Thanks! Based on my headphone collection, maybe it’s not for me then, although I’m still curious about trying one out.
I’m guessing it probably isn’t compatible with my Mojo Mystique X?
I’ve actually not tried a mojo with the bakoon so that’s why I didn’t really comment on it lol, but I think it could be good but can’t confirm myself
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I agree with M0N’s points about the headphone pairings. The Susvara and LCD-5 benefit a lot from the 13r, and it outright fixes a lot of what was wrong with the LCD-XC ('21) (minus giving it a desired bass bump.) On the other hand, I felt like lesser chains like the BF2/64 → RNHP had a lot more girth in the low-end ʰᵉʰ which was nicer for less-demanding headphones like the D8KP. For DAC pairings, I preferred leaner sounding gear, granted my other assortment is well out of the 13r’s price range. It was pretty abysmal with the Ares II and lukewarm on the BF2/64. Soekris 2541 is really a perfect pairing for me as far as DACs go (and I can’t go physically larger anyways.)
As for the mid-texture thing, there’s a semblance of that on the 13r I’ve noticed, but it feels more volumetric/tuning more than completely missing information. Nah, it smoothes it out, but it’s done in a pretty nice way. DAC pairings are pretty important for this amp, and highly noticeable. So you have to mindful of equipment coloration.
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Yeah I think chains like that are more suited toward the d8kp, although honestly most of the pairings I’d go with for the d8kp in the same range as the bakoon/enleum would actually be tube based lol (eddie current, dna, lta, cayin)
Would agree, the 2541 is likely the cheapest dac I’d go for with the bakoon to really start to get something out of it, and making further upgrades is def worthwhile. A lot of what I ended up liking ended up being on the more neutral side of things as well signature wise, but I did think that some of the other dac aspects like their texture, immediacy, smoothness, etc were pretty important to getting it to it’s best
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How is the EMM colored (lean towards)? I’ve always been curious about this one.
I personally think of the high end emm like if chord took a different direction for a similar goal. It’s got the clean, fast attack, and more forward in resolution, space, and dynamic approach yet some smoothness, body, and slight sweetness. It doesn’t have that chord sheen on the sound that gives the chord stuff it’s signature sound (which I’m not too partial to myself), but I think one stand out trait is how it handles transients and highly prioritizes the initial attack but doesn’t really capture decay as well, giving it a both natural and unnatural sense at the same time to me. I think some aspects of it are very natural and some are very not, leading to a weird balance that I also feel with chord in a different way. Overall I like the sound more than I do chord but it personally wasn’t for me. I’ve got more info on one of their dacs the dv2 in my dac comparison pt3 (which while it doesn’t come off as favourably there due to competition, my preferences, and system at the time, it’s still really damn good)
When it comes to the 13r, this absolutely does help with the directness and bite that the 13r can benefit from along with being very textured and technical, but I think it also sort of minimizes the natural and liquid sense that I like out of the 13r that is one of its big selling points imo. That being said I wouldn’t mind having an emm pairup with the 13r but it wouldn’t be my first choice.
The older meitner actually had a different sound, one that was a bit more warm, relaxed, smooth, but also technical without being overstated, honestly signature wise I prefer it to the current emm sound but the technical superiority of the emm would make me favour it in a comparison.
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Ahh, okay. That’s makes sense.
EMM sounds like something I’d probably like. Thanks for the thorough explanation.
23r is my favorite amplifier for the utopia. Great stuff. I thought it blew my eddie current aficionado out of the water
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Can someone explain to me how the HPA-23RM is supposed to work as a portable amp? I’ve never heard of a portable dedicated dac, so what is the point of a portable dedicated amp? Am I missing something?
