Anyone have experience with auralic taurus mkii? Can anyone compare it to the v281 in terms of detail and and signature? Looking for an upgrade from the rs-08 and hope to find something smooth but with greater detail.
Just so peeps know, I was very happy to hear this amp. It’s Raal’s new PDA-1a that can be used with both planars and dynamics. It was available to try at Capital Audio Fest and is on discount this month. I heard HE-6 (6-screw) on this and it was pretty wild how well controlled it was. It was like sheet metal laser cutting but in audio form.
Also heard Susvara and LCD-5 on it and it worked well on those too but I’m a HE-6 user 4lyfe 
I’ve heard Oor+Hypsos, GSX mini, GSX mk2, Soloist 3X, Benchmark AHB2 (as a headamp), and a few others but this might be my favorite solid state amp thus far.
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Nice, looks pretty sweet. Strange they are still keeping the raal branding on it, given that requisite has plenty of products to it’s own name already (mainly when it comes to studio gear, excellent stuff they have there) unless raal worked with them on designing this one too (which would be weird since this isn’t for anything raal makes)
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They also have a tube amp for non ribbon drivers coming aswell as a tube amp for ribbon drivers.
I assume these none ribbon amps are derived from the existing/upcoming ribbon amps, possibly optimized for higher voltage, lower current requirements of higher impedance headphones.
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Ah yes that one. The tube amp. They brought it to canjam…
and it was broken during shipping. So yeah.
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was asked but dont know shit about portable gear myself for roughly $400 what would be a good portable amp for a pair of sony mdr z7m2?
Bifrost 2 question (didn’t see a dedicated thread here, but please redirect me if I just missed it). I know when these first came out there was a lot of discussion around sound quality from USB input vs coax / toslink. Now that these have been out for a while, what’s the general consensus? Are they equally good, and it just comes down to quality of source? Or is there a real benefit to the USB input?
I’ve been a/b testing between USB and coax, with USB fed from RPi4 / Intona galvanic isolator and coax fed from Pi2AES. It seems close, but for most songs with most of my headphones I prefer the USB input. (Listening through Jot2, so maybe that’s limiting the difference I hear.)
Any opinions from longer term BF2 listeners?
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My experience with the Bifrost 2 and inputs was that I preferred the Unison USB over the coaxial spdif input from the pi HATs used (Allo DigiOne & HiFiBerry Digi2pro). When using the coax spdif out from a Matrix Audio XSPDIF 2 into the Bifrost 2, there was not a detectable preference to my ears - so again I opted just to use the USB input on the BF2 for simplicity sake, and that also allowed me to use the xspdif 2 on another DAC which supported AES and was making a significant difference. Again to my ears and in my setups FWIW.
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Apologies if this has been answered but I just got a Bifrost 2 and I’m kinda confused about one of it’s features.
Is phase inversion just for speakers? I’ve been playing with it and for headphones it seems like a dedicated “make this sound worse” button.
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It swaps absolute phase.
Some people can’t differentiate absolute phase at all. Some can.
The reason it’s there is some components swap phase and some recordings are out of phase, so you can fix it. It’s not uncommon to see on DAC’s.
Most of the time you leave it alone.
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Thanks for the quick response! “Absolute phase” was what I needed to look up, “phase inversion” lead me down some rabbit hole about speaker wire polarity and I was a bit lost.
I like ur profile Pic btw. Lol
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My understanding is that some transducers are more affected than others by it as well (for example phase matters more with DDs than planars are BAs from what I understand)
Ok guys, so I have a line on a hydra+vox stak for ~2600USD. This puts it in the same price range as the sagra and Morpheus. Anyone have any input on kinda the strengths and weeknesses of the 3?
@M0N have you heard by any chance this amplifier? Looks pretty slick.
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Hello
A question, would it be an upgrade to sell the Fostex Tr xx at a good price and buy the Zmf Atticus or Aeolus?
Or something else in the way of headphones?
If so any suggestions?
The aim would be to stress the Euforia amp with something high impedance.
Depends on what you’re looking for.
No experience with the other 2 hps and the euforia, but I have an aeolus and I wouldn’t get it for technicalities alone. It’s a chill hp that’s pleasing to listen to imo. It’s generally warm, intimate, sweet, has pretty good timbre, and is tonally weighty. It is lacking in the sub-bass department, at least with the universe perf suede.
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Thank you for the feedback.
I don’t know any of the Zmf headphones and can therefore hardly assess them.
And I haven’t read any reports like that.
I just wanted to get a rough impression of what people think of the two headphones.
I would also be confident that the Aeolus can be combined with the Euforia.
But the Atticus doesn’t look bad either.
It would definitely be too much for the Verite.
There is the used one at a good price.
On the other hand, maybe some people have heard the Fostex and the Zmf and could give a rough impression.
The option to keep the Fostex and go for the Lawton Cups would still exist.
But I would also be open to other dynamic headphones, except for the Focal.
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I only tried Eikons on my Echo mkii and it was a nice pairing. So I would say ZMF should sound nice on eforia as well. With that sait I have th900 and that headphone is a reason why I am selling Eikon. I never plug th900 to echo so I don’t know how that would sound on tubes. But sound wise th900 is just more engaging, feels faster and more detailed to me. Eikon sounded a bit to smooth and laid back but it can hit nicely as well.
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Hello! I was looking for some input, was wondering about a good 250 under portable dac/amp combo or DAP that would be decent with enough power for a sundara per se? Asking for a friend whose system ive been working on, while trying to stay budget. I thought the Hip Dac in particular looked quite interesting, if anyone would share their thoughts on it i would be curious!