RudeWolf

That's phase, man. Impedance is the other graph which hovers around 47 Ohms, tho that doesn't change anything. After much pondering I find that my main beef with Utopias is that they don't have anything they're the best at. Orthodynamics will best them at bass, HD800 has better soundstage... and so on. The only exception might be build quality, but that's a moot-ish point.

Elear Utopia Had the Utopia for a few days on RME ADI-2 Pro. Both headphones share the same Focal house sound with upper mid scoop and in headphone terms slight treble hype. Elear is in a good price bracket, but Utopia sits 2 grand too high imho. Stock Utopia had too little bass for my tastes with overall brighter tuning, technicalities wise it's better than Elear. The upper mid scoop on both cans keep them from reaching greatness, because many instruments end up sounding wrong. What's interesting the scoop isn't annoying. Overall Utopia might be just about the only flagship dynamic headphone without crucial drawbacks. Like the HD800 for example. As it is it's overpriced unless the looks give you a mad boner, which would be understandable. Elear is priced better and sits a bit below HD800. It has a more user friendly tuning, but soundstage is way smaller. Choose your poison between bass and soundstage. Uncalibrated I'd prolly go for the Elear.

Shouldn't be bad input devices, if you're getting noise variation with potentiometer. Even more - 50Hz should be a grounding problem, check the grounding scheme of your amp.

Yea, at least that stuff ain't obsolete!

Looks great! How much was it grand total?

One French mag sent in a pair of Elears for measurement the other week. Wasn't too shabby, dug pretty low for a dynamic open back, the treble peak wasn't too painful. The garden hose cable was annoying and I didn't like too much the upper mid suckout. With the overall treble happiness of higher end headphones I was pretty content with these. Build quality was superb unlike the Spirit Pros, which crack and creak.

I'm starved for good space operas, so obviously I enjoyed the first season and second seems even better. Btw, did anyone notice that dialog tracks for S01 were mixed super horribly?

I'd only splurge for an ATC amp if it's a built in for active speakers. They're not bad, but not a good value. If you can, put less money in amplification and more in the speakers themselves.

I'd use this - https://www.minidsp.com/products/minidspkits/nanosharc-kit You get superior DSP control, extra inputs and remote volume/input/filter control. Supposedly the DAC should be input agnostic due to FIFO reclocking.

That's just grand. You ninja those right before me and now they collect volcanic dust... Well, get 7-9V of AC or DC, fashion a spdif input and you should be able to have music.

What's the latest news regarding a Denafrips DAC being spotted in Iceland? P.S. Looks like 2017 will be the year of the R2R dac. I sort of feel torn between a RME ADI-2 Pro and one of these Asian miracles.

Just got mine, thanks! Need to order the rest of the parts for my Dynamini.

Btw, what's the general consensus on Glycine? I've seen it pop up on Massdrop and some designs are interesting, but border on tad too garish for me. This seems like the right kind of black.

I'm pretty sure you'd use analog in this case only to connect a phono preamp. Otherwise it's a DAC/AMP unit. As for DSP, I'm probably biased, but I've never encountered any headphone which lost more than it gained by properly applying measurement based tonal correction. With stuff like this available I see no point in using regular USB->I2S converters. Bake in a profile for headphones and a different one for your speakers/room. Switch with remote.

It's another format cashgrab. The only reason it's known is due to some highly connected ex-Dolby peeps behind it. Streamers are desperate for a differentiation factor, so they grab every straw they get. Credit: I work for a company which might be able to deliver the superweapon the streamers need. And it doesn't involve selling all your gear/music. Thus we're sort of competing with MQA, even though our methods can be compatible.

For 95% of the folks the answer is - hand it over to someone with an oven. It's doable by hand, especially with a hot air station for the power pad and then dragging along the side pins. Most likely I'll be buying a pair of AMB regs.

Mouser parts here - http://www.mouser.com/ProjectManager/ProjectDetail.aspx?AccessID=497a265867

You can try this - http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/swap-meet/299822-fs-soekris-dam1021-rev1-0-02-bc550-mod.html These are the earlier boards, but seem properly modded. As for the input board - I might actually be able to sell you one together with an Amanero USB->I2S converter. It will have on board connection for volume, input switching and input indication. Ideally you'd want an extra 12V DC power supply because that supposedly improves the noise floor/sound. For a leaner build I could also ship you a proper 7VA transformer to use with the DAC. Here's one of the last images of my DAC still in operation. You can see the input/control board.

Anyhow - if someone wants to get a good taste of that multibit goodness, get the soekris board. Some come up cheap 2nd hand, just make sure that you out-ninja other folks who might also get their multibit sweetooth on. I got mine right after they became available. At first it sucked ass and was borderline a disaster. The guy who designed them is pretty experienced in digital electronics, but not so much in analog, so there were fuckups. And by fuckups I mean a few guys got their stuff blown up because of asymmetrical PSU loading which spat out an uber nasty DC transient on powerdown. Also initially digital filters sucked, so they had to be swapped out. Same for Vref capacitance, which used to be lacking. Supposedly that's been sorted for rev4, so if you're up for it, get a half decent +/-12V DC PSU and try to find a good input board from my compatriot Normunds at DIYA. Some folks say that, if done right the DAM can trade punches with Yggy and come out on top. In the leaner implementations it's still one of the best diy DAC options out there. However, if you hate hassle/adventure, just get the Modi Multibit. I think that it's a much better option than half of the old multibit big iron DACs out there. P.S. Should any of you need info about working with Soekris boards, drop me a pm. I've gone through DIYA threads, so you don't have to. P.P.S. I killed my board by lifting one of the Vref cap pads.

There's a Soekris module inside there, so it might sound good. If they have bothered to change the digital filters and modded the PSU loading so it doesn't kill your downstream stuff on powerdown... *shakes fist at Birgir for ninja-ing those two boards*

Has anyone actually built the CFA3? On one hand, there are plenty of decent smart choices for driving headphones nowadays (maybe it's different for stats), but on the other - I'd love to build something insane for a change. So, I was thinking - 2xGR PSU's powering a pair of CFA3 boards in a 2U 400mm Modushop case. Double Joshua tree attenuators for volume control. Or should I just stick to ebay Dynahi kits and sit my ass down?

LS50ies are a safe bet, if you need bookshelves. The ELAC coax bookshelves look nice, but i can't understand the advantage of using a 3-way arrangement if you have 5-6" woofers. And yeah, get a sub if you can.

Bah, just use a DAC which has a memory buffer and galvanic isolation. It will sound the same with any input, because jitter will be dictated by the on-board master clock and galvanic isolation will take care of most of the ground/line crud. The only price to pay for this would be latency induced by buffer size. Mine adds 0.5ms. You can't just go spewing out stuff like "USB is dead, because my AOIP gear makes me feel better/different". P.S. Just keep in mind guys, that USB audio can't really be compared to other data transfer protocols which have error correction. USB audio can't do checksums and repeat sends, it'll just cut out, if the stream gets interrupted. In theory you could make an audio transfer protocol which would have a buffer and then attempt resends for bad packages until the buffer runs out. Think - anti-vibration systems on those portable CDPS your cool friends had.

Currently there's a slight shitshow going on in the Apple official USB-C dongle review thread - http://www.apple.com/shop/reviews/MJ1K2AM/A/usb-c-digital-av-multiport-adapter I have pretty neutral sentiment for both of the major players. For 20 years I've been using mainly Windows and for the last year or so getting a MBP for work was a wonderful revelation. I'd hate to return to Windows for work.