Wladimir
100+ Head-Fier
Uhm, I see. Well, if we're not talking about serious hi-fi but just a general consumer-grade posing rather than exploring the absolute possibilities, then that is not a discussion for me.
For people looking for absolute performance, there is a big bridge to gap in terms of the whole chain like I outlined the last time, otherwise Empyreans won't sound anywhere near their full potential. I'm not really surprised that in your system, you found them unworthy.
The sad state of affairs these days is that general head-fi public thinks that if they spend a few grand on each of the critically perceived equipment (limited to DAC+AMP, sometimes perhaps a source component), they should be getting hardware that ought to be extracting around optimum performance from their headphones. While this might be the case with many HPs, it's far from the truth in case of Empy 1.
If you had really cleaned your setup from all the noise (both electrical and resonant!), you would clearly hear how they scale and react to every tiniest change in your setup. But that requires a real commitment - learning and experimenting. Not snake-oiling. After many many thousands of hours of tweaking my own system, I still haven't found their limit of performance. I would even argue that they're extremely picky on their feed and while forgiving thanks to their tonal balance, the bass often suffers because the chain what is feeding them, is messing the bass up.
The most overlooked or underestimated component is indeed the source. What isn't rendered there with pristine clarity, no level of DAC or AMP will make up for it (that might very well be the reason, why one doesn't hear a change of the DAC).
Unfortunately, there is hardly any digital source that sounds really well. Recently I've visited one of the highly regarded high-end studio in my country, where the source was a €27.000 big fat machine. Unfortunately, even despite the horrendous price tag of the whole system, it sounded just gross in my view - mainly because of hyped & piercing highs, although focus was exceptional. But overall, it was not listenable, let alone enjoyable (I even had tinnitus for the next 3 days). That just proves that no amount of money ensures a highly resolving and a velvety pleasant sound at the same time.
There was some low hanging fruit to be harvested with that system, especially in cable routing and resonance management, but I won't go into details now. I've made there a good 1,5 days of clean-up and connected my own source - DIY Diretta endpoint, which I have been meticulously developing for the last past years. Nothing else changed in the hardware department, yet the system sounded like it was upgraded another $100k. You don't have to believe me, you can read it from the owner himself. And all I changed was the source - first device before the DAC and implemented my rules of resonance management to other digital equipment and their power supplies.
This photo is before the clean-up.
For people looking for absolute performance, there is a big bridge to gap in terms of the whole chain like I outlined the last time, otherwise Empyreans won't sound anywhere near their full potential. I'm not really surprised that in your system, you found them unworthy.
The sad state of affairs these days is that general head-fi public thinks that if they spend a few grand on each of the critically perceived equipment (limited to DAC+AMP, sometimes perhaps a source component), they should be getting hardware that ought to be extracting around optimum performance from their headphones. While this might be the case with many HPs, it's far from the truth in case of Empy 1.
If you had really cleaned your setup from all the noise (both electrical and resonant!), you would clearly hear how they scale and react to every tiniest change in your setup. But that requires a real commitment - learning and experimenting. Not snake-oiling. After many many thousands of hours of tweaking my own system, I still haven't found their limit of performance. I would even argue that they're extremely picky on their feed and while forgiving thanks to their tonal balance, the bass often suffers because the chain what is feeding them, is messing the bass up.
The most overlooked or underestimated component is indeed the source. What isn't rendered there with pristine clarity, no level of DAC or AMP will make up for it (that might very well be the reason, why one doesn't hear a change of the DAC).
Unfortunately, there is hardly any digital source that sounds really well. Recently I've visited one of the highly regarded high-end studio in my country, where the source was a €27.000 big fat machine. Unfortunately, even despite the horrendous price tag of the whole system, it sounded just gross in my view - mainly because of hyped & piercing highs, although focus was exceptional. But overall, it was not listenable, let alone enjoyable (I even had tinnitus for the next 3 days). That just proves that no amount of money ensures a highly resolving and a velvety pleasant sound at the same time.
There was some low hanging fruit to be harvested with that system, especially in cable routing and resonance management, but I won't go into details now. I've made there a good 1,5 days of clean-up and connected my own source - DIY Diretta endpoint, which I have been meticulously developing for the last past years. Nothing else changed in the hardware department, yet the system sounded like it was upgraded another $100k. You don't have to believe me, you can read it from the owner himself. And all I changed was the source - first device before the DAC and implemented my rules of resonance management to other digital equipment and their power supplies.
This photo is before the clean-up.
