Filburt

Does anyone happen to know a good place to get the parts to build one? Wanted to make one for my iPod Touch Thanks!

I agree on this. I have an iPod Touch and, after having used most of the iPods out there, I was a bit surprised by it in that it sounded better to me than I'd typically encountered from iPods. Then I go to head-fi and they insist it's one of the worst? lol. It does have a bit of hiss; more than a bit with IEMs, but I haven't found it distracting when actually listening to music and, overall, I'm really happy with it. It is beyond slick as far as gadgets go. Where does one acquire parts to build a dock, by the way?

Okay... Anyone have any impressions on the CK7? They look interesting, but I'm a bit reluctant after owning the ATH-CM7 and not being impressed (got it used, though...).

Are these any good? I figured it'd be good to get at least something approximating the real story on these by asking fellow head-casers. Thanks for any help you can offer in advance

From a performance standpoint as a source, I'd at least have to give the thumbs down on the DA10. Few products have given me such a case of "That's it? I don't get it..." as the DA10. With all the hype on head-fi, I thought maybe it'd be at least decent performance (for the cost, anyhow) and what I found was a pretty mediocre overall performance. Not sure it would work so hot driving directly from the outputs, either. Maybe the Desktop Balanced would be a better way to go; I'm not sure since I haven't tried it nor do I really know much about what it looks like inside. Osjur - I didn't much care for the Opera w/ K701 when I tried it. I don't know why Meier likes the LM6171/BUF634 combo so much; I found it to be bad news sonically in my own experiments and Meier's stuff hasn't disabused me of that impression.

Fungi did you see my reply to you?

Is this from the dac or also even when it's used amp-only?

My experience with the 701 was that, compared to the other pair of headphones I had handy, the 701 maybe changed for a month or so and then it has sounded the same since. I don't know how many hours I used it, but hysteresis on driver construction of this sort isn't particularly surprising nor particularly mystical. Amp burn in, though, is rather voodooish, unexplained, and honestly doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me both based on my experience with electronics generally (and industries reliant upon these parts en masse) and my personal experience with headphone amps. Head-fi is "burn in" crazy and it seems there is little restraint on what people will try to "burn in." Perhaps it's based on some faulty argument from analogy that, since one thing may break in (headphones), it's somehow intuitive that all things will. I also don't care for it being used as a means for certain posters to attempt to downplay the relevance or accuracy of product performance impressions they don't agree with.

UE9 is not where I'd look for what you seem to be asking for, based on my experience of them. I haven't been all that impressed with UE thus far (although I've only tried the 750 and UE9). Based on my experience, I would choose either the W5000 or K271S. Velour pads definitely upped the comfort on the 271 for me; I really like these pads. 271s isolate better than the W5000, and the 5000 hangs more loosely (and leaks more). I got the 271 specifically because I wanted more isolation, both in _and_ out (e.g. what I think you're looking for), and it does about as good a job as I've encountered in that regard as far as circumaural headphones go. Plus, they really just sound great. I'm not a big basshead, though, so I find the bass pretty satisfying; it does get better with some break-in (e.g. driver hysteresis). The overall presentation is more balanced, open, and airy than a lot of closed cans I've used. I don't generally like closed headphones, but these won me over. The W5000 has more low end presence although I'm not sure if the mids are as clean and balanced. They also cost a lot more. Still, I like the W5K also

What?

Looks like part digital-side stuff to me, and part analog as well. Poor filtering/noise shaping and perhaps a sloppy modulator on the 2704 coupled with the peculiar aspects of the Predator design. You can see the digital-domain stuff in the Alien DAC RMAA as well - http://www.amb.org/rmaa/AlienDAC_16b_44k_battpwr_transit_20070420.htm. However, the Predator's results are still worse.

Really? The crosstalk is interesting from the standpoint of rising with lower frequency; contrary to what is often seen (although probably due in part to the very low feedback resistors used). However, I think the distortion graphs are both more interesting and more meaningful from the standpoint of performance. That is a lot of IM distortion, and that's at nearly full scale with a stable waveform. On actual music, it's probably even worse. Distortion products at nearly -80dB with a ton of odd and high order junk along with noise is rather unimpressive. In person, the story wasn't much different (to me, anyhow).

The velour pads improve comfort considerably. Additionally, they appear to help with the problem of shallowness. Overall, a big improvement in function and comfort for me

I don't think head-case needs as many moderators as it has. It seemed like the whole point to head-case (and certainly what I understand to be the draw of the site) was that it would not be moderated much, and now that there are moderators some of them have taken it upon themselves to create a need for moderation by coming up with various personal standards for content. This was pretty much the predictable result of increasing the mod count here on head-case, and so it goes...