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These days either using the line out of a dap or dac/amp (that favors dac performance), but there are standalone portable dacs out there, an older one I used to have was a cypher labs algorhythm solo dac, or small enough dacs that run off of bus power or dc that you might be able to rig up as portable. But really most portable amps these days are meant to be added onto daps. I guess there’s nothing stopping you from plugging it into the headphone jack of a laptop or pc either (but please don’t do that for something like the 23rm lol)
I personally tend to run P6P → Mass Kobo 424 to improve the overall quality of the setup, or LPGT Ti → Woo WA8, both amps offer an improvement over the internal amps and are being fed by the line out of the dap. When I had my hpa 21 I used a lotoo paw gold og to feed that often. Having a dac only is a bit more of a niche use case but typically paired with a high quality dac of some sort they provide a step up over just a dap or dac/amp combo (assuming proper setups and fair comparisons at least)
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There goes my plans lmao. It seems like the P6 Pro fits here too. Would it be a bad idea to use the P6 Pro as my desktop dac if I only have lower end amps to use with it (like the 23rm or LTA MZ-3)?
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Nothing stopping you, but the handicap would be absolutely massive to where I really would find a hard time justifying the cost of the amp if you’re going to limit it from the source like that lol
I would at bare minimum at least get a dongle dac like a l&p w2, lotoo s2, etc and use that to feed the amp but again it’s still going to be fairly limited there in comparison to a real nice dap or dac
I mean I don’t see how either of those are lower end imo, but you can use it as your desktop dac if you want as it’s line out mode is pretty good, that being said you will be handicapped a little bit since both those amps are single ended and I do think the line out (and headphone out for that matter) are better balanced but for line out it shouldn’t be that big of a deal. One thing to consider as well (which is likely going to be more impactful sound wise tbh) is that as a USB dac the P6P is a noticeable bit worse than playing music off it locally, so for best sound making sure to play the music off the dap itself is important, but if you want still good but not as good pc audio you can use usb mode. Other daps have better usb dac mode implementations than L&P like lotoo but then I’d say the dac quality is worse in the lotoo compared to l&p so game of tradeoffs
Really when it comes to battery powered portable setups it’s easy to go overboard and find yourself with a battery powered but less usable system than you hoped. Really anything that takes DC in can be an option to run off a battery supply in the end, so you can put together some stupid setups that are technically portable and technically battery powered, but if they’ll be reasonably usable is a different story. At some point if you only use setups like this stationary in the same place, getting a backpackable desktop setup that runs off ac really might make more sense instead of dealing with some of the limitations/compromises some portable gear makes
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I think my perception of high/low end amps got a bit skewed recently. I currently have a Bifrost 2/64 and I’m thinking of switching to a Qutest to power one or both of those amps. Thanks!
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You know you are too far gone when M0N is the one being realistic about not forgetting that a 6k rrp amp isn’t mid-fi 
I think M0N covered all the big things here with his responce, but imo, yes the p6p is a viable desktop dac in that range if used off of internal storage. That said, I didn’t personally like the synergy with 13r. Rs8 may be worth trying to hunt down a demo of as a couple people I trust fairly well put it on a similar-ish tier to p6p when using LO.
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He addresses some of the “issues” that Cameron raised.
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Do you remember why?
So first off, it’s inherently gimped by not being able to run balanced, so it’s already not running it’s best. I think that just generally the sonic goals of the yggy don’t quite mesh well with the bakoon. It just sort of felt too smoothed over for both texture and dynamics, which really kinda diminishes the value of the amp. It’s an amp that can easily sound overly smooth and dull with the wrong dac pairing, and to me the yggy just didn’t give it enough energy, technical performance, and tilted it a bit too warm for my personal liking. It’s just an amp where I’d want to have a higher tier dac in general than a yggy, but also the yggy just doesn’t have the proper energy/directness and comes off as oversmoothed or more dulled as a combo. I’m sure some of that is due to running single ended as well, since I wouldn’t consider the yggy overly smooth or dulled in other pairings of course. I can’t fault it too much for a dac of it’s caliber pairing wise, but overall as a pairing that’s where the off-putting sense comes from, it just feels like I’m not getting the real strengths of the amp with it vs other dacs of the same level
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Do you have a DAC recommendation for the Enleum/Bakoon in their price range?
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Rockna Wavedream Edition used or Wavelight if you’re going for new
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Would agree, the rockna is quite a good match, I’d personally go for the base wavedream if you can swing it, not much more than the wavelight for the performance it offers. I also think lampizator Baltic 3/4 is really nice as well. Bricasti also comes to mind if you wanted a more neutral option.
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