Thanks!
On the topic of cables: I’m using DHC Prion4 (pure silver, same price bracket as higher-end Danacables stuff) both as a headphone cable (for the Nutopia) and interconnects. My goal in getting these was to “brighten up” the Nutopias.
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I mean the prion4 is as about as high as you can get and should add some energy to the chain. I do think the prion isnt as treble boosting as some pure silver cables i heard (read as it doesnt icepick your ears) but did an extremely good job giving all that detail up high while keeping it smooth.
How it synergizes overall, i do not know but it doesnt seem like youre stuck on the stock which i think was a detriment to the Utopia. Which was what i was trying to get at.
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Definitely not necessarily. Nobody has mentioned this but I would pay close attention to impedance bridging between components as well. Especially if you’re talking about resolution, definition, and crispness.
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Maybe an HE1000SE would fit the bill. I previously had a non-Stealth Arya and liked it (didn’t have the 433 or the Weiss, back then).
They’re not too power-hungry either. It asked Mr. Masuda if the 433 can drive them. Apparently he has an HE1000SE arriving next week, and said he’ll get back to me after it arrives.
In a sense, yes, but that could actually be desirable (such as removing thinness, removing overforwardness, removing unnaturalness, etc), and the downstream components add positive aspects of their own (increased dynamic capability, more convincing spatial recreation, better overall control, etc). Personally, rather than looking at things as if what comes directly out of the source is the finished/desired product, imo you kinda need to consider everything as a sum of it’s parts and what a dac is designed to drive. What comes directly out of a dac/source isn’t really meant to be what you hear as the final result, dacs are designed to feed the rest of a chain, typically a preamp and amp, and both of those have an important role in shaping the sound to get a good final result. There are dacs that are designed to bypass some of these steps (such as dacs designed to direct drive a power amp, or dacs that try to drive directly off their analog stage though those are less common in general), but in most cases what directly comes out of a dac isn’t really the finished result per se.
In terms of pure information, likely not, but at the same time from my experience driving directly off the output stage of most dacs is a really lackluster experience despite the highest level of resolving power, it’s a massive tradeoff in my mind. An example I guess was I was direct driving some headphones off the line outs of my Aries Cerat Kassandra II Ref (one of the few dacs that can actually do that with the power it has), and while that had amazing directness in terms of resolving power and clarity, over time it felt lacking in terms of weighting and felt a bit dry, spatial recreation felt more forced, dynamics while punchy didn’t really sit right with me, and a few other qualms. Hooking it up to a headphone amp of a similar caliber ended up resolving those aspects for me while also keeping most of the resolving power and directness, not all of it, but most. It’s just that the rest of the things that the amp improved in that experience ended up (to me) being a more overall beneficial result vs the direct off the dac. A bit of an extreme example though.
Not to say someone can’t prefer that, but personally I wouldn’t suggest most people do it because there’s a lot of tradeoffs there. That’s really what it’s all about, audio is a game of tradeoffs, the only way you can have it all is going super super high and having it perfectly setup and matched, but even then you’re going to be getting 99% rather than 100%.
Personally from my experience, in most cases you’re much better off focusing on creating a chain that showcases the largest amount of the traits you care about with some level of balance rather than prioritizing a single metric at the cost of others (that ends up being hard to define anyways) for long term listening satisfaction, but that’s just me. Not to say one can’t create a chain where one of the focused aspects would be resolution, I’d just make sure it’s not at the cost of other aspects that make music engaging and enjoyable.
I guess a question I’d ask, is that information actually gone to your ears, or is it a bit more obscured/changed in presentation but still present? The dac you have is a higher level than the mass kobo so your bottleneck likely does lie with the amp, but at the same time the mass kobo is still pretty good from my experience in terms of resolving power, it’s also not an amp that puts that front and center imo, it does a good job of presenting that in a more balanced manner but that’s just my experience with it.
Detail/resolution is a tricky metric as noted by others in the thread, because it can technically encompass all aspects of sound, and some amps/rest of the chain will change the presentation and either limit or showcase those aspects depending on how they were designed.
You also aren’t really directly comparing the dac out of the weiss, and most of what I’ve said above is talking about the direct line out of a dac. You’re running though an internal headphone amp that’s more minimally designed on the weiss, if you wanted to tap directly off the outputs you’d need some specialized cable for that (you’d get more resolving power from that, but at way greater cost, don’t do it since most output stages can’t handle it). From my limited experience (since I didn’t use it much lol) the headphone out of the weiss is actually pretty good considering the standards for integrated headphone out (which are typically nowhere close to the level of the dac itself), but imo I’d say I’d prefer the mass kobo most of the time with most headphones but can’t say for sure since I’ve not done a side by side for that, and it will depend on the headphone of course, and my preference isn’t really that forward very airy very wow sort of sound most of the time.
