Quote:
Headphone Addict,
Thank you for the fantastic reviews! I had already ordered a D10 when I found your review. I had been thinking that the D10 was preferable to the D4, because of the optical out, but you seem to prefer the D4 SQ with HiFlight's OPA1611 or the Vivid V1 (seems like a great deal at $99).
My current setup:
MacBook Pro >Pandora>Optical>D10 (on order)>DT770 32 ohm or HD650
Interested in your recommendations, keep the D10 and upgrade with a topkit? or return for the D4? or order the V1
How does the uDAC-2 compare?
Thank you!
-Mark
I don't know about the DT770, but for the HD650 you might want more power than the D10 offers. I've owned the HD650 a couple of times, although I settled on the HD600 for a slightly more balanced approach to the music. The D10 has just enough to drive the HD600 to moderate volumes, but not enough to blast them loud and feel them. If you need optical and a great DAC then there aren't a lot of other portable choices (Headroom has a nice portable optical DAC/amp but I haven't heard it), but the Nuforce HDP is a good choice for the Senns if you don't might plugging into the wall power.
The D4 has more power for the HD600/650 when you engage the 9v battery, and it's a little more transparent and open sounding, but that doesn't make the D10 a bad DAC/amp. It's just the D4 is a little better. Still, if I had to pick one of the two iBasso amps for my Macbook I'd pick the D4 to drive the HD650 (if it had to be portable, even if stock opamps).
The Vivid V1 is a lot of fun with the HD600, less so with other headphones if they have borderline bothersome treble; and because the DAC is not as detailed and spacious as the iBasso DACs I tend to classify the V1 more as a "fun" sounding DAC/amp than a "reference" one like the iBasso amps. But you could pair the V1 with a nicer sounding DAC like the SuperPro DAC707 for optical or the uDAC-2 for USB, and have good detail and ambience with a very powerful amp - that is a good option too. I don't know why the V1 has so much power with HD600 when it's charged by 5v like the D10. Usually the HD600/650 need higher voltage swing and a 9v or 12v amp does a better job.
The uDAC-2 would be similar to a D10 in power, but without the optical or battery option, and maybe with a little worse low volume channel imbalance. The uDAC-2 line-out sounds a little better than it's headphone amp, and although the amp is still very enjoyable the RCA outputs are even more impressive. Listening to it's headphone amp might sound most like a Pico DAC-only feeding an iBasso T3. It's enough to enjoy my HD600 but not enough to really draw out the most performance from them.
Few portable amps really do justice to the HD600/650 - among the high-end portable amps that do the best with them are the balanced SR-71b, balanced Protector, Stepdance, and 3MOVE in that order; followed by the Pico, XM5 and D4 which are slightly less powerful even with 9v power like the Meier amps. I'd say all of those are top tier portable amps in terms of transparency and refinement. The V1 has a few flaws with other headphones putting them in the second tier, but when paired with the HD600/650 those flaws seem to fade away and not get noticed very much. Like I said, it's a fun amp to pair with the HD600, and HD650 should be even better with this particular amp since it will fill in the missing highs I missed with the HD650.
