aerius

I've had an HD800 on loan for a few days and so far I'm not digging it. To me it's sorta like a super AKG K701, which is unfortunate since I don't like the K701. Yes it's super clean, yes it's very detailed, but like the K701 there's not much joy in the music. Which would be fine if it had no other issues since it would make for a great tool in testing out amps & sources, or doing recording/monitoring/mastering and that kinda stuff. Unfortunately I had several issues. My main issue is the bass, or rather, "where's the goddamn bass? I want my bass back, damnit!" If I play any of the songs off Die, Rugged Man, Die by RA the Rugged Man, I expect big fat fucking bass, I don't get that with the HD800, it's more like what I'd hear from a set of Quad ESL-57's. It doesn't hit hard, it ain't got weight to it, and it can't groove for beans. This is a problem even with classical, say for instance the last couple minutes of "Ride of the Valkyries" which should sound huge with good weight behind it. The HD800 fails here once again, I far prefer the presentation of my HD580 here. Yeah it gets confused and compressed, but at least the weight is there to make it sound huge, whereas the H800 sounds wussy for lack of better words. Similar problem with the XRCD version of "Scheherazade", the bass just isn't there to balance out the rest of the piece. I also noted the upper midrange/lower treble wonkiness mentioned by The Sloth, which showed up in the violin sections of "Scheherazade", it just doesn't sound right. I had some issues with the treble as well, but managed to fix that with the right tubes in my CDP and amp, at least enough so it doesn't bug me at normal listening levels. One final problem for me was the soundstage, as with the K701 it's always too darn big. When the recording calls for a small acoustic space, the HD800 doesn't shrink down the soundstage to match. For instance if you took the Cowboy Junkies' "Trinity Session" and "Whites Off Earth Now", both of which were recorded with the same single ambisonics mic but in very different acoustic spaces (a medium sized church and their own garage, respectively), the reproduction of the soundfield should be very different as well. My K340 is excellent at this, it'll shrink the space right down and make it nice & intimate whereas the HD800 always sounds like the music is in a bigger space than it should be. I've been in the Church of the Holy Trinity where the Trinity Session was recorded (and heard some cool bands & music there), it's not as big as the HD800's make it sound. I think part of the excellent separation that the HD800 achieves comes from making the soundstage artificially large, if you have more space there's more room to put stuff without having it overlap & get fuzzy.

Ride of the Valkyries, and crank the volume way up. Why? Because it's loud & fun, goddamnit. Plus a lot of systems can't handle the dynamics and crap out. O Fortuna from Orff's "Camina Burana", also with the volume cranked up good. Same reason as above. Volga Boatmen's Song as performed by the Red Army Choir (make sure it's the Naxos CD). This pretty much covers it all, it has a ridiculous dynamic range from the opening to the crescendo as it goes from a solo voice to a full choir & orchestra. Most systems will crap out at around the 2 minute mark, but it keeps getting louder for another 30 seconds or so. Wait for the trumpets a bit before the 2:25 mark, if they can't cut through the sound and blast you the system is crap. The choir & orchestra will also expose any colourations in the midrange, and quite a few in the bass & treble as well. If the voices start breaking up, getting "honky" or don't sound natural, I know there's something wonky going on. It also works soundstaging & imaging and pretty much everything else except the ability to play female vocals. Sweet Ones by Sarah Slean. Cause I like it and it sounds good.

Not a headphone meet, and not exactly in Toronto, but it's a meet nonetheless. Audio Meet Announcement

Quads in a larger room with a high ceiling is asking for trouble, unless you never plan to listen any louder than 60-70dB or so, and the music doesn't have much bass. The Living Voice Avatar, though it's a dynamic speaker shares many of the same sound qualities with the Quad 57 including the super clear midrange and freedom from colourations in the sound. It also plays louder, but it's still limited in loudness & dynamics since there's only so much a couple 5.5" drivers can do. You might be able to get away with it in your room but I wouldn't bet on it. I'd agree with the above posters on the recommendation of Apogees, I haven't heard the Duettas yet (my experience is with the Diva, Scintilla, and Centaur) but if they're anything like the ones I've heard they should be great. The two issues I can think of is that a)they're rather old and not every one is going to be in good condition, and b)they're pretty demanding on amps, especially the Scintilla.

Yeah, about $2000 per metre.

Wow, there sure is a lot of extra room in the chassis for all the new parts you put in on the mod. Great work!

Heh, nice, I didn't notice the spelling mistake on my first read. Since there's only one tube it must be a cathodyne phase splitter. Lots of gain, but pretty much no current since most 6SL7 designs run them at 2.5mA or so. Even if you run the 6SL7's hard you can only put 3-4mA through each section, and if you paralleled the sections in each tube that's only 6-8mA to drive each EL34, then you still have the massively high output impedance of the 'SL7 to deal with. So it's probably some kind of SRPP or cathode follower setup, but then we're back to 3-4mA of current at most which then runs into high frequency roll-off problems thanks to the input capacitance of the EL34. If I was stuck with current production tubes, I'd probably go with 4 12AT7's or a pair of 6SL7's followed by 6SN7 drivers run at 10mA or so. Or maybe a quad of 6H30's or ECC99's.

That's what it is according to their product description page WES Electrostatic Headphone Amplifier But 6SL7's as drivers? I really don't get that one.

K340's are weird like that, I own one myself and I still haven't heard two pairs that sound the same. Every single one of the 5 or 6 K340's I heard are different, though they do fall into either the bass heavier or bass light categories.

