Not the 509 but maybe interesting enough?
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Thanks man @orrman, I appreciate you looking out. I was thinking the 590AXII may be too good of thing paired with the 30.2s. Strangely enough, there is an amazing deal on a single owned 590AXII in California owned for a yearish… i want to say. Feel bad because a dealer hosed them.
I picked up a Modwright KWH 225i yesterday and should be arriving early next week. It’s the one @Veritas put up the other night. Cool story behind it. Someone asked for the blue heat sinks to be power coated black and changed his mind to silver. Dan Wright sent the unit down the streetish to Echo. It’s a one off black on black, murdered out, unit. 2 year warranty and can reach out to Echo if there are issues. They sold the unit at desler cost after a week. Worth checking them out. They have both new and fair amount of used gear [https://echohifi.com/]. Nice guys, OCD about packaging, and Oregon doesn’t believe in sales tax.
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I bought my monoblocks from echo a few years back. Really accommodating people. I wish we had dealers like that around us
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congrats on the 30.2 they are beautiful speakers to look at as well as sounding. The vocals tone and texture was perfection for my tastes. I heard the anniversary edition at my local hifi shop paired with an Accuphase E650 and Audio Research 75 and they were both magic… They threw in an Hegel H190 just to show the difference. The Hegel was solid but the 30.2 definitely scaled with the better amps.
The only issue I think we had in their setup was wall boundaries were a bit problematic but don’t remember exactly.
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They scale surprisingly high. To a point that i had all of my electronics at double its value and it still kept up
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Have you heard the 40.3 xd speakers? If so were they meaningfully better? I’ve heard only the P3ESR and 30.2. For me the P3ESR were meh in comparison and the 30.2 were well worth 2x the price.
No, although that was my original aim for endgame. 30.2XD was perfect for my medium sized room and I was saving for 40s if I ever moved. I changed to Raidho after assessing my tastes and never looked back.
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The Harbeth’s midtones and vocals hooked me also. Accuphase was the dream, but a tough proposition in the US. I’m equally excitrd about the Modwright. Looking forward to hearing the pairing… terrified about moving it 
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I also liked my Harbeth with electronics that had a bit more speed and punch. I think Harbeth excel with midrange, tone, and timbre, but they can be soft and slow. Adding some nimbleness gives it great synergy.
I’ve got the DACs for my “total system overhaul” picked out: Holo May L2, and maybe Soekris 2541 to try as a budget alternative comparison / flavor.
Tube amp will be WA22.
For SS amp, the Bryston BHA-1 is my default choice currently(transparent, smooth, spacious - I should just stop researching and buy it), but I’m wondering how the newer competition fares, at ~$2K and under…
- OOR
- HPA V340
- HPA4
- ?
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These two dont sound all that similar. Given the rest of your chain I would probabaly look at spring 3 instead and use some of the extra money elsewhere. If you are looking for a more budget option, goldnote DS10 will be a fairly contrasting flavor but still with good technicalities. Ayazi mk2 would be another option in the ~$1500 range if one pops up, but they are fairly rare.
What cans are you running and do you already own any of this gear? Just TBH, unless your cans are quite spicy, may/sokeris + wa22/bha-1 will be a significant double down on smoothness that may well not work with your cans simply due ot be fairly heavy handed. IMO oor stack and V550 would both be solid options ~2k used for the majority of cans and both should pair alright with holo. IMO, in the 2k range, HPA 4 isnt realy worth bothering with. Another option to look into would be the holo bliss (i dont think anywhere here has heard it though) or laybe a luxman if there are any for sale.
Ultimately, answering this will largely come down the cans you are using as well as what you currently value/dislike about your current chain. Over all, just tbh, I wouldnt realy recommend a single step entire chain overhaul. I would get the piece of gear you are most confidant in liking, give it some time, and then come back with impressions + what you want to fix/retain about your chain and go from there. (yes I am aware this is a disatisfying answer btw, and no, I often dont follow it myself, but I tend ot regret when i dont)
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Hm. Everyone seems to be saying May is a significant improvement over Spring, for extra sense of space, improved tone & weight(?), other technicalities. You are suggesting to swap the Holo for DS10? Or swap 2541 for DS10? (for a further change in sound flavor from the Holo, I assume)
Ohhh, I see! I was not expecting any significant smoothing from these DACs(just clean neutral), and smoothness from the BHA-1 only in the sense of making sure the treble is fully refined and controlled enough to stay minimally fatiguing/peaky. My previous mid-level attempt was BF2/Gungnir MB + Soloist 3XP(stock opamps), and there was an undeniable, irritating, underlying brightness even with phones everyone swears were not, such as AWAS. So I just want to reach a high enough level of refinement to avoid that shit ever happening again.
(I am fully expecting more smoothness from the WA22, however; perhaps mistakenly?)
