Dear Watercoolers!
Once again, I'm sitting alone in my hotel room listening to music. Really good music. In a quality that I could never have dreamed of with headphones ten years ago, let alone 20 or even 30 years ago. Yes, I’m feeling really good right now.
I'm sitting on the bed. The notebook on my lap. And I'm thinking about how to describe my experiences on September 8th of this year as succinctly as possible. And what led to me feeling so well today.
It was a Friday in the north-east of Amsterdam's city center. 10 o'clock in the morning. My wife took me by car to a picturesque little side street. We agreed that she would pick me up right there in six hours. I waved after her. Then I looked around. Was this supposed to be a store for headphone aficionados?
When I opened the store door, I was greeted by the owner. We greeted each other and he invited me to try out whatever I fancied. I was now standing in a huge living room, not very bright. On the directly adjacent terrace, I saw a man testing various TWS headphones.
In the "living room" there were three listening islands (?) with several armchairs and an Eames lounge chair with a stool. On one of the two islands, another man was testing the Yamaha YH 5000 SE on the small tube amplifier he had brought with him. I also wanted to take a closer look at these headphones later.
I continued to look around and saw the dCSLina stack, Riviera AIC 10, Viva Egoista 845, Warwick Aperio, Spirit Torino Valkyria Ti and an almost infinite number of other things that made my mouth water.
But also a small, inconspicuous silver box.
I'll keep it short. After six hours in this „living room“, I decided to buy one of these boxes in black alongside the VE Phönix LE (001/222).
And that's what's doing its job in the hotel room today between an iBasso DX320 MAX Ti and a Diana TC with JPS Superconductor.
The small box is an extremely simple power amplifier. Milled from a block of aluminum. About 900 grams light. 19.8 centimeters long, 10 centimeters wide and 3.5 centimeters high. Inside is a Class A amplifier, without battery, without power switch, without volume control.
The small box only has two 4.4 mm sockets, one for the input and one for the output. That's how I like it. Uncompromisingly simple. If both sockets are connected, the small amplifier warms up immediately and is ready for use straight away.
But how does the little one sound?
Well, so far I've only listened to it with Diana TC because I only have a 4.4 mm cable available for the Lady and my Focal Utopia. And because I don't want to use any adapters. And because the Diva is a challenge and requires particularly high-quality amplification in order to be willing to sing at all.
Diana TC with the 4.4 mm Superconductor cable and the small black Thrax Resolute on the iBasso DX320 MAX Ti are an absolute winning team to my taste. I love the sound of the iBasso. It sounds natural with the Mango OS and has body. It has power. And yet it's also a fine spirit. I also find its graphic equalizer excellent, which I use to boost the sub-bass by 1 to 3 decibels.
I use Diana TC with the bass ported pads, but she can certainly handle a bit more bass. And the little "Resolute" controls this adjusted bass down to the lowest levels absolutely effortlessly and with maximum precision, regardless of the volume.
I operate the iBasso on Gain II of the total of IIII gain levels. I either use HiRes recordings. Or my CDs ripped with a Melco D 100 and a Melco N10 in WAV format. Or my vinyl rips created with an AK vinyl ripper in DSD format. Since I listen exclusively with the Mango OS, I need the music files locally on the internal memory and on the SD card.
The small power amplifier has now been used for several hundred hours. I also used the burn-in cable supplied with the iBasso DAP.
The first thing you notice when listening is the pitch-black background. Next, the dynamics in particularly quiet and loud passages. Excellent! The picky Diana, which we classify as a fast and rather analytical headphone, shows its musical side and begins…..to sing.
She benefits greatly from the boost in the sub-bass. The staging and imaging is excellent. The stage is wide and deep. Every instrument is where it belongs. Voices, both male and female, are neither too far in the background nor too intimate. Awesome.
Her timbre is natural and authentic. Sibilants are very well under control. And because I like the way Diana fits, and she is rather light at 390 grams, I can listen to her singing for hours without getting tired. Provided the source material is good. Bad productions remain bad, of course.
The holographic performance in combination with the natural timbre is particularly evident on the album "You can't take my Blues" by Doug McLeod, for example. It really does sound extremely authentic.
Richard Wagner's "Ring des Nibelungen" under Sir George Solti is another such recording. In my hotel room, I just shake my head in disbelief, literally seeing the stage and the costumes and the beauty of the actors, following their movements in space.
Bass canonades à la Alva Noto punch with such power and yet are springy and dry as dust. For a portable setup, this is really great cinema.
Speaking of transportability: the high-quality S.I.N. cables that I bought for the small Resolute are not only designed for high-end sound, but also to minimize weight. Especially the power cable, of course, which can get really heavy.
I'm sure this all sounds like advertising to you. Just this much. I paid the full price for the small black box and the associated cables. And the owner of the Amsterdam store knows nothing about this post.
I just felt like praising this little item. If you're ever in the Netherlands or at Zeppelin & Co in Singapore, try it out and let me know what you think.
Best wishes and have a nice week!
marcus.