Maybe to play a bit of semantics and devils advocate, how do you know that the mass kobo is adding those aspects such as it’s punchiness or it’s slight reverb rather than the internal weiss amp either just not being able to showcase it from the source or changing it based on it’s own coloration lol. Or how do you know that the internal weiss amp isn’t artificially adding that coloration that gives it much more pop when it may not be there beforehand? The only way to really tell the sound of a dac is to try it with a ton of different amps (maybe also preamps) and headphones to get a good picture of what it’s consistently doing across all of those, and also to find out good pairings and see if you can determine why those components have good synergy
There’s absolutely the possibly that you prefer the presentation of the weiss headphone out over the mass kobo with the utopia, in that case that saves you some money lol, but you could also experiment with one or two more headphone amps and see how that really changes things for you. If you’re after purely resolution focus, you’re going to want a very forward maybe even slightly compressed leaning amp, something that prioritizes it’s resolving power over other aspects rather than a more all around balanced amp like the mass kobo. I also think that you’re really going to want to step up to a 394 ii or something more on that level rather than the 433 to take better advantage of what your dac is putting out.
From all of this it def sounds like you prefer the weiss hp out over the 433, in that case my personal suggestion would be to try a different headphone amp more at the caliber of the weiss with a more forward, airy, and aggressive lean to it. I’ve only tried the OG utopia and not the new one, but maybe consider trying something like an allnic hpa5000 xl (or their new one actually which is likely a lot better, just not heard myself, I think you might really like the way it presents if you appreciate that wow factor and airiness/sparkliness) or moving up to a 394 ii if you can find one (the 394 ii is cleaner and also more technically capable than the 433, although still more on the no nonsense side of things). I also think the suggestion of wa33 would be a good pairing with the weiss as well for the focus you’re after (cleaner, more forward, balanced, though with a bit of pop as well).
I think if you got a HEKSE that would be a good example of another way to showcase the differences of the mass kobo vs the internal weiss amp (I personally think the 433 can drive it no problem for it’s price class) and hone your preferences for a potential amp upgrade. Or you find you prefer the weiss headphone out still and call it a day lol
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@M0N, thanks for the detailed, educational, and very insightful response. I have consulted your “Shit List” many times since it was published: thanks for that too!
I guess a question I’d ask, is that information actually gone to your ears, or is it a bit more obscured/changed in presentation but still present?
Great point. While the information seems gone, it is possible that it is just obscured. But, as it no longer readily catches my ear & attention, let’s say that it is effectively gone.
it’s also not an amp that puts that front and center imo, it does a good job of presenting that in a more balanced manner
Indeed, maybe that is all there is to it: that I just happen to prefer a more “detail front and center” presentation. But I would describe the effect of switching from the 433 to the Weiss headphone out as being like cleaning the glass window through which I’m “looking” at the music: a matter of improved clarity.
if you wanted to tap directly off the outputs you’d need some specialized cable for that (you’d get more resolving power from that, but at way greater cost, don’t do it since most output stages can’t handle it)
Incidentally, people on Head-Fi have reported doing exactly this with the Weiss in question, and also with the $20k Weiss Helios - which doesn’t have a headphone output - with reportedly good results in both cases. I have never tried this myself though.
Maybe to play a bit of semantics and devils advocate, how do you know that the mass kobo is adding those aspects such as it’s punchiness or it’s slight reverb rather than the internal weiss amp either just not being able to showcase it from the source or changing it based on it’s own coloration lol.
Very astute observation. This is indeed possible. I just assumed the built-in amp’s sound would be closer to the DAC output than a different amp from a different manufacturer, but you’re right: this doesn’t have to be true.
I also think that you’re really going to want to step up to a 394 ii or something more on that level rather than the 433 to take better advantage of what your dac is putting out.
Yes, once the successor to the 394 ii is released (later this year, apparently), I might upgrade.
As for tube amps, I’m quite happy with my LTA Ultralinear+: I recall you recommended the LTA MZ3 in your List; the Ultralinear+ is a step up from that in most ways, including resolution. It is likely on the same tier overall as the WA33, if not higher.
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Fair enough
In that case, I do really think you might just more be running into the mass kobo being the bottleneck in the chain for both not really matching your preference but also just not being up to the technical standard of the dac as well. It makes sense this is with a utopia, it’s a fairly efficient headphone so while it is picky on quality it’s not as picky on quantity of power.
It also makes me curious how the og amps vs the new one, since it really does seem like they amp more differently than I’d imagine
I bet the weiss could handle it with a utopia, although I’d be curious if this was true for more power demanding headphones too. I just would always take caution doing that because aside from just getting a lackluster experience or running into distortion or lack of volume, some output stages really might not tolerate the load well and freak out. It might be worth trying if you’re genuinely curious about the difference between the headphone circuit vs just direct out (I don’t know much about the internals of the weiss, it could be the same for all I know, not sure)
All depends on the designer, sometimes the headphone outs on dacs are lazy and just pretty meh, sometimes they’re pretty great but end up overemphasizing certain aspects about the dac, and sometimes they’re actually pretty different in coloration/character than you’d expect, all depends on how much effort the designer puts into it. For the weiss that’s one of those where I actually can see people using the headphone out because it (to me) seemed like it was actually designed to be used for more than just convenience lol.
I like the mz3, I actually have a fair bit of experience with the UL+, but as a power amp, and for the integrated I never really sat down with the headphone side of things as much. I did run some headphones off the speaker out of the UL+ and thought that was very good, I would put that as above the mz3 in most aspects (although maybe not noise floor lol), and from the times I did that I would put it on the same level maybe slightly above as the WA33 although different presentation and pros/cons (but would be hard for me to place because of the buff the ul would get depending on the preamp used, and more speaker than headphone use for me lol)
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