Blind Virtual Audition of Several Headamps

Which amp provides the presentation that you like the best ?

  • A

    Votes: 1 5.0%
  • B

    Votes: 7 35.0%
  • C

    Votes: 1 5.0%
  • D

    Votes: 1 5.0%
  • E

    Votes: 2 10.0%
  • F

    Votes: 4 20.0%
  • G

    Votes: 2 10.0%
  • H

    Votes: 2 10.0%

  • Total voters
    20
  • Poll closed .
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Founder of XSA-Labs
Joined 2012
Paid Member
It’s been a while but I think another Blind Virtual Audition thread is coming up now that I have about 8 new amps I want to compare. I have more than 8 new ones so have to decide which ones get tested. Of course, the winner of this first thread should be there for reference and the rest are being decided. Here is a photo of the testing auditioning setup which is colocated with my speaker listening position. Very nice to compare sound from speakers to same from headphones.
 

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X, I look forward to your next virtual audition. You have so many speakers and amps!

669634d1521465299-blind-virtual-audition-headamps-1c27f279-aa03-4c4d-a4a9-2128e1fc2a92-jpeg


It occurs to me that the only part of your signal path that you haven't hand built is your DAC. At the moment I am listening to your Pocket Class A through my Fostex planars, fed by my first DIY DAC--although I didn't build this one...member Matt_Garman did. It is a non-oversampling design based on the ancient Philips TDA1387, and it sounds sublime. Gerbers are freely available here, and the best part is that it only costs $20 in parts. Mine is a tiny Raspberry Pi hat, but he designed a larger board too. Just in case you're interested!
 
X, I look forward to your next virtual audition. You have so many speakers and amps!

669634d1521465299-blind-virtual-audition-headamps-1c27f279-aa03-4c4d-a4a9-2128e1fc2a92-jpeg


It occurs to me that the only part of your signal path that you haven't hand built is your DAC. At the moment I am listening to your Pocket Class A through my Fostex planars, fed by my first DIY DAC--although I didn't build this one...member Matt_Garman did. It is a non-oversampling design based on the ancient Philips TDA1387, and it sounds sublime. Gerbers are freely available here, and the best part is that it only costs $20 in parts. Mine is a tiny Raspberry Pi hat, but he designed a larger board too. Just in case you're interested!

I am very interested in this. Ebay sources legit? They're so cheap I can't imagine that they're faked , but I don't know

Thank you for posting this!!
 
Founder of XSA-Labs
Joined 2012
Paid Member
X, I look forward to your next virtual audition. You have so many speakers and amps!

669634d1521465299-blind-virtual-audition-headamps-1c27f279-aa03-4c4d-a4a9-2128e1fc2a92-jpeg


It occurs to me that the only part of your signal path that you haven't hand built is your DAC. At the moment I am listening to your Pocket Class A through my Fostex planars, fed by my first DIY DAC--although I didn't build this one...member Matt_Garman did. It is a non-oversampling design based on the ancient Philips TDA1387, and it sounds sublime. Gerbers are freely available here, and the best part is that it only costs $20 in parts. Mine is a tiny Raspberry Pi hat, but he designed a larger board too. Just in case you're interested!

And you have not seen the 15 other pairs of speakers in storage or the 36 amps outside of view :)

You are right, a DAC is not something I have designed and built. Although I did assemble one (CS8416 CS4398 iwth coaxial 24/192k) from a kit. It sounded good and had a powerful +/-15v opamp (of your choosing) as the output but software/driver wise it suffered pops when changing songs and sometimes formats. Very annoying and potentially speaker destroying pops. So relegated to the junk heap.

My next one was a prebuilt XMOS U8 PCM5102 TD1308 and it worked very well - no issues with pops. Lacks a volume knob and cannot drive amps to clipping are my complaints.

Now I am using the DAC that comes with the Focusrites and they sound quite good, probably bordering on excellent. I brought the 2i4 with me to a HeadFi meet and several people there listened to the Focusrite and asked me more info about it as they were unfamiliar with it. Most people use is as a musical session recorder not as a DAC. But they told me it sounds very good, perhaps as good as some of the pricey $1k DACs that were also being played at the same meet.

If I do a DAC, the next one will be a ladder logic one - always intrigued me. In university, I saw a friend make an 8-bit DAC from scratch (TTL logic chips) for a project that took RS232 to drive an analog motor for an ROV submarine we built together. Now make it 192khz and 24bits and use 0.1% tolerance resistors. Sounds like I need the Soekris next... :)
 
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