Highlights Of 2021

General Discvssions & Theory/Vnderstanding
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My highlight of 2021 is the year of the Server/Streamer.

I always knew that electronics is important. I also knew that source is important, such as DACs, but I never knew how much of an impact a server makes. Early on in 2021, I got off the PC and realized how much getting offline and especially off of the noisy PC makes a huge difference. At the end of the year, I got a high-end server and I can confirm that it was equivalent of another DAC upgrade. Coming from a Golden Gate, that is pretty high praise.

Other than that, I have been quiet (unintentionally) on the normal channels which probably speaks bounds of how content I am on my setup at the moment. It feels good to end the year with a smug smile lounging back on my listening chair listening to 2ch.

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This year was pretty nuts on the audio side of things for me. Went from a Dragonfly Cobalt + Klipsch HP-3 (which that combo is still amazing, might I add) to an ADI-2 + HD 800S (not a great combo) for a brief moment. Fortunately, it was quickly replaced by a Bifrost 2 + Asgard 3 + LSA HP-2 chain and what a fantastic setup that was. Probably where I should have stopped. Then it was joined by a Quicksilver Headphone Amp and a Clear Mg. The A3 eventually upgraded to the Jotunheim 2 and the Aeolus + LCD-2 PF were welcomed into the fold. Later, the LCD-i4 showed up and all the other headphones slowly started leaving. I was aiming at the Gjallarhorns next but ended up with a TH-900 MK2 instead followed by the TH-909 and Pass Labs HPA-1. The amps, i4’s and 909’s left while the 900’s became Lawton Purplehearts. I had planned on leaving headphones entirely for 2 channel but my plans fell through. What I have left I’m pretty happy with and looking towards next year maybe a DAC upgrade, DHC Complement C cable for the PH’s and maybe a Mysphere :eyes:. I think overall my interest in headphones has dwindled and I can comfortably enjoy my chain without the nagging upgraditis for the foreseeable future.

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Great thread! I’ve had a pretty fun year in headphone audio. At the end of 2020, I had just sold my Aeolus and bought a Verite Closed. I had the nagging feeling that my headphones were being held back by my very modest DAC and amp. At the time, I was using a Topping E30 and JDS Labs EL Amp II. Things sounded great, but I knew there was room for improvement.

In February, I began the upgrade process with a new DAC. All my research kept leading back to the Bifrost 2 as the logical step to take from the $100 range of Delta Sigma stuff I had been using. An upgradable multibit DAC with almost universal praise across the wild world of internet audio forums gave me confidence in my choice. Needless to say, I wasn’t disappointed. I had been previously suckered into the ASR mindset that DAC’s didn’t make a difference. I know this is wrong now, even if I might not be able to sit down and successfully prove this with a double-blind test. I now find myself perusing the Lampizator thread more than I care to admit wondering what more is possible in DAC performance.

As a ZMF owner, I had read everywhere that these creations of Zach’s really love tube amplification. I had never owned or even heard a tube amp before. I started researching for my first tube amp purchase. I wasn’t trying to spend a fortune, so I was looking at things like the Feliks Audio Echo, Hagerman Tuba and Bottlehead Crack. I came across some impressions of the Quicksilver Headphone Amp, and it stuck in my mind. There wasn’t a ton of info to be found on the thing, but everything out here there was extremely positive. I found myself actually looking for some criticism of the thing, but came up empty. I pulled the trigger on the amp and have no regrets.

While I waited on the Quicksilver I was able to buy a another tube amp that I was very interested in, the SW51+. I had it on order with the amp builder in Russia, but was able to find one used. This saved 2-3 months of wait time. I actually received the SW51+ before the Quicksilver. It was my first experience with a tube amp, and I knew I was in trouble. This thing sounded amazing with my Verite Closed, and it was so cheap! The price difference between it and the Quicksilver put some pretty high expectations on the Quicksilver. I thought it would be hard to sound better than this little Russian creation. Luckily when the Quicksilver arrived, it managed to outclass the SW51+. I love both amps, but with the VC I found myself plugging into the Quicksilver 90% of the time.

