They can be that way, but it’s largely a function of how they are driven.
They can be extremely dynamic, I don’t do EDM or Rap, but I listen to most everything else, though most of my taste in metal is older material.
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Yeah it could have been. I demo’d them on a Moon 430HA. Had enough power and current definitely, though might not have the best synergy with the Susvara. The Moon struck me as on the warm/smooth side of things. Still don’t think it would be for me regardless.
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I agree with this. I only had about 30 min with 1266 TC (after I got the fit right at least) but the staging was absolutely wild and I 100% see the cans being worth while for that alone. Maybe the fit I get would evolve if I owned them/played with them longer but they were very precariously balanced on my head for a proper fit and the fact I had to pay attention to looking down was pretty annoying tbh.
Im pretty currious about the LCD-5 post EQ. TBH I wasnt all that impressed on either of my demos (once at canjam for like 5 minutes but second time was several hours at a local shop). Ive been told the stage opens up with EQ though which would be pretty appealing. TBH I really wish the susvara had a bit airier of a stage and other than that SUS and LCD-5 didnt actualy seem all that crazy far apart (though I did find pre EQ the LCD-5 was pretty claustrophobic on darker sources)
hahahaha. I agree 1000% here. TBH IDK if I would do sus as an only can. The technicalities are just so damn nuts though that I cant stop using it. Im hoping to bring back some emotion to it with sources but we will see how that goes over the next few months
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They don’t work at all well on a lot of tube amps, they were the only headphone to sound truly terrible on a SW51+ for example. The amp needs to be able to control the drivers.
The advantage the D8KP has over other TOTL planars is you can use it on a broader set of amps, SET amps are not off the table, and I think they sound fantastic on the Stratus, but you have to use SE out, Low gain, and Low impedance, which maximizes current delivery to get the most out of them.
I’d imagine they are a great match for the EC amps.
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Yeah they basically just have to float and not seal to sound good
Would somewhat agree depending on what music you mainly listen to, although still worthwhile for some
For me this really will depend on the amp, I can easily see that with most <5k amps and dacs, but they hugely open up after that, that’s really the real cost of the susvara lol
Would agree
That would be a pretty chilled out combo
Hmmmm, I’ve never personally a stage opening up with any sort of eq, typically the opposite
Careful balance there lol
Also can actually be taken portable with some things too and still sound decent, which is always a plus
They are. Other tube amps I’ve really liked for the d8kp is the hpa5000 xl, modwright ha300, potentially MZ3 depending on what you want
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Thats interesting to hear. TBH for a fair while ive been under the impression that D8KP are pretty exceptionally un-picky for a TOTL can but I wonder if maybe thats only really for SS stuff where I cant even think of a bad matchup (I mean even the GSX MK2 worked probably the best ive heard it which surprised the hell out of me). I wonder if D8KP on tubes is kinda like utopia on SS where the synergy issues/wins arent always all that predictable (at least at my experience level). TBH I had expected them to work real well on forge because of the really holographic staging the amp tends to have as well as the sweetness in the mids but instead I got the first pairing id ever heard where I thought the D8KP sounded genuinely just bad.
Me either tbh. Ive had it play 0 role in stage on stuff like LCD-R and significantly decrease depth on stuff like utopia, but never increase it. Thats why im kinda curious to try. I’ll probably bring my laptop down to my local shop at some point in the next month or so just to give it a shot but no real expectations here.
Yes it can! It can be real damn good even! Really takes advantage of the insane texture and technicalities of the 428 to the point I even sometimes use the 428 out of my desktop dac for it.
Any common traits you feel help the d8kp shine on these amps? I had initially thought maybe they just like dry tubes but I dont think all of those realy classify as all that dry.
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My guess is the amp has to have single digit output impedance.
The Stratus is 3.5 Ohms SE/Low/Low, I’d guess the EC amps are also under 4.
A lot of lower priced amps will be 20+.
But it’s a guess.
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Keep in mind the context, fairly unpicky for a TOTL which still means pretty picky regardless. Also solid state are a bit safer bet I would say though
I think that’s a reasonable way to look at it
Most of them are actually dry, but that’s also just my preference there, I can’t really identify one real common trait there
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I dont know why this didnt occur to me tbh. The WA8 is 20ohm and my forge is 32/300 (liked the 32 with sus more than the 8 by quite a margin for some reason). I think the phantasy 2 low is 32 ohm, but im not sure there and it wasnt great on that either.
haha, yah. That is a pretty big caveat.
Fair enough. What I expected but was worth an ask
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@M0N I hate myself for even asking this, but how does the D8000 compare to something like an LCD-24? From the descriptions here it sounds like they may be close?
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For exclusively Rock/Metal, Electronic, RnB, and instruments like electric guitars and digital pianos the 1266 still pulls ahead or the D8kpro is so close?
Also is D8kpro stage size closer to the 1266 or the dianas?
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In my opinion, the 1266 is better for those genres, but not by a huge margin. Stage size is closer to 1266. The D8k Pro is one of the best headphones period.
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Off-Topic on live
When you are unfortunate enough to set up a music-event in something that was not purpose built to have good acoustics (church, concert hall), then you need three things:
-
Power, not because you need loud. Depending on what is deemed acceptable visually, you could hang line arrays every 5 meters and get away with quite low volume.
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DSP/Speaker management, you need to correct for the table tops and chairs, the walls being weird, the ceiling, and cut out that 7.6kHz resonance of the cheap-ish speakers you were handed.
Having something to kill feedback loops is also handy in case anyone is given a mic that is not locked solidly to the stage floor… -
Compression, while at home, you can get a room down to 30dB(c) with some effort, an audience even at a Jazz concert is not going to stay quiet. So for that faint string plucking to be audible above room noise, you are going to need quite some “oomf”. Which would in turn push that cymbal hit into the danger zone. So compressor it is.
Also: Live is so incredibly suboptimal for recording. Holding up your phone is only marginally worse than “sending the mixer aux to a recorder”, or I am doing it wrong.
I think generally the 1266 does do better as a whole for those genre, but I would give that the d8kp is more organic in how it goes about doing it. I think it would also depend on what chain you’re driving it with. On my setups the 1266 really is simply a step ahead of the d8kp, but the gap starts to close the more you limit source gear
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Agree! In my experience, I would place the D8KP up there with the Sus, 1266, Diana, Utopia. If forced I would give the edge to those others on the right source gear…but why choose!!?!? 
I’ve never tried estats, nor the “ear speakers” like the MySphere or Raal.
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(for my own setups and sources) I would personally place the susvara, mysphere, utopia, and 1266 over the D8KP from a technical level, but the D8KP over things like the Diana, hekse, lcd4/24/4z, etc. I think the main thing that limits it for my own setups is just that it can’t scale as high as the aforementioned, but that can be a positive in some cases if you don’t plan to continue taking steps up cause it will equal or outperform those headphones on some lesser chains
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Y’all are making me want to consider a set now!
How was it with the allnic3000 (if you tried)?
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I have tried it on a 5000xl and it was solid, I bet it would be pretty good with the 3000gt
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when you mention lesser chains, are they like the level of for example cyan+soloist (3000$) or yggy+v550 (5000$) or amber+enleum (10000$)
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Pacific → grandinote Demono monoblocks is obv the low leven chain /s
but realy, from personal experience my main SS chain is Xi Sagra → 13R. On this chain the d8kp and sus are quite different but I would say they are overall of a similar total SQ level. This may chance with a better dac but currently there isnt realy a better per-say with the d8kp winning in texture, depth, and clarity with the sus wining in organicness, staging, and timbre.
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