MooBin
Head-Fier
- Joined
- Jan 11, 2009
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[size=xx-small]The following thread is created to let everybody participate in the process of setting up and optimizing my new bedside headphone setup using a Woo Audio 3+. The hope is that this might be helpful to some fellow headfiers as it may be to myself as a headphone newbie since I would like to ask questions along the way. Comments are also very much appreciated. I intend to post my experiences as they occur in time and I hope it is not too much boring. The numbering of days is not in sucession, there may be some more days be elapsed between two entries.
Listening background: The list of what I do not listen to is most probably shorter: I do not favour Hardrock, Hiphop, Pop (the mass-produced ones), Metal etc. - maybe you get the picture. I favour Jazz, Folk, World Music and in particular guitar, since I am a guitarist myself. My favourite musicians include Pat Metheny and Pierre Bensusan, Leonardo Amuedo etc. In my collection of appr. 1400 CDs, audiophile recordings are common. I do own several playback systems with one of those really reasonably sounding
. I am into highend for more than 25 years (back in the 80's Apogee Duetta with Krell KSA100) but a newbie to headphone reproduction.[/size]
[size=small]Reporting day 1: Arrival of the WA3+ and first experience[/size]
The WA3+ came in a neat small package, well packed with tubes separately in carton. Everything was undamaged. I unpacked the amp in the morning and let any condensed water dry out over the day.
In the evening - after installing the tubes - I set it up as follows: Standard wall outlet 230V 50Hz <-> Standard power cable <-> WA3+ <-> Moon Audio Silver Dragon Cable <-> Sennheiser 650. Source was a Yamaha DVD S2700 (plays all formats from SACD over DVD-Audio, DVD 96K, CD, CD-R mp3 etc. - actually really everything exept Blue-Ray) connected via Fastaudio Starline interconnects 80cm to the WA3+. Initial power for the source was standard wall outlet via a standard cheap power strip and standard power cable.
Trying a CD without warming everything up first did not floor me at all. In fact the first impression was much worse than using directly the headphone jack of my old Denon DVD5000. However that did not alarm me too much for I did experience this first impression effect already with other audio equipment I own and of course everything needs a break in and of course a warm up period.
More alarming was a faint background hum that did occur irrespective of the volume setting. But as the effect was quite small I continued listening. After about 3 hours of operation and playing a SACD (Stockfish records sampler "Closer to the music" - this is a highly recommended one !), the sound became much more refined. I would describe it as having a big "soundstage" (if one can talk about this in relation to a headphone) and having a real high end resolution, sound on the lean side - lacking probably a bit overall warmth but not missing defined bass. Actually quite nice for the first day - exept for the (slight but annoying) hum of course.
The unit does not hum mechanically by the way - in this regard it is dead quiet ! This is a very nice amp.
Listening background: The list of what I do not listen to is most probably shorter: I do not favour Hardrock, Hiphop, Pop (the mass-produced ones), Metal etc. - maybe you get the picture. I favour Jazz, Folk, World Music and in particular guitar, since I am a guitarist myself. My favourite musicians include Pat Metheny and Pierre Bensusan, Leonardo Amuedo etc. In my collection of appr. 1400 CDs, audiophile recordings are common. I do own several playback systems with one of those really reasonably sounding
[size=small]Reporting day 1: Arrival of the WA3+ and first experience[/size]
The WA3+ came in a neat small package, well packed with tubes separately in carton. Everything was undamaged. I unpacked the amp in the morning and let any condensed water dry out over the day.
In the evening - after installing the tubes - I set it up as follows: Standard wall outlet 230V 50Hz <-> Standard power cable <-> WA3+ <-> Moon Audio Silver Dragon Cable <-> Sennheiser 650. Source was a Yamaha DVD S2700 (plays all formats from SACD over DVD-Audio, DVD 96K, CD, CD-R mp3 etc. - actually really everything exept Blue-Ray) connected via Fastaudio Starline interconnects 80cm to the WA3+. Initial power for the source was standard wall outlet via a standard cheap power strip and standard power cable.
Trying a CD without warming everything up first did not floor me at all. In fact the first impression was much worse than using directly the headphone jack of my old Denon DVD5000. However that did not alarm me too much for I did experience this first impression effect already with other audio equipment I own and of course everything needs a break in and of course a warm up period.
More alarming was a faint background hum that did occur irrespective of the volume setting. But as the effect was quite small I continued listening. After about 3 hours of operation and playing a SACD (Stockfish records sampler "Closer to the music" - this is a highly recommended one !), the sound became much more refined. I would describe it as having a big "soundstage" (if one can talk about this in relation to a headphone) and having a real high end resolution, sound on the lean side - lacking probably a bit overall warmth but not missing defined bass. Actually quite nice for the first day - exept for the (slight but annoying) hum of course.
The unit does not hum mechanically by the way - in this regard it is dead quiet ! This is a very nice amp.
) -> Hum reduced to a much lower - acceptable - level (and I am REALLY sensitve to this kind of thing) . I skipped all other phantasies of what to do next and reinstalled the setting in the original place.
