Fafner
500+ Head-Fier
- Joined
- Oct 26, 2003
- Posts
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- 378
Nice. It almost looks a little out of place in that rack as it is so small compared to everything else. What is the wooden box at the bottom of the rack?Some shots!
That trunk is insanely small. Macan?And here it is!
Nice. It almost looks a little out of place in that rack as it is so small compared to everything else. What is the wooden box at the bottom of the rack?
Glad you're enjoying this fantastic amplifier! I don't know who told you Servo mode isn't the best setting for the Abyss, in my experience planars want the extra control from servo and I reserve pure class A for more sensitive dynamic headphones. That said, trust your ears on that one because some prefer the extra class A 'meat on the bones' even with planars.Alright, I had the chance of briefly listen to it, too bad I don't have much time these days, but it's going to improve in the next ones.
What's immediately striking is the naturalness, the effortlessness of the musical flow. My previous amps (Flux Volot and Burson Voyager) weren't struggling of course, but you get the impression they were in fact when listening to this thing. It's like if the Zähl was telling them "hey, look at how this should be done!". Impressive. This is with the amp set on "Servo mode", which isn't even supposed to be the best setting for the Abyss (haven't tried the "pure class A" setting yet).
What's striking me a bit less is the volume reserve there seems to be. Admittedly I was testing with a relatively lowly recorded recording (Abbado's Lucerne Mahler 2 rendition), but to reach a satisfactory listening level I had to max out the HM1 with the Bartók set at around -12dB. That was with Bartók outputting at 2V and the HM1's back gain switch set to +15dB. With Bartók set to 6V and HM1's gain switch set to 0dB, the volume got sligthly lower, which wasn't something unexpected (going from 6V to 2V makes you loose 10dB according to dCS, but then you get 15dB from the gain switch). Haven't tried the 6V/+15dB combination, but that is supposed to make the HM1 distort.
The Flux Volot and Burson Voyager seemed to offer a quite bigger volume reserve: on the Burson I was playing the same at high gain with the volume pot set at around 60/65 over 100, and the Flux was playing at high gain with the pot set around 2-ish.
This seems like the wrong way to do it. I have my Rossini to 0db at all times, outputting 6V for the Expanse and Stealth ( had it on 2V for the Meze Elites) and no gain on HM1. Why would you want digital attenuation? As good as the dCS is compared to Chord for example, throwing away bits and then adding gain doesn't make sense.I had to max out the HM1 with the Bartók set at around -12dB. That was with Bartók outputting at 2V and the HM1's back gain switch set to +15dB. With Bartók set to 6V and HM1's gain switch set to 0dB, the volume got sligthly lower, which wasn't something unexpected (going from 6V to 2V makes you loose 10dB according to dCS, but then you get 15dB from the gain switch). Haven't tried the 6V/+15dB combination, but that is supposed to make the HM1 distort.
This is correct. Bypass the digital volume control and send the HM1 the highest voltage signal you can. At 6v it should definitely be enough.This seems like the wrong way to do it. I have my Rossini to 0db at all times, outputting 6V for the Expanse and Stealth ( had it on 2V for the Meze Elites) and no gain on HM1. Why would you want digital attenuation? As good as the dCS is compared to Chord for example, throwing away bits and then adding gain doesn't make sense.
Where do you find that?Recently I ordered a gold-plated silver connecting cable (16 x 18awg) for my HM1.
(between the power supply and the amp)
Compared to the original cable, this cable offers better tonal performance and musicality for HM1.
Currently I use it to listen to different categories of music and its quite good.
(e.g. vocal, rock, LIVE or pop music)
This is a nice option for me, because I can choose it according to my needs.
Sometimes, l still can use original cable if I want more clear sounding.
(e.g. some classical music)
Although I am often too lazy to replace it... because for me it is also good for listening to classical music.
I ordered this gold-plated silver connecting cable here:Where do you find that?
Come on. You use a DAC with an external clock.Well i’m proud of us. It took 96 pages before we got to “tuning” the Hm1 with the classic audiophile crap good effort
I'm not coming from an ASR perspective here, I've tested things myself for 8+ years and went from evereything to a Fiio E10k, Chord Mojo, Dave, M-scalers, Optical isolation, streamers ,etc before throwing money at dCS.Come on. You use a DAC with an external clock.
Plenty of us have been using after market headphone cables, fuses, power cables, etc etc I've got both chassis of my HM1 connected to a Shunyata Altaira grounding system. Everything is fair game, and there is indeed improvement to be had over stock.