Icarium

Hrm yes that's true.

Welcome to the fold Elephas! I've been enjoying my UX-1 for awhile now... I can't wait until my APL modified dv60 arrives to shoot it off against the stock UX-1 and Neil's modded unit. APL hifi is nice because they do have an actual partnership with Esoteric (Only modding outfit to have that partnership) which allows them not only to source replacement parts that otherwise are not sold on any market (Transformers for voltage swaps... even the transport they will literally not sell to any other company though the cost is not.. cheap). And the guy knows his way around the stock units. I was having an issue with my UX-1 where the disc tray wasn't opening up all the way I emailed Alex on a Sunday morning and he had me drive up that day and he fixed it on the spot. Immediately diagnosed it as a massive misalignment due to being dropped (Probably by Fedex) and took the thing apart realigned/llubricated things till it was working better than before... free of charge. That all being said. I totally understand where PFKman is coming from. A lot of modding outfits you don't know how reliable they are or even how long they will still be in business. You don't generally know before hand if they will build you a shoddy product that will fail and then refuse to take responsibility and fix it for free or cost of shipping. These are problems that sometimes crop up when not dealing with a relatively established company. Still there are modding companies that are pretty established and guys that have good business practices so people who are pondering that thing just need to dig a little bit harder for info before they make a decision.

I do love me the 3D21 types. Even Neil feels its a toss up between xf2s and the 3D21B.

Wow that is pretty blingy. I don't know about 4 figures for connectors. I love the aesthetic of the furutechs really understated retro elegance. I will stick with those

I only have 3 pairs sadly Had to part with a red pair to acquire a blue! Darkless with your close relationship with Mikhail you should have gone for the adjustable headband (Carbon fiber siding instead of aluminum though)! You can of course borrow one at some point JP. As for pricing I paid 3.1k for the blue pair and sold my red pair for 2.7k unboxed with that weird modded stock cable a shorted out Black Dragon single ended and a blue dragon balanced (My original pair I got from the taiwan guy with the rudistor). I was told the blue pair I bought had offers of 3.3k and people willing to bid it up higher but the seller went with me since I lived 5 minutes from him and the transaction was less painful for him (Guy is in love with the sds-xlr and hd650 combo and the hd650's ability to scale which admittedly the Qualia by far bows to the hd6X0/k1k in). Personally I think the sure thing price on Qualias is probably 3.5k at the moment... and if that pair I had (8/10) had the rest of the accessories/boxes/papers I would have wanted 3k and gotten it. Though I wouldn't have sold if I could afford to just chill with 4 Qualias. I plan to someday at least have 4. And I think that valuation makes sense. It's 2x as limited (~250 pairs) than the L3K and imo a clearly superior headphone unless you are very into the L3K sound and can't get a good fit. Meh if people disagree and are willing to sell me pairs at ~2.5k or less though I will not argue price/value with you and just take you up on that no questions asked ;p

Nice impressions. With my furutech'd out v3 Qualia cable I notice similar improvements. Additionally compared to moon audio cables in general there is a significant widening of soundstage in addition to just being a clearer sound in line with that which you have mentioned.

I didn't really follow this thread, but I'd guess the direction would be reasonably different versus the Stello line for two reasons: 1. Stello DACs probably use opamps in their output stages... Alex Peychev if he was willing to do a mod probably will not. 2. He'd probably consider a tubed output stage as well and Stello products are of course solid state. Of course these mods may in the end take the thing to a more expensive price than the Stello DACs... but... it might still be cost effective. Who knows.

Hrm my friend is looking for some 2.0 dealios for his computer. 150 dollar price range. I rock some M-Audios myself and like them but they are slightly out of his budget and I'm sure there are other good brands too. Swan m-200s? I don't know.

Just ask for a K1000 to see if she really loves you.

Yeah.

