Thread for the Rupert Neve RNHP headphone amp
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One of my favorites in the price range that I won’t let go of, pretty special overall. A neutral natural signature with great dynamics, speed and separation, very deep but smaller stage, great timbre, very organic presentation, and lots of resolving power overall. Very telling of the dac as well, so scales better than it should given the price lol. Great for both studio and recreational listening
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Own this, love it. Sounds just lovely on all my headphones. My HD660s and Focal Elegia sound fantastic on this. I do feel it needs a good quality headphone to get enough bass out of it. Some cheaper 'phones can sound a little anemic. The only music genres where I do not prefer it are heavy bass styles.
Well built and with a subtly different colour palette - the faceplace is a slightly blue tinged grey and the deep red volume knob is very pretty in person. Best money I have spent so far and the first piece of gear that made me realise just how much difference one very well made item can make.
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My favorite part of the appearance of this amp is how it looks like lab equipment. The steel case and off-grey faceplate just looks…hyper functional.
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I think my actual favorite thing about this amp is how low-maintenance it is for the sound quality you get. It doesn’t really need warm-up time, it doesn’t get hot, it’s reasonable to just leave it running 24/7, it’s small enough to fit on a desk just about anywhere, and I don’t hear any RF interference on mine.
I dunno, maybe all this stuff would be true of any lower-end solid-state amps, but yeah, as someone who went for tubes as I moved up, my RNHP still definitely gets use just because of the convenience.
Pairs wonderfully with the Elex and the Gjallarhorn.
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Much as I love the sound the noisy power supply does sometimes drive me crazy. Adds an interference hum to the whole chain if connected via rca - even when on a separate and filtering power strips.
This is a very late answer/question, but were you able solve that? I have never had that problem, my RNHP is dead silent and the stock PSU works perfectly fine through RCA (and else), on any strip or outlet.
Sorry it took me a while to get back to you, I was visiting family!
I never did track it down. I’ve had it before with an amp, an Aune one I believe, it just did not like being in the same chain, even parallel, with other amps. I have it now only on xlr from the BF2
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To update this, after a while of no hum, it had started it up again, this time it is not in a chain with anything other than the BF2 via xlr. Besides, the faint whine is audible in headphones when nothing else is connected to the RNHP. Think I will try finding a better power transformer for it.
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Thank you all for opening my eyes to the “Bf2+Rnhp” (so much crap talk about Rnhp online, that I was so worried I did a mistake because I hate waiting and returns… NOPE)
The presentation of this combo was a good taste of what’s to come and if this is the first step into “real” sound then I’m in for a ride.
This combo is so alive and immersive and feels personal. Soul, ambience, reverbs, separation, dynamics, and finally heard “depth”.
I see the 1990 & NH tapped out and reached their limits technically and I need a new higher tier headphone next (eyeing Th909 first because of its characteristics and my music)
This 9 hours session sounded so good and euphoric at the end.
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The RNHP sounds great, and it pairs really nicely with the BF2, so I don’t know what’s going on with people shit-talking it apart from the recent price increase.
Glad to hear you’re enjoying it!
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Probably a bunch of “measurebaters” that prefer to look at graphs instead of istening to music with their ears. 
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To be honest I felt it was ludicrously good for the old price. Classical music, electronica and jazz sound amazing - anything that needs swiftness and precision. It was the first bit of gear that made me go "Ooooh… ooh wow so there is more to this than cheap and good enough to tap your foot to be explored. My only gripe is the occasional power whine and to be honest that’s really my fault for trying to use sensitive iems on a bit of studio equipment but dammit I miss using it in the hot weather otherwise!
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The recent price increase really isn’t raising it rather bringing it up to what it should have been selling for lol. Although still unfortunate it had to be raised
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I’m so glad I don’t hear this. Or just my tinnitus is louder 
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I like that it feels much more natural (but not lazy) than anything up until that point. Its a small, few frills unit that is a clear step up from the “into” tiers.