I see. I still think the 8740/8741 should be buffered right at the output, and additionally I'd like to see use of film caps rather than electrolytics (though the Silmic II is a very good cap as far as electrolytics go). I know the Wolfson datasheet specs 10uF lytics right on the output, but it also specs an antiquated op-amp of relatively low performance in the LPF, so I'm not sure much deference should be accorded, and buffering the output directly seems more likely to preserve maximum performance since the dac will see a much easier load. For the i-out dac, I think "passive" I/V is bad news from a performance standpoint. It's an imperfect conversion to begin with, and in addition it seems as though it would be exceedingly difficult to get the full dynamic range. On top of that, from what I understand the PCM1794 has a current offset which, on a passive scheme, can result in offset at your output. Putting the active I/V on a seperate board isn't a good idea, either.

No, I was not aware of a revised design. Link to it? The Opus I'm familiar with uses the WM8740, which is a v-out dac and so there is no I/V to be performed. The modular design sounds neat in concept, but the implementation raises my concern even if assuming modularity is a reasonable platform for a dac, which I think is also open to reasonable debate (my preference is towards one-piece).

AKG K271S

Well, unless the Predator has some sort of DC-DC converter, the Bithead would appear to have more supply voltage (4xAAA). The overall design itself isn't particularly complicated. Where did he say the battery is excluded from the warranty?

I wouldn't; the Pico implementation is substantially better IMO.

I was wondering about that too.

http://www.head-fi.org/forums/f5/rsa-predator-appreciation-thread-277017/ Heh. was bound to happen I guess. Seems like there frequently has to be an attempt made to fetishise a product and deliberately exclude negative commentary in the headlining thread.

I don't know if this is any help, but I think the person (kitaoji) who had the DA100 at the meet I was at had a W5000 as well. Wish I could compare them again though, so I could help more. Seems like the DA100 is relatively safe choice, overall, though. I think at the time I preferred the VDA-2 by a bit, but this may have been due to it being a bit less warm, which with the Zana Deux worked to its advantage. Perhaps with your setup this would be less of an issue; I wish I'd checked it with the GS-X. I haven't heard the 840c or been able to see the internal design particularly well, so I can't comment much on it. Aside from that, the DA10 would be at the bottom of the list for me out of what's left. Any of the other choices sound fine; but, again, the DA100 and VDA-2 sound like they're probably the best buy and most palatable to your realistic budget situation.

Where did I tell you that you "don't hear what [you] hear?" I accept that your opinion differs from mine, and I recognise that people hear differently. I'm relatively familiar with psychoacoustics at this point, having learned about it back when I helped with tuning psy models on lossy codecs, and continuing to study about it since then. I don't think that's really the problem here, though. It seems as though you want me to go beyond tolerating your opinion to outright endorsing it as though I believe it is an accurate representation of the DA10's relative performance, and I'm not going to do that. I gave my impressions of the DA10, explained my reasoning, and responded to one of your comments. If you don't like what I have to say, you're welcome to express that, just as you're welcome to say you like the DA10, but don't act like I'm shouting you down when things don't go your way. Or we just have some people here who happen to agree on this particular issue. Then again, maybe you're right, it's a big conspiracy and afterwards we pat each other on the back for a job well done.

So? Are you implying I am or was impaired or something? I don't know what their criteria are, but I'm basing my judgment of it on my experience with both qualitative and quantitative analysis of audio equipment. I know you like your DA10, but it may be worth considering that at least some of your disagreement with impressions here is an incident of limited experience rather than the rest of us being either intoxicated or desiring equipment with poorer linearity.

I have no idea if the VAC1 makes a difference, because I've only ever used the VDA-2 with the VAC1 as that is what grano had. I found the GS-X + VDA-2 was not too cold for me; some of it will depend on your K701s. I've found the earlier (I think before serial number 3000) version doesn't fill out the low end as well, but didn't compare with that specific setup, so maybe you'll find a different result in that case if yours is the earlier model. Still overall, if you're looking for something warm, the DA100 may be the better choice; although I don't think I'd pair it with the Opera (I find the LM6171/BUF634 sound too thick and inresolute generally, I suppose). I'm not familiar with the ATH-HA5000. I'd personally pair it with something like a dynalo (e.g GS-1 or a DIY build). I like the PCM1794 better than the AK4395, but the AK is still a very good chip as far as sigma delta converters go; I think it'd be better if it were i-out. 'Musical' is a pretty nebulous term; I think it commonly just refers to whether the person finds the sound engaging when listening to music. I didn't have the opportunity to measure the DA10, but it didn't sound particularly linear to me. The OP275 itself isn't what I'd call high performance, and the overall implementation of the AD1955 in the DA10 didn't seem to be anything special; I do wonder about the quality of the filtering. Overall, I agree with deepak; it lacked dynamics, was dry, and the soundstage was not to my liking, each time I used one. I think this was probably due to transient distortion products, maybe high order harmonics, the mediocre slew and settling characteristics of the OP275, and perhaps limitations imposed by the analog stage design generally. I was pretty underwhelmed by it as a source, considering the praise it received on head-fi.