The middle of the year was mostly a crash course in tube-rolling. I got all kinds of 12AX7’s and EL84’s to try in my Quicksilver. I spent a little too much money in the process. I finally settled on my favorite combination of tubes and unloaded a lot of the tubes I’d auditioned and moved on from. A couple months of happy listening followed with no changes to the setup.

A beautiful Manchurian Ash Auteur popped up for sale one day on Head-Fi, and I made an impulse buy. I’d always wanted to try the Auteur, and this one really caught my eye. It won me over by including a fancy ZMF 2K Copper cable in the package at no extra cost. I knew I would never buy a $400 cable, but I certainly wasn’t opposed to trying one out for free. The Auteur arrived and was even better looking in person than the pictures could portray. As far as the sound, I was really liking what I heard. To my great surprise, I found myself reaching for the Auteurs over the VC’s. Not sure if it’s the tuning or biocellulose driver, but I just found the Auteur more natural sounding. They also sound incredible on the high Z-out of the SW51+. These crazy headphones started to make me wonder if I even needed the VC and Quicksilver anymore!

Fast forward a bit and I see Zach is going to release a Blackwood VC during ZMF November. I decide to sell my Manchurian Ash VC in anticipation. They sell extremely quickly. In the mean time I’m still really digging the Auteur, so much so that I stumble upon a Blackwood set and find that I can’t resist trying out this super-dense version. So now I have two Auteurs in the house. At this point, I’m frequently thinking to myself that I’ve lost my mind.

A handsome set of Olive VC’s goes up for sale and I’m smitten again. I get them in, and they’re great, but I have spent enough time now with the Auteurs to come to the conclusion that I really do prefer them to the VC. Now the Olive VC’s have found a new home, and I keep trying to decide which Auteur to unload. I like them both so much sonically and aesthetically that I have convinced myself that I’m not crazy for keeping them both. After all, on the used market the two of them together are about equal to the price of a VC.

That’s where I stand at the end of 2021. I’ve got a Bifrost 2, two tube amps, two Auteurs and two happy ears. I almost bought an ECP DSHA-3F a few days ago so I could have a high-end solid state amp to complement the tubes. Luckily for my wallet, it sold before I had a chance to spend another $2K!

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24

Question for everyone! Busts of 2021? Was dope hearing your highlights of what you liked but what about your most meh or straight up gear that u tried?

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Aeolus and RME ADI-2. Too warm and smooth, too digital/clinically dry.

Dishonorable mention to Amazon for blue balling me with a too-good-to-be-true deal on Focal Solo6 Be’s only to cancel the order two months later.

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For me it was the LCD-24 and LCD-4z. Happy I auditioned them both as now I know to completely avoid them.

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Good question.

Xduoo MT-602

I bought it out of curiosity and as a cheap way to get an idea of what tubes can be about. Very pretty looking, functions and very meh.

The built in headphone amp is awful, the preamp is serviceable. It is let down by the non tube stage which desperately needs lower gain. Any subtlety the tubes give is just overwhelmed by the huge amount of amplification in the gain stage. You can get a hint of it by pre amping the pre amp but at that point it’s really hard to justify not spending more. I am baffled by why people seem to like these cheap xduoo hybrids.

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Didn’t realize u had the aeolus this year. Honestly I could see that, I haven’t had the aeolus but owning the verite I already see how smooth and un offensive it is to where I can’t imagine using a headphone from zmf that was meant specifically for that lol.