I usually go with Opus 46 No. 1, 5, 6, 7, & 8. I have several different recordings of the pieces and I like the Naxos recording of the Slovak Philharmonic the most, I think they do the best interpretation of the music. DVORAK: Slavonic Dances, Opp. 46 and 72 CD - Listen to Classical Music - Orchestral Music - Naxos Direct

Secret #29 of audio sales: Everything sounds good with female jazz ensemble. Well, almost everything, the equipment in question practically has to be defective for it sound bad with this music genre. Which is why when you go to an audio show, most of the manufacturers/dealers will jazz music and girl with guitar music, it always sounds good. Patricia Barber, the Cowboy Junkies' "Trinity Sessions" album, that stuff never sounds bad. But if you decided to play Dvorak's Slavonic Dances or any of the Red Army Choir's military marches, you'll find that many systems will crap themselves since they can't handle the complexity and dynamics of the music.

Do it as an invite only meet then, keeps the size nice & manageable as well.

Did I miss a revision or something, cause it looks even more tacky and stupid than I remember.

The 6H30 has a gain of around 15 and a plate impedance of 1500 ohms. So, let's run the math. Let's pick a Grado with a 32 ohm impedance, for this to present a load that's 3x the Rp of the tube, you'll need to get the impedance up to 4500 ohms, an impedance ratio of 140:1 which requires a turns ratio of 11.9:1 on the transformer. This would give an overall voltage gain of 2dB, which is a fair bit short of the 6dB of gain which is claimed for the IEC output. Which means 1 of 3 possibilities: The transformer doesn't present an impedance of 3x the tube's plate impedance The gain is 2dB, not 6dB Your idea of a low impedance headphone is something with an impedance of around 80 ohms

Play some Fear Factory or Slayer and crank the volume to 11. R10s really hate it when you do that.

This is something which I've noticed with loudspeakers & headphones, one which does everything well won't really have an area where it's great and stands apart from the rest. Conversely, a headphone or speaker which is great in one or two areas generally isn't going to be an even all-round performer. I don't really see this problem with sources & amps, well, at least once you spend enough money on them, but with transducers there's always a trade-off to make, at least to my ears.

One possibility I see is the harmonic distortion graph, it looks like something you'd see on a solidstate amp where the 3rd harmonic is higher than the 2nd. Contrast this with the Senn 650 where the 3rd is lower than the 2nd, and which as far as I can remember, no one has called bright nor fatiguing. And here's a K701, no wonder I didn't like the darn thing.

I have heard the Woo 6 though not the maxed out version, I don't think it's that good of a match for the RS-1, the main issue being the midbass & midrange not being clear & detailed enough, along with too much "tube sound". My guess is the output transformers & power supply isn't up to task as I've heard better results with the same tubes in one of my proof of concept DIY amps. My recommendation for that price range is the Trafomatic Head One which I found to be quite a bit better with my RS-1's. It's quite neutral with a more detailed presentation. I'm not sure what it costs in Europe but it's around $1000 USD over in North America.

I have a few of the same pieces, but most of my records are Deutsche Grammophon and London labels so I very much doubt we have the same records. Chances are the it's a totally different orchestra & conductor as well.

You should try cranking up the bias till the plates glow and see if it sounds better, 6AS7's aren't that expensive. Going back to the OP, one amp that comes to mind is the Trafomatic Head One, but it's a transformer output amp not an OTL like the singlepower. Definitely a nice neutral sound and not the warm mushy sound found in many tube amps.

Actually the amp sees the 20 ohm load in series with the paralleled load of the 2 ohm resistor and the headphone. In the case of Grados this would work out to a bit under 2 ohms in series with 20 ohms. I've built one of these doohickeys with 5W resistors way back in the day, my sources & 'phones weren't that great back then so I didn't really notice much of a difference, if any, between the adaptor output and the headphone output on my receiver.

Someone should hire a lawyer and sue his ass for false advertising.

And they're all sold out of Western Electric 437A's. Bummer.

Elliptical concrete Le Cl

There's actually something better, full choir & military band, in this case the Red Army Choir and Band. There's huge dynamics on some of the tracks combined with a very dense & complex mix. The Song of the Volga Boatman is almost guaranteed to cause severe compresssion & distortion on damn near anything when played at a realistic volume, that is to say "postjack loud". My K340's are hopeless, the RS-1 can get the dynamics but suffers a lot of colourations while my Senn 580 compresses the dynamics with some mild distortion. I need to bug someone with an SR-007 to see if it can handle the abuse. Amazon.com: Russian Favourites: Vasily Agapkin, Boris Aleksandrov, Aleksandr Aleksandrovich, Anonymous, Russian Anonymous, Matvey Blanter, Lev Konstantinovich Knipper, N. Kool, A. Novikov, Yury Alexandrovich Shaporin, Vasily Pavlovich Solovyov-Sedoy, Don't buy the "best of" CD even though it has some of the same songs as this one, the sound quality on that one is crap. Another recommendation would be "Whites Off Earth Now!!" by the Cowboy Junkies, available on hybrid SACD. I find the recording's a lot more dynamic & immediate than the "Trinity Session" album which everyone raves about, but which I feel is over-rated having heard "Whites" and been to a couple concerts at the church where "Trinity" was recorded. Last one for now would be Dvorak's Slavonic Dances, so far I've heard 3 versions and the one below is the best one. The violins, especially in track 5 are great for showing up colourations & resonances in closed headphones, they go honky and don't sound like violins anymore. Sound quality isn't perfect, but it's more than good enough for demo needs and it's by far the best performance & interpretation of the music. Amazon.com: Dvorak: Slavonic Dances, Op. 46 & Op. 72: Antonin Dvorak, Zdenek Kosler, Slovakia Philharmonic Orchestra: Music