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So now spending time with the RNDAC, I can safely say this is one of the best AIO options for headphones at this price point I have heard, it’s seriously good. They absolutely must have nailed the synergy of the DAC and amp, because I really haven’t heard something as well balanced as this at it’s price point. It really takes all the positive aspects of the RNHP and elevates them a fair bit with a really just engaging sound I don’t expect out of units like this.
I actually want to say the DAC in this unit is pulling a bit more of the weight than the amp is, but I’ll come back to that in a minute. Headphone wise, as an AIO it’s able to really drive most all that I connect it to. I still think with some of the very power demanding cans like the susvara and 1266 it doesn’t quite do it, but really most other cans I have on hand are awesome. Fantastic with the utopia, mysphere, d8kp, and adx5k. It’s not like it isn’t good with the susvara, but it doesn’t really shine here but I’m not all that surprised. I did find it more favorable with the 1266, but still not as impressive as the other pairings, it still sort of prefers the same pairings that the RNHP does but it can handle some of the more power hungry headphones a lot better than the RNHP could
So far, hooking it up to a DAC bypassing the internal one, it really isn’t as good as using the internal dac, even with a technically better dac, it really just seems like they optimized the amp to work best with their internal dac. I do find that a bit disappointing since it doesn’t hold up as well as an amp only, can’t justify the cost there, just use it as an AIO, or potentially a standalone DAC. Speaking of, I did feed the DAC out to the RNHP which was also fantastic, and honestly kinda showcased that while the internal amp was indeed better and a higher tier, it wasn’t as much of a difference as I was expecting, and kinda confirmed that the DAC is pulling a bit more of it’s weight. It did depend on the headphone though. So don’t buy this to bypass the DAC, you’re wasting your money there.
DAC wise, I’m pretty impressed, I wasn’t expecting it to be this good as a DAC only, I’d likely put it perhaps around something like an crane song solaris quantum perhaps a bit below that, it actually kinda reminds me of if you paired an og yggy a2 with an rnhp, I do think that in comparison spatially it actually might be a bit both more spacious and more deep and accurate, although less grand and less verticality there, very black background though. Dynamically a bit less capable than the yggy but things like speed and separation and overall detail/nuance might be somewhat comparable or slightly better, timbre is also surprisingly good, and tonality while not closely matching I think is close enough where it’s a bit of a warmer lean as a dac, but it sounds a bit less organic than the yggy overall, but perhaps a bit more technical, very nice place to be.
I haven’t really tested it as a preamp yet, I’ll get to that later
I don’t really have any real AIO comparisons, since most of the AIO I really like tend to be either competing at a higher price point or a lot lower one. I can’t help but stress this is a fantastic balance of overall performance, a really great do it all box.
From a value perspective, while it is great as an AIO, I do think you could likely get better sound for money if you went with separates, since I do think you are paying a bit for everything being in one box + the field lice design/case, but still it’s quite good and I don’t have any regret in picking one up just to try.
Ah, general sound as a combined unit really does remind me of a yggy paired with a neve although a bit less fun and more down to business in a fantastic way. The stage blackness, depth, accuracy, and now even width really is super solid, the overall speed and separation is great, the tonality is that fantastic neve neutral-natural balance, dynamically pretty balanced and great (although this is less impressive than the stage), really solid resolving power too, great grip and control over most cans. Really I think the overall refinement and effort that went into voicing this combo impresses me the most. Even some higher end components don’t get his level of refinement and balance in their integrateds (so perhaps it is worth the price in that regard lol, although 1k less would be a lot more competitive even when comparing separates imo)
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Excellent impressions! Thanks for taking the time.
It’s nice to hear that Neve’s last consumer product was a success.
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Absolutely a success in my mind, it would really be hard to not suggest this to anyone looking for an AIO in this range
I’ll hook it up to my 2ch later and see how it fares driving power amps or some studio monitors
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Nice writeup! I’m always thinking about moving to a better “all-in-wonder” desktop setup. I need to get one of these on loan to try it out!
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