ok, so maybe mon will have a differen opinion here (no idea), but IMO a demo on shit gear is better than no demo at all by an almost infinite amount. yes things can change significantly, but you need the most solidified base line possible to truly understand other comparisons. If you have never heard a tube amp, you cant be expected to truly understand the differences bewteen, say, specific SET and DHT amps (something I am personally struggling with currently). As soon as you have a “here is what I heard and here are the circumstances” explaining how something is difference becomes much much easier. IMO, demoing a can on the worst pairing possible is still better than no demo because it at least gives you a frame of refrence. Source gear changes a lot of a sound, but I have personally never once stumbled across a source that truly makes something a different can.
Yeah sorry about that, now up to date
It would likely be the amp13r for sweetness, smoothness, and warmth. Or if I wanted something more neutral organic slightly softer I’d go for a modwright ha300, and if I wanted something more almost tight and clean I’d consider a niimbus/v550 pro or potentially inpol ear. But honestly for 5k I might start looking into used speaker int’s personally, you would have good options in that price range used that I might take over some of the above
No I don’t think it would be a waste of time and would be worthwhile if you get the chance to
I’d mostly agree as long as you are at least midrange electronics, I would actually advice against a demo of some top tier headphones if you have something like a magni modi stack or whatnot since that can really skew things to a large enough amount that I don’t think a demo will be worthwhile. But otherwise yes a demo is better than no demo, just keep expectations reasonable
Something like a pass labs int 60 or 25, viva solista, ayre ax5, hegel h390/h360, vinnie rossi lio, higher end accuphase or luxman, bryston b135 cubed, etc, depends on what you can source used
You might notice I’m not suggesting pre + power combos right off the bat, and that’s because if you do that you are kinda committing to that harder. An integrated offers better value per dollar vs a good pre + power amp and if you are trying to not blow out the budget I think it’s the smarter choice
good to know. Im still a little bit off of the actual purchase here (unless something pops up used at a stellar price), but I was kind of curious if maybe a tube HP amp w/ pre and a separate power amp may give me a more flexible system for the money but I’m just super unsure how lots of stuff (especially tubes and power amps, lol) stack up.
You could do that and still get good results, you would just be trading some sound quality for versatility/flexibly if you do that (unless you spend double lol). But if you have a wide range of cans that trade off could be reasonable, just depends on how hardly you want to commit to something like the susvara
the issue with active pre’s generally is good ones are expensive, I haven’t directly compared the pre’s in my more expensive headphone amps directly to standalone pre-amps, but the design considerations are somewhat different.
Because good active pre’s tend to be expensive, integrated’s tend to win until you get into more expensive systems, or you need a lot of power where packaging tends to become an issue.
Using passive pre’s can limit what you get out of the power amp side.
I haven’t tried the pre’s on some of the better DAC’s those might be an interesting option, Chord, MSB, Lampizator etc. have Pre options, but you’d want to compare them to a high quality stand alone pre amp.
They can be viable depending on the dac, but the ones with good built in pre’s aren’t cheap either. Also dacs with volume control generally tend to sound pretty different from an active pre, but again depends on the design
Lol. Fair enough. I wasnt sure if you could get away with pretty solid SQ if you went something like MZ3 (~3k used) for the pre (that seems to preform pretty well as both a pre and an amp) over just a HP amp that happens to have a pre
TBH I was under the impression a good passive pre was the idea solution if you have a short cable run.
Yeah sure, but now you only have 2-3k ish for the power amp as well. But that’s a good pick for something to be a pre that would be different from your power amp. So that is reasonable
Passive pre’s are cool and all, but honestly I’ve always felt they are a big enough bottleneck in high performing systems that I’d suggest avoiding them at the higher end unless you wanted to go with a TVC preamp (those are the only ones that have really impressed me for being passive, and they are quite expensive for good ones lol). Some things take well to passive pre’s, some absolutely do not
It’s a compelling argument and I did that in my 2 Channel for years, but IME no passive pre is a match for a good active pre, the latter are just expensive. When I added an active pre to my 2 Ch system it was night and day better.
Good to know. Glad I didn’t just get a passive an never question it
Also, not a clue if anyone here owns/has extensively demoed a set, but I’m super currious how something like the sangra-la Sr (or any just good timbre estat equivalent that actualy has emotion) stacks up against the cans here. Way out of my price range unless I sell abslautely everything but I am currious.
I have one but never talk about it, in some ways it’s a few steps above these headphones, in other ways it might necessarily not be. I think a more appropriate comparison would be things like a 007/009, shang Jr, and others are more level playing field comparisons imo, while things like the he90, shang sr, sr omega are a step above
Maybe this more of belongs in a different thread but when you say “step above” do you mean more in terms of a whole package sense or more of a “one to two areas way better but also one or two worse”? TBH I am asking because I was trolling the Shang Sr thread on headfi today during a couple meetings and realized that like all of the amps they talk about using don’t really scale with the cost of the cans at all from what I can tell (for example saw a lot of carbon and BHSE usage and those are both only </= 5k used) meaning they aren’t actually as rough of value propositions as I had initially suspected.
Likely yes
Both, I do think overall they can be a higher class, do to some potential limitations I think there are ways to get the 4 cans in this thread title closer than you might think if you go far enough on source gear
No, and actually previously I’ve said (somewhere, not sure if it was here or elsewhere) it’s easier to take a shang sr to potential than a susvara, but there’s a reason for that, and it’s mainly that the market for stat amps is actually pretty small, so you really don’t have the wealth of higher options for stat amps as you do for traditional headphone amps let alone speaker
I could likely touch on it on another thread at some point
pure curiosity, what would you call like peak shang sr amps? DIY T20/egoita (0 idea what those cost)? or will “just” a BHSE or carbon actually get you there?
Broke off a second question to the general help thread that felt less fitting to ask here btw
Custom one off monsters, or things like a woo 3es elite (which I own for mine), and viva egoista stx. That’s basically all that comes to mind for true top of the line options I’ve experienced. Personally I think there’s good options below that, but we need more ultra high end readily made stat designs
There are many other stat amps I like below those though
Sounds like a pretty deep and expensive secondary rabbit hole
I mean in the end you basically either commit to stats or commit to traditional headphones, it’s hard to justify going both
I was gonna say, that’s a completely different and equally deep rabbit hole. Gotta pick one! 