Hrm. I don't know if I was the one that said it sounded the "best" out of an RPX100. I did say that I liked Qualias out of my RP010 Classic which was originally designed for Nik by Rudi for Qualias. Though it isn't the best amp by any means for the Qualias. Certainly don't know what the RPX100 sounds like as I haven't heard them so maybe it wasn't me. Though I would think the RPX100 should sound similar to the RP010 as it is the same topology as the RP010B which is the second version of the RP010 Classic. I wouldn't classify the Qualias with the RP010 as bright at all in comparison to say with the KGBR (balanced reference i.e. precursor to the GS-X) where it was a notch brighter with. What cable are you using? Qualias are a bright headphone period... have you heard them less bright out of something else? The RP010B did have a slightly more upfront sound with more organic mids and more prominent slightly punchier bass and I miss that at times.. but its more a question of the merits of punchy versus laid back sound and apparently the organicity/mids were really just distortion. I also noticed the hiss with the Qualias and the RP010 though I didn't think that was really out of the ordinary at the time since there isn't a single headphone amp that I've heard be completely hissless with the Qualias as I think they are the most sensitive headphones out there. The amp that does the best job with them and hiss is the reference half of my SS-1 where it is barely detectable but you can still notice the absence of something when the headphones are unplugged versus when they are plugged in but it does a pretty good job.

Word of mouth of course. I was skeptical before as well. Like who the fuck are these people... man fuck opinionated people. And what the hell is their problem. Sure they don't kiss various manufacturers' asses but they seem to like that Kevin Gilmore guy more than is healthy. Then it was more like.. hrm but there sure are a lot of good threads that seem more applicable to my current headphone situation than at head-fi where besides the "Oh I have way too much money to spend help me make a rig threads," the really good meet impressions threads and the marketplace of course... But I sure wish they would post more. Then I realized... hrm opinionated.. well that's me as well. And being a person who believes design/execution/quality of parts does matter to sound... well how can you not eventually end up placing Kevin Gilmore on a certain pedestal of faith. Even if he is batshit crazy and doesn't necessarily agree with me 100 percent of the time. Now with head-fi down the interesting threads are getting more and more sparse amongst the mehly interesting threads. And where's the sweet drama. It's hard to drama about something that is down. Ohwell. Now I look forward to head-fi coming back up or... long live postjack forum.

Oh I know! <3 Elephas. I was just thinking about my defining headphone personality (Besides being a weird asshole which is indeed inline with bonkers) and the fact that I essentially have gone cost no object... that the headphone I ended up with is the Qualias. A lot of people don't even put it on their topmost tier (Where usually something like HE90/R10 maybe K1000 as well sits). I mean sure there's people like Philodox who wholeheartedly embraces the K340, but I think even he will admit that if he had 0 issues with spending 20k with a rig (Not at all saying he can't afford it but it takes a certain crazy to spend that much in a rig in the first place) might go with something else. And why have 3 Qualias? I can't even answer that one. Neilvg had 3 HE90s (And 2 HEV90s) and uh.. Ken36? or KenW one of those had 3 K1ks... and several have had 4 R10s though there is the bass light/bass heavy versions. There really is no reason to have that many though. Certainly a little bit weird. And I want more. Oh many more. At least 1-2 blue ones. Some actually NOS not just close to NOS ones. Mmmm more.

From Alex Peychev's boards: Icarium wrote: As for whether or not the 3.0 GO can drive K1000s directly... I would have to say probably not. K1000s are significantly harder to drive than the HD650s. They are possibly the most difficult dynamic headphone to drive and need something like 6-8 watts per channel to really sound their best. There is no problem installing a totally transparent Class "A" MOSFET buffer in the NWO so it achieves 10W for the headphones. I did not know what I am going to face when I came down San Leandro for the Head-Fi meeting, otherwise, I'd show prepared. Smile After hearing Neil's electrostatic headphones, I am now even thinking about offering an external unit for electrostats. This is given I have more free time for R&D. Please look out for headphones like Neil's and let me know if one becomes available. I've always wanted to have good sounding headset but have never liked anything, until last Saturday when I heard the Sennh's. WOW! Regards, I wonder what K1ks sound like coming from the NWO directly....

If loving Qualias equates to being bonkers than I will only be satisfied with the level of bonkers that I will be recognized as having when I have enough Qualias to swim in like Scrooge Mcduck. Probably next year this will be an actuality.

Just wait until Alex hooks you up with his power cable.

