[Fafner]

Some shots!

 

[Frankie D]

Some shots!

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?

 

[adrianm]

And here it is!

That trunk is insanely small. Macan?

 

[Fafner]

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?

It’s the AB1266’s box!

 

[Fafner]

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.

 

[plumpudding2]

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.

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.

For me the HM1 has plenty of volume with Susvara and the Holo May at 3V. I'd very much recommend against using the +15dB gain setting at the back unless absolutely necessary. For very quiet recordings I usually engage Roon's volume leveling which in some cases can give as much as a 10db digital boost (and it is designed to never clip).

A lot of manufacturers like to slap on ridiculous amounts of gain on headphone amplifiers to give the illusion of power. (Worst example being I think the IFI diablo which starts distorting past 9 o'clock on the volume pot). The HM1 can accept a 23 dbu input signal (11 Volts) with a 6db gain becomes a 22 Volt output signal. For reference, Susvara reaches 120 dB SPL at 17.5 volts, so I'd say there's plenty of power there. EDIT: upon inspection of the manual the HM1 doesn't double the max input voltage and taps out at 23.5 dbu (11.6 Volts), so any dac with a 5.8 V output level can push it to max output.

As long as the HM1 reaches your desired listening volume I wouldn't worry about "volume reserve"

 

[adrianm]

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 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.

 

[IanB52]

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.

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.

 

[elf21400]

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.

 

[IanB52]

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.

Where do you find that?

 

[elf21400]

Where do you find that?

I ordered this gold-plated silver connecting cable here:
https://www.facebook.com/NornWire
1.0 meters USD1,500
0.8 meters USD1,300

In addition, I also tried gold-plated fuses on the HM1.
It also makes HM1 have better musicality.

I think one of the advantages of HM1 is its flexibility in various adjustments.
(Class A, Class A&Servo, Sound adjustment for Low/High/Sound stage...)

Through the combination of accessories like cables and fuses, this advantage can be further leveraged, allowing for compatibility with a wider range of headphones or music genres (and better tonal performance).

 

[adrianm]

Well i’m proud of us. It took 96 pages before we got to “tuning” the Hm1 with the classic audiophile crap good effort

 

[IanB52]

Well i’m proud of us. It took 96 pages before we got to “tuning” the Hm1 with the classic audiophile crap good effort

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.

 

[adrianm]

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.

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.

I also use a power conditioner and a power regenerator, both of which make a difference (because i have bad power). As for the external clock, besides being very easily double blind-able (as was SOME of the power stuff, ) , dCS has explanations for everything they do. They also pioneered clocks in a studio environment ages ago.

Gold is shiny/valuable so it sounds better/musical, when it is in fact a worse conductor than silver...not really in the same ballpark. I've had every flavor of snake oil when I had the Chord Dave . While most of this stuff changed things subtly, improvement requires thoughtful engineering and measurable results. . While people subjectively claim it was better, I myself found most stuff to be worse, and a clear degradation.
End of the day, i sold all that crap (fancy cables and all) and threw the money at dCS + cheap, studio interconnects. And I regret the many years I spent testing all these claims.

Placebo effect is strong and I've fallen for it myself more than once. You can't really improve things you don't understand. You can only make it worse or, at best, different.
People on the dCS forum swear their Nordost (Or insert BS brand here) sound so much better than regular cables the peasants use, but if you check the very scarce measurements of some of those clock cables, they're not even square waves anymore, they're sine waves. Which might look prettier and more " musical" , but that's not how clocking works. And paying 20k for an overengineered Vivaldi clock and degrading it's performance with an improper cable just because it costs 5k is ...unfortunate. To each their own.

 

[IanB52]

I think this thing is probably just a better cable using litz wires. Gold in cables is kind of like how Abyss uses aluminium, it adds a flavor for reasons that aren't necessarily technically sound, but don't make the audio experience any worse.

I can understand the reason to want to simplify the process of building an audio system. For me, I can't get where I want to be without nice cables. I worked in pro audio for a long time where the standard was Mogami, Canare, or Gotham cabling. I can't use them in my listening system.

I would really just be happy with a better DC cable, gold or not, as all my other cabling is of much higher caliber and I hate having a weak link.