Thread for discussing about all the Re Leaf headphone amplifiers.
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So I have been listening to the E5 studio for the past couple of hours and it’s really great. The fact that it already sounds this good with the external stock PSU that costs 20 euros is impressive.
It’s an improvement on all fronts (soundstage, timbre, detail, control, grip, dynamic range, ecc…) compared to the Bakoon HPA-21. WIll probably update this post once I get the better PSU I have for it up and running.
This is pretty much THE amplifier to buy if you want to go all out on current drive. The Bakoon HPA-21 is good yes, but you are basically paying full price for effectively half the amplifier since it also has a voltage output (while the Re Leaf only has a current out) which IMO is just ok and I don’t think it’s really worth to use it, definitely better alternatives for voltage out there.
You buy a Bakoon because of the current output, which with something like an HD800S or other (mostly) planar heardphones (the D8K non pro especially is supposedly to be really good on this) is still really worth it because of the sinergy, or if you come from the HPA-01 or the HPA-01M and want to move to a more technically capable amp this is the obvious (and pretty much only) choice you have, it’s a definite improvement, at least from the HPA-01M. Also, it’s much easier to obtain in comparison to the Re Leaf.
I gues another reason to buy the HPA-21 is if you wanted a really good portable amp, since it runs on an internal battery.
The E5 studio is really hard to find used, you can basically only find one in Japan (since the manufacturer is Japanese) and even there they are quite rare, the amp came out in 2019 and I was able to find like 1 or 2 other E5 studios that were sold in the used market in the past years.
Also doesn’t help the fact that most hifi gear in Japan (from what I’ve seen) gets posted as an auction on Yahoo Japan, so I had to do the whole bidding and shipping through a third party site (Buyee).
Nonetheless, it was all very much worth it. Since it already sounds this good with the crappy PSU, I suppose this can scale really high with a proper one, but most importantly…no more batteries to deal with lol, gone are the days of me wanting to listen to music only to find out that my Bakoon has an empty battery.
If I had to complain though, the Re Leaf has a really bright LED on it, I doubt I’ll be able to put a lego over it like with the RNHP LED since the holes looks too small, I guess I’ll either find a way to hide it without resorting to tape or live with it.
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Yoooooooo nice to see someone else try a releaf, loved my E3 dC, easily best current drive amps I’ve heard, fantastic with the right pairing. Also yes they do surprisingly well with a mediocre psu, but getting a nicer psu improves them further. I had a Sean Jacobs psu with them that really brought the best out of them. Will be very curious when you get more time with it and will look forward to reading the article eventually lol
Also D8000 Pro is really good on it lol. I felt that the headphones that impressed me the most on it were the 800s, ADX5K, Diana v2, LCD 2.2 PF. The susvara when running bridge mono could actually sound good on current drive, but not really for the price so I don’t consider that a good pairing, other headphones didn’t either impress me much or sounded way off. I would have kept the amps if I had more cans that shined on the amp, but since I didn’t end up keeping the 800s and 2.2pf around, I sold it. I do miss it with the adx and d8kp though
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Just wanted to update my impressions with the better PSU (finally got some nice amount of time with it) and yeah, as expected, a nice and noticiable improvement: better clarity, bass slightly deeper, possibly punchier, better separation, better microdynamics and low level information, blacker background.
The thing is, it’s nothing special and it’s a simple LM317 based PSU, something that in parts would cost you about 50/60 euros transformer included (probably less but I’m being generous). I did put a 30 euros EMI filter in it but still, all of this was to say that even with a cheap PSU the improvement was noticiable, definitely worth it, and it’s clear that can scale much higher with an even better PSU while not spending crazy amounts on it.
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@M0N @Alb what dac were you pairing with the Re Leaf amplifiers? Are there any odd synergy things to consider since it is current drive?