I remember you disliking that one but had no idea that you also didn’t like the 4z! Shame it looked super interesting

Yeah those seem rough tbh, I had their solid state stuff and it was decent but even then that’s completely different. Cheap tube stuff in particular seem fairly sus, just like why even

Altho that one cheap tube amp from schiit still has me curious, I think it’s called vali or something

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I actually didn’t have many busts this year, probably because I didn’t buy as much and when I did I was very selective of what I got. There were things I got that absolutely didn’t live up to the hype around them such as the oor and elysian x, but those are still good products on their own and still worthwhile

Ah wait, I am still somewhat mad about the terminator ii, very underwhelming.

There is an actual dogshit product I bought but it’s more on the audio production side than reproduction, a klark teknik eqp-kt, worst eq I’ve ever had the displeasure of laying my hands on, made everything you run through it sound substantially worse. It’s clear their goal was to emulate a pultec eq, and at 300 bucks I just had to see how it stacked up, but it’s somehow able to do the exact opposite of the pultec by making everything you run through it sound terrible

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The only thing I sent back was the Sennheiser Hd 600, which many people praised.
I originally wanted it for the Feliks Euforia amplifier.
It read well but the sound from these headphones was terrible for me.
The Lcd 2c sounded much nicer in comparison. The direct comparison of Lcd2c vs Hd600, which you often read about, is also very far behind.

The Nintendo Switch also disappointed me, it would have been nice to play a bit while listening to music.The games are unfortunately very expensive and nothing you would want to play.The classics in the store would be appealing but also very expensive and too little to keep them.

Otherwise, I didn’t get involved in any of the hype, neither the new Focal headphones nor Audirvana Studio.

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Looking back the only thing I still have from the beginning of the year is the bifrost2. That means I changed quite a lot in my gear this year but so did many here based on write ups.

My highlights:

Hp- Fostex Th900 SB/909: from all the headphones I tried so far this hits my preference the best. I could live just woth those two and be happy. This will be the case until I have a budget for totl hp and amp that synergies nicely with it.

Amplifier: Violectric hpa 550 pro. I was eyeing something from vio for some time and I finally picked it up. Power, control and being clean and natural my ears are my highlights so far. Plus the engineering and build are impressive.

IEMs: Unique Melody mest mk2. Surely there are better Iems out there but for now I don’t have a reason to look for one. For my mobile needs this with dx300 just works perfectly.

DAP: ibasso dx300: my first dap. And I must say I am very happy with it.

Bust Of the year: Audio Technica AWKT- I think it is great headphone and I really wanted to like it. It was just totally not my preference and I had to force myself to pick them up at the end.

Honourable mention: Sennheiser hd600+ Feliks echo mkii. This combo for.me is amazing for majority of my small library. Tubes do show how well they can scale and change.

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Musical Fidelity M1 DAC
Demoed it in store (fed via some high-end streamer, feeding into my LakePeople G103-S and AKG K-712). It is overly smooth and lacks detail. Saxophones do not sound convincing at all on that unit.

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So, I’ll try and keep this short and focused, as I don’t feel like I had a ton of new experiences in audio in 2021. I replaced the RME ADI2 with the Bifrost late in 2020 and that was quite the eye opening experience for me, but I’ll leave it at that since that was 2020. Fast forward to now, still rocking the Bifrost as it’s just such an excellent all around for my preferences. I’m sure eventually I’ll upgrade, but right now it’s suiting my needs perfectly and I have nothing in my immediate sight right now.

So for 2021, the biggest highlight was obtaining my Questyle CMA800R. I fell in love with the Questyle sound when I got the QP2R. Such a rich, organic sound. I started to look at the Questyle desktop gear, and decided I wanted to save for the CMA Twelve, until I realized that the internal DAC could not be bypassed. I believe M0N had mentioned the 800R to me, so I started to look into it at that point. I was a little bit on the fence because of the somewhat unique way this amp is intended to be used (dual mono), but it could also be used single in stereo, and I was told this was still a worthwhile purchase with the intention of using that way. I found a great deal on one from TMR, and pulled the trigger.