Happy birthday indeed!

I use it in my office rig. The Yamamoto is a good value at its price and its definitely a fun little amp that does a lot of things well. But what differentiates it from being high end in my mind is that it cannot resolve as well or image/soundstage as well as some amps that cost more (It's better than some 4 figure amps sure, but if you average them I think they eek the Yamamoto out by quite a bit). It's also warmer than neutral, but again I like it for that as it is a fun sound.

I own one and I don't consider it high end. It's upper-mid for me. Personal opinion only of course.

The DAC is going to be similar to mods in my DV60. 6 dacs per channel. ECC99 tubed output stage. Capacitor coupled again sadly. USB interface input as well as a ton of other inputs/outputs which mine will not have. Including a proprietary connection that will couple with his modded transports. As to how it will sound in comparison? In possible to say. I think he said with the fully updated Denons ($2500) they will be a 5 or 6 to the NWO 3.0 GO. My player with a better transport and true balanced output will probably be a 6.5-7. Depending on the quality of transport you use with the dac I would imagine it could bridge anywhere from the range from 5-7. If you say used an APL modded UX-1 transport... I bet you could possibly hit a 7... This is all based off estimates though based on him saying the updated (32 bit dacs/new tubed output stage amongst other mods) Denon will be a 5/6. He will eventually release a dac on par with the NWO 3.0 GO but that will I'm sure between somewhere like 15-20k Probably closer 20k He seems pretty sure that the modded sa10 (CD/SACD)/sa60 (CD/SACD/DVD-A)/dv60 (CD/SACD/DVD-A/DVD-V) all with the same mods will still better the EMM labs SE stack and will be the second best digital available. We'll see if that's the case I can't say I am ultra-ultra confident without the transformer coupling, but hey Alex has followed through asofar with promises related to performance.

Yeah they are using the ECC99

Damn straight we did. Problem is that as powerful as the transformer coupled output stage (The excess power is what lets it function as a preamp) is not quiteee up to the task of driving the HD650s. It did sound awesome with Qualias and anything else though. That it beat out the SS-1 is not overly surprising. He says he has yet to find a customer who has a pre amp that can beat out the NWO and clearly people who have multi figure sources have some pricey ass speaker rigs (Though the merits of which can be of course debated if we examine the rigs individually.. but... well you get the picture.) Alex thought the HE90 was the best headphone hands down and the HD650 is a bit bass heavy but otherwise another very good headphone. He liked the vintage rs-1s as well and the K1k rig... and probably others ;p

Yeah the ES-2 was best in show and then I think a tie between Al's SDS-XLR rig and Min's Zanden Rig. I liked the HD-2 too but.. the SDS-XLR was just on another level. I don't think you were alone in the attack thing. Me and I think one other? Maybe Iron Dreamer remarked on that too. Besides having a lot of strong points the HE90's biggest and most appealing trait is its effortless sound. Neil's rig obviously has maximized that trait in spades while maximizing other things as well. You don't have to concentrate on the music at all. Nothing demands your attention and fatigues you. You simply enjoy. And I think what is necessary for it to be this way is a slight lack of speed/lack of attack. Imo with the 3D21A output tubes which I've been non stop raving/hyping about... I think some of the attack gets put back into it. Whether or not that's an improvement or not depends on taste. I for one like a speedy attack (Hence Qualias even at the sacrifice of midrange). Very interested in hearing Neil's impressions of Hytron 3D21A versus NOS Mullard XF2s with proper biasing on both.

All the information on the site is pretty much 2 gens out of date too.

Yeah that's the APL unit me and spritzer rave about. Well this is what the fuss is all about ;p Very eager to get my DV60 done (Won't be transformer coupled ... less dacs per channel... probably no pre-amp functionality as capacitor couple it just wont produce as much power to warrant pre-amp functionality and obviously weak ass transport versus the UX-1). Some day I'll get that UX-1 modded though! Alex though straight up hated my SS-1 ;p He said the SDS sounded much better (Had previously brought it to his home in Dixon with Qualias). It was still acting kind of wonky too... too bad Mikhail didn't come out and help me iron out the weird channel imbalance issues.