So as said here I’ll post a couple (more like 4 lol) of impressions about the thing’s I’ve heard:
Esoteric Pro Audio - Kora System
In short, it was really impressive. The guy who makes it is beyond filled with passion, he has his own personal system at home which costs quite more than his house, this is the the best photo of it I could find, which is the thumbnail from an video interview he did a couple of months ago:
You could call the whole Kora System a “scaled down” and “affordable” version of it since they have the same philosophy of “transparent and uncolored sound” behind them.
What really impressed me about it was just the transparency of the sound, there was an extreme coherency, but what really made me go “holy shit” was the microdetails and dynamics in general, in praticular the microdynamics. We were in a really less than optimal room, one that was quite small for the speakers, but it still managed to sound really really impressive after some calibration of the audio manager and the sound correction software.
If you want a more technical explaination of the Kora System, here are the links that talk about the speakers, the “audio manager” and the amplifier.
I wanted to spend some more words about this because I think it’s really something, but I never heard something so high in terms of price and performance. THe closest thing I can compare this to is the setup of my dad’s friend:
Techncics SL1000 System a Van Den Hul The Grasshopper IV GLA cartridge → Manley Steelhead MK2 → Manley Reference 350 Monoblocks → Acapella High Violon 2001.
When I heard it it was really freaking great, even while using a puny RME ADI-2 as a digital source I still had goosebumps while listening to some techdeath, so it was really good to say the least, but the Kora System? I think it’s on a whole different level in terms of dynamics and transparency, but a slight step back in timbre (voices were sometimes ever so slightly unnatural).
Of course take this with a whole spoonful of salt, I’m not the most capable person to evaluate a difference between these two systems, which were both heard with vastly different types of music and the Kora was at a disatvantage because of the small room.
But still, the Kora did impress me (and also my dad) at the end of the day.
Spirit Torino - Planar Prototype + Pulsar
I’ve tried both headphones on the Siegfried amplifer, which was mainly made for the Valkyria but should work well with those headphones too. Having said that, I have mixed feelings about them.
On one hand, they were quite punchy and really aggressive, but in a good way, like they were pretty good for heavier genres like death metal.
The planar prototype was the punchiest of the two, with the most mid bass also, the drums were hitting hard while still being relatively snappy and fast.
The problem was that it had a couple of oddities in the sound, which I can’t really explain. They were the result of a mix of somehthing in the frequency response and technical abilites I think, but I’m not sure. Some albums sounded really great, like much better than my setup, other not so much and ended up having too much mid bass, to the point where the drums were bloated, but still even with those that sounded really great, there was something that didn’t fully coinvince me, might be the spatial recreation but I’m not sure.
Still, at their prototype price of 2K euros (their official release price with some minor aesthetic changes will be 3K) I think it could be somewhat competitive, but I would really need a lot more time (to also try other albums) on a more “down to earth” setup and not a 12K euro DAC/AMP like the Siegfried. More focus on the impact and engagement side of thigns rather than separation, soundstage (which was somewhat closed in, but I think I’ve just been spoiled by my HD800S). It was much different from my HD800S, but still had fun with it.
Thinking about it, from a value prospective I don’t really know at this point, it has the potential I think to be a more fun and engaging headphone with some sacrifice in the technical department, which might be to one’s liking depending on their preferences, but for me? Again, would need more time, but I don’t think I would be willing to sacrifice technicalites at the end of the day.
The Pulsar was closer to my HD800S in terms of presentation, with a bigger soundstage and a more “dynamic driver” punch. Not quite as punchy as the other headphone, but still engaging.
It definitely had better technicalities, and sounded best with the albums that sounded “the worse” (read as “not as good as the others”) with the planar one.
Still there were some oddities, which I still quite put my finger on it and would have needed a lot more time to identify, but still it was somewhat enjoyable.
Now, this has a MSRP of like 6K euros, the same as the Susvara. I have no idea if from a value proposition this is a good headphone, I think it lacks some technical abilites to make it truly something TOTL, but on the impact and engagement department it was still quite good but not as much as the other heapdhone, which was a bit too much on 2 out of the 4 tracks I tried (each track from a different album and artist), but the trade off was better technicalites, but still I don’t feel like they are quite there IMO.
The best part of all of this though was the talk with Andrea RIcci, the owner of Spirit Torino. Just a really down to earth, passionate guy. If you get the chance to meet him I would strongy advise to do so, he’s really great.
Bonus Impression - Utopia 2022
So while going around the various rooms, I saw the new Utopia 2022 connected to a Naim Uniti Headphone Amp Edition + Core and decided to give it a listen, since for some time there was this little voice in my head going “at some point HD800S might not scale as much as you like them to, so you’ll have to choose some other headphones Alb, and the Utopias might be good at it”.
Now at this point I was actually somewhat tired, and my “the same 5 jazz albums (as well as the dreaded Take 5) tolerance indicator” was almost full, so any more of it would have just made me go “I’m out of here”.
Back to the Nutopia, I put on some random jazz song and menwhile I thought to myself “hey this looks like some streaming interface, I might be able to search for something I know”. Boy was I wrong, it was all local with a shit ton of jazz and classical music. Despair hit me. But then…I found an album by Banco del Mutuo Soccorso, an italian prog rock band that I quite like, ideal for a more laid back, chill and relaxing listening session. I try to play it but nope, the interface basically shat itself and gave an error along the lines of “unable to play that track”. The universe had decided that it was time for me to go unless I was ready for some more jazz. And so I went home.
All of this happened in like 30 seconds and while doing so I thought to myself “hey this Utopia is pretty nice”, so there’s that. Now the same voice I was talking about before is slightly louder, great.
Oh well, I still have to buy a proper source and work on the dam1941, so I can justify not thinking about it for some time.
Some more thoughts about a "realization" I had while listening with the Spirit Torinos
As a metalhead newbie in the Hi-Fi I world, in the past I would sometime think: “Is it worth it to spend a lot for metal music? Won’t the “subpar mastering” make me hit the wall much earlier, where going higher could be detrimental and show all the flaws in the records?”.
After my positive experience with my AQ Carbon, mainly how it made unique-sounding albums sound better more than things that have a more “standard” and “modern” production, the question became: what if, to reproduce certain albums at the same level of others, you need a much more expensive setup?
This might sound silly to you, but I’m a bit paraoind and thought that if I had gone higher the sound would collapse on itself because it would make all the flaw evident, but it was quite the countrary.
I need to go higher to get an appropriate listening experience with certain things, and I had this partial realization while the SP planar prototype while listening to an album that I talked in my AQ Carbon impressions: “Stare Into Death and Be Still” by Ulcerate.
On my HD800S it sounds good yeah, but you can hear that there still a lot of room to improve, but I somewhat thoght (this before the AQ) that the limiting factor was the production on it.
After the AQ, I started to think that the limiting factor was just my setup, which was just not high enough in terms of perfomance to make it really sound.
And my experience with the SP confirmed it, in fact, the album that sounded the best with those headphones was indeed the one by Ulcerate, while the other ones that had a more standard, modern production did not sound worse than with my HD800S, but different. But “Stare Into Death and Be Still”? It was insane, I was extremely suprised by the amount of information, both in terms of detail and spacially, that there was there.
Having kind of realized this (like I’m 90% there) I won’t feel bad in splurging more money for some more upgrades! I can just justify by saying “well you actually NEED to spend at least a couple thousand euros to listen to this avant-garde technical death metal album to a good enough degree to hear what the album has to offer”.
