[WhippieDaddy]

Quote:

Actually, to compare pricing, you have to take Lyr plus Bifrost so they're actually pretty close. Within US$100 or so if Bifrost has USB. Just got the HE500 and am considering the WA7. Liking what I've been reading so far.

 
Good point, I forgot about the DAC in the WA7.  It appears to me to be an excellent one (so far anyway) and I would therefore say it might even be fair to include the higher priced Gungnir for comparison.  That would put the total price above the WA7 ($849 for Gungnir with USB plus $449 for Lyr = $1298)...  Hmmmm....  The WA7 is looking better and better price-wise.  Having said that, I'm not familiar with the quality of Bifrost / Gungnir and they might match or outdo the WA7's DAC.  Hence the Bifrost + Lyr could indeed be a valid comparison.

 

[AustinHorn]

Well, I finally got my silver WA7 today.  I feel like I've been waiting for over a month.  Oh yeah, I have. Had enough time so far to install the stock tubes & use my ipod5 as a source with my HD800s.  Even brand new, it sounded very good with them.  I tend to prefer them with my OTL amps & off the top of my head I can at least say the WA7 seems a very good match.  I have yet to have time to do any real comparisons with other amps or to use my LCD2s or he500s with them. I also got the gold pins but haven't installed them yet. I wanted to establish a baseline for comparison between the two sets of tubes based on what others have said here.  I can say that Jack has built one heck of a beautiful amp this time around.  My wife has never been big fans of my various amps but she fell instantly in love with with this one & wants it set up in the livingroom. NO AMP has been allowed in there before.  In my house this is huge.  Anyway, the wait is over & I hope to have time this weekend to really get into it. Sure glad I bought it before the price went up though I can say, I would be temped anyway, knowing what I know now about the sound.
 
I'm not sure how I feel about the lack of tube rolling options with this amp.  That has been something I really enjoyed with the Woo6 Maxx I have as well as with my other tube amps.  Guess time will tell.  Right now I don't think I'd be allowed to sell it even if I wanted to.  It really does have WAF pluses if my wife is at all typical of how most ladies will feel about this thing. 2 big thumbs up Jack for this design.

 

[mrbigsby]

Great impressions thanks man!
Would love to hear your thoughts with a computer or Cck as the source. The iPhones proprietary DAC won't allow you to experience the WA7s own 32 bit Mac native DAC- which means you unfortunately get amp only with that set up.

My wife had the same reaction! Now if we could only get jack to manufacture matching cans, speakers, hard drives, etc, we would have a full line of wife friendly man toys!

Watching this space!

 

[atomicbob]

Having listened many more hours I will say I am impressed with the WA7 versatility in driving many different cans so well. I think the lack of tube rolling opportunities may be a feature here. The stock Sovtek 6c45pi are performing very well. To paraphrase Frank Zappa, this might be a good case of Sit down, plug in, shut up, listen and enjoy.

 

[AustinHorn]

Great impressions thanks man!
Would love to hear your thoughts with a computer or Cck as the source. The iPhones proprietary DAC won't allow you to experience the WA7s own 32 bit Mac native DAC- which means you unfortunately get amp only with that set up.

My wife had the same reaction! Now if we could only get jack to manufacture matching cans, speakers, hard drives, etc, we would have a full line of wife friendly man toys!

Watching this space!

Yeah I know I'll need to get thinks rearranged to make some room around my desktop or a laptop to fully utilize the WA7 fully. My wife's insistence on having it perminantly located in the living room has kind of thrown me a curve cause I had made very different plans for how to set it up. So now other doing some weekend testing, set up as I'd planned, I'm going to have to rethink just how to use it. I need to see just how good the DAC is compared to my other options too. My WA6 maxx was one of Jack's early ones that was totally maxed out & I need to see just how the two compare. I can already tell the WA7 is more powerful but does it sound better & if so with certain cans or all of them. Then the dac comparison too is important. I need to do a lot of A/Bing this weekend. And the living room is now an issue cause there are no electronic gear at all in there now & I'm not sure the wife has thought thru the necessity for needing other stuff in addition to the "pretty little cube" in there to actually make best use of it. It will be interesting. See I'm already thinking maybe I may work this into a deal with a Mac ultra book etc added into this deal. Maybe even just a loaded macmini with a large monitor would work. Time will tell... Gotta proceed carefully...

More short term, looking forward this weekend, to hooking it up properly to see just what it can do along with all the comparisons I can think of. Wonder how much burn-in these tubes need. some one may have said that somewhere here but if so I missed it? Oh well I'll figure out everything as time allows. Da*n this thing is pretty. Hope it proves to sound as good as it looks when geared up properly. My brain is going a million miles an hour. Im now finding it hard to just focus on the short-term with the livingroon deal now in the mix.

I had a bit of an issue getting the windows driver loaded on the 1st laptop but it turned out the pc was in the middle of a series of windows7 updates too, so it just took a long time. No problem with the desktop though. Anyway, scared me there for a while while the laptop was just grinding away.
Onward through the fog...

 

[AustinHorn]

Having listened many more hours I will say I am impressed with the WA7 versatility in driving many different cans so well. I think the lack of tube rolling opportunities may be a feature here. The stock Sovtek 6c45pi are performing very well. To paraphrase Frank Zappa, this might be a good case of Sit down, plug in, shut up, listen and enjoy.

