day difference, and all for the better with regular opamps, this is not cut and dry with the Bursons. The SS V5 already has great bass. I mean really, really good. Tight, dynamic and basically perfect. But the effect of the Silmics is inconsistent here. On some songs it turns up the bass from 10 to 11. On others it does nothing. However, it does soften the treble a bit. It’s not removing detail, just making it softer and so these are nice quick mods to have available for recordings that are too hot or fatiguing for one reason or the other.
It’s the chill-pill. If you have HD800's you will probably want to try this for sure.
Another beautiful quality of the Burson SS V5 is how it handles both male and female voices. The entire range is available. Silky, squeaky, husky, smokey and natural. The details and dimensionality of the Bursons almost puts a face to the voice you are hearing.
Sibilance has always been an irritation for me and in the beginning of my amp building and opamp and cap rolling I was trying to eliminate it. However, it is oftentimes in the recording. One cannot say “silly sandwich” without producing it. But how the opamp treat those sounds is what matters. The Burson does not create sibilance that is not on the recording, and it does not hide it either.
I find the LME49990 with Silmics does mask the sibilance superbly but I have not yet had the desire to run the LME49990 again compared to these.
Here are some interesting observations with and without the Silmic on the Bursons.
James Blake: Overgrown
Silmic: Very lush. You can feel the bass in your chest. Vocals are not near, they are on you, in you. This is very close and intimate and for a happily married hetero male, almost uncomfortably close
, but if you want to be sung to and wrapped into the music this is the way to go. This really is a very remarkable experience.
No Cap: Beautifully articulated bass. It is tight. Instrument separation is perfect. The voice is moved back just a bit compared to the silmics. There is a touch more sparkle at the very top.
James Blake: To the Last
No Cap: The bass is completely extended. This song has a percussive “tick” that on lesser opamps is just kinda there. On the Bursons it has a specific location and even extension into space. The rasp of James voice is so detailed.
Silmic: The percussive “tick” is less sharp and feels less extended into space. There is less air and depth. The soundstage is smaller than without caps. The rasp is still detailed but less sharp.
On this song silmics do not improve the music.
Blue Coast Collection #1: Looking for a Home
Silmic: Guitar left and guitar right. The sound is full. Voices are distinct at 12'00 and 2'00
No Cap: Just a tad bit lighter, cooler. More background ambiance.
Yo-Yo Ma, The Goat Rodeo Sessions: Attaboy
Silmic: Very warm and musical.
No Cap: Lighter. Cooler, tempo feels just a bit faster.
Thievery Corporation, Saudade: Meu Nego
No Cap: first time I have ever heard noise from the needle on the record. At first I was thinking there is something wrong with my connections. Checked connections. Checked that opamps were properly seated. Checked that headphones were plugged in correctly etc.. until I figured out I am hearing needle noise from one of their samples in the recording.
Silmic: The needle noise is still there, but muted. With regular opamps I hadn’t really ever paid that much attention to it and am not sure I was even aware of the needle sound.
The equipment I am running here is a Xonar as DAC going to a variation of The Wire as headphone amp. The wire is a very simple design that has an opamp for I/V and then is followed by LME49600 as buffer. I run mine at +- 15V. This then goes to the HD650 manufactured in 2014. There are a few interesting observations that need to be mentioned here. My headphone amp with LME49990 produces about 1mw of DC offset on the right and 2mw on the left channel. Perfectly acceptable.
With the Burson in I/V it produces 0.01mw offset. That’s amazing and hats off to the Burson engineers.
Another is that it is deathly silent. I thought the LME49990 was silent but comparing it to the Burson there is the faintest of background noise on the 49990. However, the Burson is just .. nothing.. no difference between on and off.
At this point I need to give props to the HD650. These scale incredibly well. All this detail that the Bursons are digging up is there. An incredible sense of air and space unlike any lesser phones I had tried. I have looked over my shoulder more often during this evaluation, thinking I heard someone walking or saying something only to find out that its part of the recording.
So what are the downsides?
Size is one. This will not fit in a small enclosure. I currently have the side pulled off of my computer and the Bursons are sticking out. This means that I can’t close this case until I get a bigger case because I have no intention of taking the Bursons out again.
Price is another. These are not cheap. However, they are worth it. If I look at my opamp collection, I have spent at least a few hundreds of dollars on these little buggers over the years. (I really hope my wife never reads this post) One single LME49713HA on Digi-Key costs $11.78 right now. And I went through 4 because they are difficult to work with and I killed the first pair. That’s just one model.
So what am I saying? If money is tight, then start with at least one SS V5. The most important one is in the headphone amp. After that, the most important position is the I/V of the soundcard.
If you need to go all the way, get the buffer for the soundcard last. This is an interesting observation. The LME49990 in buffer passes on the magic of the Bursons in I/V just fine but it can’t seem to produce it on its own in the dac or headphone amp.
What is it like to go back to regular chip opamps? The AD797 feels cramped and the LME49990 sounds grey. Don’t beat me with the “Andrea stick” but I’ll be damned if it doesn’t. When I put the 49990 in the headphone amp everything is just a little flatter, a little less exciting in comparison. Don’t get me wrong, the 49990 and others do sound really great. I was almost completely happy with those for a long time. But the Burson SS V5 is significantly better. This does not mean that my opamp rolling days are over. Now the quest is to find what is better than the Bursons, but at this point, I don’t know where to start looking.
. I actually had to support them with electrical tape on my sound card so they didn't accidentally fall out. Size aside, I am going to test those out again, along with some other new additions..
