At that price the Allo Revolution dac comes to mind. I don’t have experience with it but I know M0N likes it (in general, unsure about this specific pairing though).
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Hmm yes looks interesting.
even though I’m not a fan of eating chips.
That’s probably because of the Matrix Audio ipro mini 2S.
It’s wonderful on the hi-fi system, but I find it terribly unsuitable for headphones.
With the Little Dot 1+, it wasn’t completely wrong, but it tires me immensely.
Especially with the Lcd 2C, with the Aeon R/T it’s still halfway comfortable.
That’s why I’m probably a bit burnt out about the Ess chip.
But maybe I should give the Allo a chance - it doesn’t necessarily look bad.
Thanks for the tip.
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Looks like another has fallen to the bakoon trap and gotten me even more hyped about it. Anyone know how good the synergy would be with p6p → 13r → d8000p/sus? Would be kinda worried about it getting too dark but not sure if the cans would balance that out a bit.
I can’t speak to the P6P, but the Bakoon Sus combo is much loved.
P6p is already a bit dark so I wasn’t sure how the combo would work tbh. I think it would be fine but I’m not sure at all
To jump back to this, are all the balancing acts similar quality? I didn’t realize how many revisions there were bjt I found someone selling a “307A” which u can’t find basicaly any info on for pretyy damn cheap
Can’t speak to Bakoon, but I guess I’ve never considered the P6P to be dark. Not bright, but kinda dryish neutral with a touch of warmth and good weight and impact. If I were to go for Sus, that’d likely be my chain, at least to get started.
You could request different tube types, the most popular ones were 300B/PX4 or 2A3/45, but there were other custom order versions. Can’t comment on a 307a build, but I bet it’s good too. That being said there’s other smaller revisions with different components or slightly different designs so that’s another thing to factor but that’s not as big a deal
I’d agree, I find it on the neutral warmer forward side of things, not really dark at all. I guess if you wanted a bit more of a treble lift you could change from NOS to a filter mode
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Safe to assume any of the balancing act amps should be ~= mogwai se and above wa22? Tbh I found one for sub 2k but I just can’t find much info on them at all. I cant even figure out what the topology is…
Yah, I guess I didn’t mean dark in the conventional sense bjt more so “dark” like a traditional iem stage where its dense bit well layered. Kinda feels like music is comming out of the darkness of the background as opposed to something like a hugo 2 where there is a more open and airy feeling to the presentation. Tbh I just don’t rraly know what to call the opposite of “airy stage” other than “dark”
I’d put them above in terms of sq. I’d order it by balancing act >> mogwai se > wa22. Then again I’m personally not the biggest fan of a&s amps for the money so perhaps that’s being a bit too unfair
It’s a DHT SE amp, along with the main power tubes it has a 6SN7 for a driver and a separate psu with dual 6X4 rectifiers, transformer coupled of course. But the sound is what matters not the topology imo, generally it’s a neutral but slightly warmer sweeter signature, still dryer than other tube amps like let’s say the mogwai, but still has good emotion. The amp tends to focus more on the micro side of things but still has great macro. Spatially very large and open with lots of depth, excellent timbre and tonality, and very dynamically alive. Great control, impact is good but not great, and fairly resolving too
That makes sense, I’d agree it’s more on the intimate side of things. That’s an interesting observation for the Hugo vs p6p
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Oh agreed. I just find its usualy super highlighted by manufacturers so it struck me as wierd I couldn’t find it. Tbh, even as far as other impressions go all I can find is someone saying it run k1000 well (and even then I’m not certain they aren’t talking about another amp, thats from the 6moons “review”). Being DHT i assume it will run general planars well enough? Would be nice if it could run LCD-R (doubt I can even find out if it cqn) but I’m more so concerned about how well it would handle d8kp and possibly diana (v2 and phi) for future playing (since i just assume sus and 1266 are out yhe window here without an added power amp)
Very fair. Tbh I kinda wonder is A&S are so loved purely because they are so regulalrly avilible to demo unlike a lot of other stuff in the price range (same goes for woo tbh).