Great point! Other than comparison testing the gold pins this weekend, this may be the one tube amp I should just treat as a SS amp & do as you say. It will certainly save me money compared with some of my other tube amps where I have spent about as much or more on tunes as I paid for the amp. This is a nice change. :rolleyes Old habits are heard to break!

 

[atomicbob]

Tube rolling fun here is with a WA3+. Soon to have a NOS 2399 to try. If you have an Ethernet and NAS you might look at a Sonos Connect. Control with a smartphone. High coolness and WAF, minimal fuss, excellent sound.

 

[atomicbob]

I should also mention that the Sonos Connect has a S/PDIF output allowing for Use of outboard DACs with S/PDIF inputs such as Benchmark DAC-1 or the excellent Violectric V800.

 

[FxTkd]

Anybody know how WA7 compares to the WA6 SE? 
For me its a toss up between the WA6 SE and WA7 for my HD800s. I would appreciate any suggestions before I make a decision on the purchase of one of these beauties.
Thanks 

 

[daigo]

The switchable impedance and the high bit rate DAC is interesting.  Posting to follow this thread for a bit.  

 

[mrbigsby]

Welcome!
 
I wonder if the WA7 has finally caught up with shipping orders. Has anyone seen one just on the shelf in a store for demo?

 

[AustinHorn]

I spent my first weekend with the new WA7 hooked up to my desktop pc rotating my listening between my hd800, both LCD2s, & my he500.  First let me say that I found that the WA7 sounds very, very good with the Senns., as good as my crack/speedball amp - something I wasn't expecting. Also, unlike my WA6 max, it has a ton of headroom with my he500s. I no longer have the he6, but I suspect it could drive them too - though it might not be my 1st choice. With both my v1 & v2 LCD2s it sounds great.  ( I admit to being one of those who actually favors the original v1 sound to the later v2 & v2.5 versions - color me strange.) Anyway all three of the above brands of super popular audiophile grade cans are a wonderful match with the WA7. All weekend I had the gold pins in the amp & did not go back & forth between the two sets of tubes.  I also made no effort to compare the dac portion against my other dac options - something I really want to do since I admit I come into this with a bias that dac/amp combos are never quite as good separates. But in this case, time will tell.
 
As I've said previously, my wife has decided she thinks that this WA7 will be in our living room & so I will set it up with a laptop unit in there longterm I may match it up with an Apple laptop or mini - time will tell. I'd expected this to become my bedroom rig when I bought it, replacing my current OTL setup, but for now I guess that won't change. 
 
Anyway, one mans opinion, for what it is worth, is that the WA7 is a wonderful all-a rounder that will pretty much drive most, if not all, today's top nom-Stax type headphones. It is easily the most beautiful amp I've seen so has huge WAF upsides too. Highly recommended.
 
As time allows I plan to do many more types of comparisons with my other dac/amp gear & more headphones & IEMs too. So far it seems Jack has outdone all my expectations. Is it the best $1000 one can spend on a dac/amp or dac & amp in the same price range, I don't know. But based on what I heard this weekend it is the best $799 I ever spent!

 

[mrbigsby]

Wow! Great impressions. I suspected it would drive just about anything based on the cans I've thrown at it thus far. It's funny that the last couple products I've bought an reviewed have ended up so damn good! I almost feel obligated to dislike something more enthusiastically about either the WA7 or HP100- I want to, I really do, but it's just not happening for me. They are my two top products of 2013 and my go to amp and cans. Both these items have taken away 95% of my gear-lust, in a way it's sad I'm no longer curious about improving my audio experience. In another way it's a landmark in what is, for now at least, a seemingly utopian oasis found on my wallet punishing audio journey.

Well done Austin, looking forward to reading more of your discoveries.

 

[PleasantSounds]

Quote:

 I almost feel obligated to dislike something more enthusiastically about either the WA7 or HP100- I want to, I really do, but it's just not happening for me.

 
Let me help you with that 

 - I do have two minor complaints:
 
- The glass top does not lock in in any way: I'd expected that the grooves on the sides of the chassis would hold it in place, but it gets misaligned with every touch.
 
- When the amp is switched off, wouldn't it be logical to revert to the DAC mode? I have to use two switches, conveniently located at the back, to switch between headphones and speakers.
 
Having said that, I'd put up with more inconveniences just to enjoy it's sound.
 

 

[Currawong]

Quote:

Quote:

 I almost feel obligated to dislike something more enthusiastically about either the WA7 or HP100- I want to, I really do, but it's just not happening for me.

 
Let me help you with that 

 - I do have two minor complaints:
 
- The glass top does not lock in in any way: I'd expected that the grooves on the sides of the chassis would hold it in place, but it gets misaligned with every touch.
 
- When the amp is switched off, wouldn't it be logical to revert to the DAC mode? I have to use two switches, conveniently located at the back, to switch between headphones and speakers.
 
Having said that, I'd put up with more inconveniences just to enjoy it's sound.
 

 
I was a bit surprised by the glass moving, but I could easily fix it with a couple of small dobs of Blu Tack if I desired. I didn't touch it though after I put it on my desk. You may notice the plate on the top is held in place using magnets, so it is possible Jack could design a plate designed to hold the glass a bit better.
 
Reverting modes I wouldn't want. I was using it with an external DAC a lot of the time and having it override what I set up would be downright annoying. Since I knew what each position did, it was easy to reach around the back to change the switch as desired.