This amp has been everything I hoped it would be and more. That same QP2R signature, with technicalities brought to the next level. It pairs excellent with everything I have here IMO, most notably the HD800S and LCD2.2PF. I’ve since sold the G111 and RNHP, as I feel the 800R was the next tier up from these, and the signature was just to my preference so perfectly.

Speaking of the HD800S and LCD2.2PF, these were both highlights of 2021 as well. I had a LCD2 a little while ago, I love it, and for some reason sold it, still don’t know why. I quickly missed them and had to get another set in. This time they’re here to stay for good. Such an enjoyable set, smooth, natural, organic, rich and full, never fatiguing. The HD800S still blows me away every time I put it on. I still don’t know how to describe it very well honestly. While it can get slightly fatiguing for me on poorly recorded stuff, it’s a very rare occurrence. This is easily my favorite all around set I’ve heard to date. Probably also helps that the CMA 800R was basically made for this set.

Overall I’m super satisfied where I am right now. Things not mentioned above are the hd6xx and Hagerman Tuba, Campfire Andromeda 2019, some new things I just got in this past week whish I won’t mention here just yet but I’m loving for the most part. I think my next thing I’ll eventually want to look at is a DAC upgrade, but I honestly wouldn’t even know where to begin on that search. When the time comes, I’ll figure that out.

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Fortunately, I spent a lot of time and care of my purchases in 2021. Each upgrade I made felt worthwhile to me, even with something as simple as footers for vibration control.

Any busts I had were ones that I was too quick to buy. Most of them revolve around buying IEMs blindly from a reviewer’s recommendation.

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2021 was just enjoying what I had. Didn’t hunt for much.

ZMF Auteur - my daily for most of 2021. Love how it sounds off Bifrost 2 > Shortest Way 51+. Every time I listen to this combo, it always ends with late night sessions.

NAS - moving my music library off the pc also made a big improvement. Not hearing a spinning HDD in my office/listening room :+1:.

MZ2 - Long term plan is to move this into a 2ch setup but this amp paired with the Nighthawk sounds awesome.

For 2022, looking at building a 2ch setup.

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Welcome to the fold. Looking forward to seeing your build log.

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We’ve got a Tuba thread ready when you do want to mention it. I’ve actually been enjoying the pairing quite a bit.

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There’s a REALLY nice Pass Lab X2.5 preamp up for sale at the moment. :slight_smile:

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Equipment that taught me something / expanded my understanding of HiFi:

  1. FiR VxV - helped me really understand the difference between detailed and bright. Treble boost can give me the allusion of detail, but it’s just bright. These little monsters are anything but bright, but they bring the detail.
  2. Schiit Bifrost 2 - similar to the VxV this DAC helped me understand what detail really is. It also showed me what a good DAC can do for spatial presentation of music, bringing out more of the goodness that’s already in a headphone.
  3. Hiby R5 - this was a big experiment for me to see if a DAP fits within my audio ecosystem - turns out the answer is hell yeah. So, sold the R5, bought an R6. But the R5 was the breakthrough device for me.
  4. Grado Hemp - broke my thinking that neutrality was the goal, this headphone opened my eyes to how much fun differently tuned headphones can be.
  5. iLoud Micro Monitors - lots of sound from small speakers at a reasonable price. Made desktop listening much more fun than I thought it could be. Enjoyed it so much I ended up upgrading to the MTM’s, but not sure that upgrade was worth 3x the money - they aren’t 3x better than the Micro’s.
  6. Monoprice audio stand (here) - made a much bigger improvement in component organization and cable management than I expected. Much easier to position gear where I want it.

Lots of other gear that I bought / sold / loved / hated. But these ones were the most impactful on my HiFi perspective.

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The 4z wasn’t awful…but I don’t feel it is worth anything close to the price it goes for. It has a pretty significant drop in the mids and I felt it was a very sterile tuning.

The 24 pissed me off because the bass and mids were pretty good, but the treble just ruined it for me. There are 2 narrow band peaks in the treble that make the 24 sound extremely artificial.

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