I’d be curious if you can run the E5 studio in dual mono like the E3 hybrid dC
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I put it through a wider range of dacs, I personally liked something a bit more on the rich side of things, thought both the direct and pacific were cool matches in their own right. Thought that the rs3 was a bit too dry for my tastes in that combo, and the dac 5 special v2 was too much. The mojo was cool pairing wise although wasn’t exactly what I was looking for with the 800s. But it didn’t really seem to be as dac picky as it is headphone picky for sure lol
Essentially I found that I either liked a more neutral but a bit more organic leaning neutral, or something more warmer and rich leaning. I didn’t like already dry leaning dacs, and didn’t like dacs that were overly smoothed over or relaxed either. I think it was important to pair something that’s direct and incisive leaning without going overboard, but also something with a bit more warmth and weight for my personal tastes. Rules out both extremes basically lol
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I’m currently using a Soekris dam1941 with an upgraded PSU and a couple more tweaks (EMI filters).
I would describe it as a more neutral, maybe an ever so slightly forward, while still sounding fairly organic and coherent.
Overall I would say that this chain is tilted towards a more incisive and technical sound but not by much, still something that I would describe as fairly neutral.
I can see a richer/warmer leaning dac to actually compliment better the E5 as I found it to be sometimes slightly on the drier side for something like voices. Some vocals might come off as ever so slightly “sterlile” as opposed to the richer and warmer approach of the Bakoon HPA-21. Especially true for genres like jazz/prog rock where I found the HPA-21 warmer tonality to be more pleasant, but IMO the technical trade off you get with the E5 is more than enough to make up for it.
With something like metal though I think that a richer or a more neutral slightly dry DAC are both equally solid options, especially for the more extreme stuff (that has a fairly decent production on it). Would love to try a richer/meatier sounding DAC though, could even build a tube output stage for my Soekris to try giving it a richer tone and see how that goes now that I think about it.
Guess I got one more thing to add to the never ending list of things I want to do with this dac lol.
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@M0N Which headphones, besides the 800S, are going to work well with the E3 hybrid dC? Cursory attempts to find a price are showing somewhere around $1700 and that is real tempting for something that you’ve rated so highly.
Well that’s way cheaper than I would have expected lol, iirc they’re around 6-7 grand new, and used more around 3-4 or so but damn 1700 would be pretty insane.
I would speculate that the normal D8000 would actually be a more pleasing pairing, the pro could get a bit too clean/dry for me at times.
Really though, it’s not a versatile amp, it’s something I’d only suggest for these very few specific cans. The voltage drive mode isn’t worth buying it for and the current drive is mostly what you want it always in. If I had to say what I paired well with, it’s either more efficient high impedance dynamics, or more efficient lower impedance planar. It did not do well with lower sensitivity planar or dynamics, and makes a lot of higher sensitivity lower impedance dynamics sound wonky.
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I feel like a moron now. 
I went to grab the page I was looking at, only to realize that I was looking at the “as good as new” pricing, lol. It is actually around $5,500.
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Frankly the amps are just a hard sell to most unless you are looking for a very specific sound for a very specific headphone lol, but if you are then they make a ton of sense lol
When you double them up by basically bridging them with their specific cabling, they actually can somewhat drive things like the susvara or 1266 which offer some really unique sound, but then I think value wise it’s not as appealing, would likely consider another amp at that point. Also, they do improve with a better power supply so that’s something to consider down the line if you get one considering the stock psu is surprisingly lackluster in comparison
I sort of miss mine just because of how unique they made some things sound, but at the same time with my main rotation of headphones, I didn’t find myself using the re leafs much considering most of them didn’t pair as well as other amps I had in house. Basically always had the hd800s or adx5k glued on there, with the occasional d8000 pro, and once I wasn’t really listening to the 800s much anymore, the releafs went soon after
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Maybe one day in the future. As it is now, the 800s is the only one I really want to get my hands on, and only because I’ve wanted to hear it for quite a while. And you’re right, doubling them up for Susvara really doesn’t make a ton of sense when you can spend roughly the same amount on something like an 845.
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