Quote:
Originally Posted by dungie /img/forum/go_quote.gif
SiBurning,
awesome review, with a couple of dark spots though. First, it turns out that you were comparing your hifiman not to benchmark dac1, but rather to dac1 pre or dac1 hdr. Is this correct? Second, it's not quite clear how the comparison was conducted. Was it hifiman hp out vs benchmark hp out? Or was it hifiman line out vs benchmark line out, both with some kind of reference amp (I'm dreaming to see this sort of comparison eventually)? Or maybe it was hifiman+portaphile vs benchmark? Hope to see a bit of clarification
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Thanks. I don't want to go into too much depth just yet. I still don't consider the HiFiMan burned in. It's been on continuously for about 100 hours connected to headphones as well as the lineout going to my stereo. It also wasn't intended to be the review, just some preliminary thoughts.
1. DAC-1 USB fed through coax from an Oppo DV981HD.
2. It would be fair to call my comparison between the Benchmark and HiFiMan an overall impression which doesn't really change in any of the configurations. That's why I didn't bother to go into more detail. I'll correct that here.
For the Benchmark I used the CDs. For the other sources, I used FLAC taken from the same CDs. These same FLAC files exist on the HiFiMan and the iRiver.
After my first hour or so of listening, I plugged the HiFiMan's lineout into my stereo system and also plugged in my headphones. For the next three days, nearly all of my listening was through my stereo speakers. These comparisons were between the Benchmark's lineout and the HiFiMan's lineout going to different inputs of my Creek 5350 SE connected to a pair of Epos M5 and Epos M subwoofer. The subwoofer was powered from the amplifier, not through the subwoofer amp. The Benckmark is connected to the Creek using 3' interconnects from Signal Cable. The HiFiMan is connected to the Creek using a GC Mini from Kimber cable--a stereo RCA to mini interconnet. The M5 speakers are connected using ancient 10 ga pure copper speaker wire. The subwoofer is connected to the B channel of the Creek through 15' speaker cables from Signal Cable. I don't know the brand of coax cable. This constitutes one part of the comparison--lineouts to speakers.
Yesterday, I unplugged the HiFiMan from the stereo, and did not listen to speakers at all. These comparisons used the headphone out of the DAC-1. For the HiFiMan, I listened to the headphone out or the lineout going to three portable amps: CoreSound's HeadLine, HeadRoom's 1995 (not upgraded) MicroAmp, and the original Portaphile V2^2 maxxed. I explained why I used outboard amplifiers in addition to the built-in amp. While the (four) amplifiers all sound different, they're consistent enough that the comparison against the benchmark would be the same regardless. If you prefer, it's an average. The cables used for this are a cheap optical cable, the Kimber Cable GC Mini to RCA, and an ALO Audio Jumbo Cryo X Silver Mini to Mini. This constitutes a second part of the comparison--headphone outputs, except here I also used outboard amps for the HiFiMan.
Going beyond what you asked...
At some point, I stopped comparing against the Benchmark and concentrated on the portable amplifiers. For this, I plugged the lineout of the HiFiMan to the three portable amplifiers mentioned above, and also listened to the HiFiMan's headphone output. Just to keep things honest, I also plugged my iRiver HP140 into a 2006 HeadRoom MicroDAC and the HeadLine to have some other sources as a basis. This means I had three DACs as sources going to three amplifiers, plus the HiFiMan straight. (The HeadLine has a DAC and amp, and can be plugged in as pretty much anything.) This is outside the scope of what I wrote about, and is more about how well the HiFiMan supports different portable amplifiers. That's a different can of worms.