V550/Pro seems like a killer option! Love that you can A/B DACs with it. I wasn’t fond of G111(too smoothed over, lacking detail), but there is probably zero relation in sound here. Great specs. Is it Class A/B? Or something else? I assume this is a full detailed, zero smoothed sort of sound, compared to BHA-1?
Like you said, “good for the majority of phones”, is exactly what I’m trying to achieve here. My only weird, outlier headphone in mind would/could be Stax(L700/SR-007/X9000), so I’m hoping a well-rounded, neutral/neutral-ish DAC will be suitable for that, too. I don’t have anything notable yet, but looking at options like HE1000V2/se, Atrium, Caldera, Arya, LCD-3/4. Swap to an obviously warm, smooth amp as the next step, if I’m still finding everything too bright.
For SS, in your own words, just buy it already. There isn’t going to be anything great unless you double the price of what you can get the BHA-1. Couple of minor issues with it is that you’ll want to go balance or dual out with it. The other is that the volume at least SE out is very non linear. Something that was addressed in later models. The one I had was built in 2012 I believe and it had that problem. Isn’t as bad with balanced out for some reason.
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This is just a different cable termination option? Instead of 1 XLR, it’s 2 6.35mm’s, or 2 XLRs? Don’t know if I’ve ever seen that yet. Or, it could be 2 entirely separate cables, that are mono? = “Ultimate balanced connection”?
I want to start with this comment because I feel its the most important. You can build a chain thats “fine” with most headphones, but doing this tends to mean that it wont be truly spectacular for any given one either. This is going to be doubly true when realy straying away from even the territory of neutral. Its something that is valuable when you are still trying to hunt for the sound you want, just also something to keep in mind once you find “the can”
May is a fair step up from spring 2, but spring 3 is much closer IMO. This is especially true of the spring 3 KTE that gets the may’s usb input (this is especially valuable because it significantly decreases the need for DDCs or streamers). As for the DS10, I meant to swap it with the sokeris. Just tbh, if you want to build a super well rounded gear setup, IMO, you should have a varity of flavors, not different variations of the same sound.
Quick note, you and I are probably using the term “smooth” slightly differently. When I mention something being smooth im really talking about a textural smoothness where as you seem to be talk more about tonal smoothness (fixes FR issues in cans). These are ultimately two different things (though in the lower end they can kind of blur together). As for the schiit + soloist chain, I can see fatigue being an issue with that amp but also, while I havent heard AWAS, every AT ive heard has leaned a little harsh and fatiging tbh.
As for the WA22, it will largely come down to tubes. I did find it slightly tonaly smooth, but not that much tbh. That said, tubes do fix a lot IME.
No idea on topology, but yes, it will be a little less tonally smooth, but IME, its also a fair step up technically.
I agree. This seems to be the piece of gear you are the most sold on, so just go for it. Once you get it in and get some time on it reevaluate what you want to change in your chain and we can reevaluate dacs then.
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I guess I’ll represent a different approach here. I think building balanced chains is a great way to learn what you really want as eskamo is saying. It’ll work with most stuff and over time it’s easier to discern what you feel you’re missing as you chase your end game sound. BUT not everyone finds themselves at the end wanting to maximize certain traits over others and will stay within the balanced options more or less. We all have things we prefer but not all of us optimize their gear to maximize those traits. You can also do that in many ways being different source gear or headphones or cables tubes etc at the end…
I wouldn’t be concerned from building something more balanced considering what you’re looking at. Synergy is more important so you don’t end up with something that instead of being balanced just cancels each other part out.
This! You may think that if you buy three items each will have 1/3 the impact on what you learn you prefer etc but getting one thing first might have a much larger effect on your progress towards that imo
Think of it similarly to diminishing returns. The more things you try the smaller learning experiences you gain from the later experiences (unless you get to something completely new or different that flips your entire perception lol)
Try stuff, experience, listen and enjoy. The process is part of the fun
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Ok, possibly a weird question: Is the difference between USB from a comp and a proper streamer similar to the difference between P6P on internal storage vs USB input?
I am asking because Ive been using my P6P on local files as a dap for a few weeks here and its got some traits to it (image separation, clarity, slight timbre, bakcground blackness) to it that I dont get on my TD stack and I am wondering how much of these charges are because I dont have USB in my chain vs just straight up flavor of P6P vs TD (P6P over USB sounds much more inline with TD FWIW)
If it’s reading files off of a card via an internal reader then there would be near zero signal degradation. I don’t know how the totaldac’s USB implementation is, but it’s gonna have more signal degradation (source, cables, etc) than the card being read off of the P6P.
Just FWIW, I am already using solid cables and the totaldac d1-digital before the dac (AES between digital and the dac). Honestly, the step between p6p usb vs internal is kinda like jumping from a 1k dac to may, so I’m wondering if I can expect to see a similar jump getting a propper streamer or if I should instead put money towards a dac upgrade.
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I would go for a nice streamer first as the higher you go on the dac side of things, the more you’ll be handicapped if you use usb audio direct out of a pc
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