Yah, I just realy had no good way to put it unfortunately
Depends on the planar
You just have to find someone willing to try for you lol
Very well actually, those are really nice pairings
I know someone who uses it with the 1266 and likes it, and it’s enjoyable, but you can do better on that front. Susvara is a worse match
I’d say it’s riding off the zmf effect, but we won’t get into that lol
Woo has been around and been reliable, most of their amps aren’t the best value but also don’t disappoint from a value perspective either. Their newer amps like the wa33 are still popular and held in high regards, but I think some of the other things in their lineup aren’t as popular just due to age at this point, even though if they are still reasonably solid. But people do complain about woo designs but personally I think it’s a bit undeserved (people like to bitch about the lack of safety mechanisms in some of the amps, and while that’s not great on paper, it was likely omitted for a reason and I haven’t really seen many times those lack of failure protections actually caused problems)
Yes I think they became suddenly popular after Zach started selling the Pendant, people started looking at what else was available from them.
Torq’s overly positive (massively overstated IMO) review of the pendant, generated a ton of hype on one site, which probably bled over to places like Head-fi.
Beware of people reviewing friends gear.
I’d be surprised if the Mogwai is comparable to any of the decent DHT amps, it’s an EL34 SET amp.
You’d have to look at the tube, all DHT means is Directly Heated Triode, no separate heater pins.
These are generally the oldest tubes.
A single 2A3 DHT amp might put put 5W, but it’s going to generally be closer to 2W, a 300B will be a Watt or two more than that a 1626 will probably be under a Watt.
The transformer is far more critical is what they can drive.
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It sounds decent and is enjoyably voiced, but imo a harder sell at its price point, feel similarly about the other a&s amps I’ve heard. The pendant is the only one that could make sense if you get a reasonably large discount if you also order zmf at the same time imo
Really depends on the amp, the studio t has 4 2a3 and barely manages to squeeze out a watt, while for example something like a modwright ha300 can push 8wpc with 2 300b into the same ish load. The power can be misleading though, doesn’t always mean it will actually drive some of the harder loads well, there’s other factors at play
Also very important for sound quality too, if the transformer is shitty there’s not much you can do to save that
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Another question! This is more of a convenience thing, but I thought I’d ask.
I have my Exogal connected to both my Quicksilver over RCA and my RNHP over XLR, but the RCA outputs are noticeably hotter than the XLR outputs, so I can’t seem to find a volume on the DAC where both the Quicksilver isn’t too loud and the RNHP isn’t too quiet. (The RNHP in particular doesn’t seem to sound great when pushed past 1-o’-clock-ish.)
By the way, the intent is to be able to have two people sitting next to each other listening to the same song on two different headphones. I do have some ideas and wanted some feedback:
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I could get some kind of attenuator for the RCA output of the Exogal, and raise the overall volume on the DAC. Not sure if there are issues with going this route, and I’m not sure what exactly I’d be buying.
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I could get an ampsandsound black box to feed the Quicksilver with the XLR output and then the RNHP would get the hotter RCA signal, which is kind of what both amps seem to want, but converting bal to se is not ideal.
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I could cut the Exogal out of the RNHP’s chain altogether, so the Singxer could send AES to the Exogal, but send SPDIF to a Bifrost 2 to the RNHP. I actually threw this setup together today and it’s pretty nice. The downside being the Bifrost is a lower-tier DAC and only accepts 192kHz (still sounds great though), and then the extra desk space and power usage. Also, I kinda feel like if I’m going to re-introduce the Bifrost into my desk setup, I should do it properly and get some switch boxes so I can use both DACs on both amps.
I’d just get a reasonably well made passive pre, but it’s not ideal to have anything in the chain, but this would likely give you the best flexibility. This being said, I’d rather suggest you put the preamp on the neve instead, so get a balanced passive pre, something like this
https://www.amazon.com/Palmer-MONICON-Passive-Controller-PMONICON/dp/B00GIF8GBG/ref=sr_1_1
It will degrade the sound a bit, but it’s better that degradation happens on the neve than the quicksilver imo
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Thanks for the reply! I might be mistaken, but I was under the impression that a passive pre could only attenuate, that’s why I’d initially assumed it would need to be added to the Quicksilver’s chain. Though I agree that if I could help it, I’d definitely rather have something in the RNHP’s chain over the Quicksilver’s chain.
Oh yeah that’s correct, completely forgot about that lol. My bad there. That would also work at reducing the level of the quicksilver you would just need some adapters for that (3.5mm to rca)
Out of curiosity if you feed the rnhp with rca is it somewhat similar volume to what the quicksilver would be? Might just be solvable by an rca splitter if that’s the case, and would end up with the least amount of quality loss imo
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