Just how good is the PIMETA?

[slowpogo]

I'm currently building the Tangentsoft PIMETA, with PRP and Holco non-magnetic resistors and nice caps (Elna Cerafine, Auricaps), doubled buffers and the AD620 opamp biased to class A, big Alps pot, etc. I'm basically going "all out" with the components. My reward is mostly in the building process, and I'm sure it'll sound, at the least, pretty decent with my Grado SR80s.

My question is, where does a PIMETA rank in the grand scheme of headphone amps? How does it compare in sound quality to something like the $200 BitHead, for example?

 

[peranders]

My QRV-04 is also based on a good opamp + BUF634 and I am very pleased with the result and I see no reason why PIMETA shouldn't be equally good since it is made of a very good pcb.

 

[blip1882]

The PIMETA is a very solid amp in my experience. It is well designed, good technically and has a great PCB (Tangent or whoever did the final layout really has a nice sense of board design). It has been my main headamp for three years now and I remain satisfied with it....

It certainly isn't the final word in headphone amps but it is a respectable entry. From what I've seen it is generally ranked higher than any similarly priced commercial entry but somewhat lower than the incarnations of the PPA as well as the members of the dyna-family and similar discrete, class-a amps. Also, it is several generations behind the state-of-the-art like the M3 or the B22.

Also, it is hard to rate it against the many tube amps out there... some of which cost very little to build but to tube-lovers are easily superior to the PIMETA.

 

[slowpogo]

I noticed that its dynamic range is only around 92db -- not even enough to take full advantage of the CD format. And its THD is around .1%, which also seems a little high.

Still, I'm just hoping it will sound better than the headphone jack in a typical DVD player or $300 receiver.