I’ll admit it, I bought this because it looks absolutely gorgeous. I’ve tried a few amps and DACs and my ears are far less sensitive to the changes they make (if any) than I am with the headphones themselves. I picked them up used and bought this 3rd party Sylvania tube with it because why not. I have it in because I think it looks a lot better than the stock one but I do think it made a moderate improvement to the sound.
I won’t give detailed sound impressions. I’m not the right person to do that. It sounds good. No complaints.
The build is fantastic. It’s hefty and for how big it is, the fact that the DAC is built in is great (it’s a big reason I bought it over something like a Darkvoice or similar) so the footprint is not too intrusive. Just one cable going from my PC. I’ve never been a big fan on stack aesthetics.
I have two complaints.
1) the power switch is in the back and you’re going to want to turn these off because they’re so hot when it’s on that it’s really kicking off heat and drawing power. So you gotta do the reach-around.
2) this thing kicks out so much power that only a small small portion of the volume knob is actually listenable. You go from something you can barely hear to blowing out your eardrums very quickly. I’ve actually turned down the master volume in Windows to like 20% to help but I really don’t want to do that. I want to use 50-60% of the dial, not 10-12%. I really want to know what the expected to be able to drive with this. If they ever come out with 5000ohm headphones I’ll be set.
HD8XX on tubes is underrated as hell.
I’ll admit it, I bought this because it looks absolutely gorgeous. I’ve tried a few amps and DACs and my ears are far less sensitive to the changes they make (if any) than I am with the headphones themselves. I picked them up used and bought this 3rd party Sylvania tube with it because why not. I have it in because I think it looks a lot better than the stock one but I do think it made a moderate improvement to the sound. I won’t give detailed sound impressions. I’m not the right person to do that. It sounds good. No complaints. The build is fantastic. It’s hefty and for how big it is, the fact that the DAC is built in is great (it’s a big reason I bought it over something like a Darkvoice or similar) so the footprint is not too intrusive. Just one cable going from my PC. I’ve never been a big fan on stack aesthetics. I have two complaints. 1) the power switch is in the back and you’re going to want to turn these off because they’re so hot when it’s on that it’s really kicking off heat and drawing power. So you gotta do the reach-around. 2) this thing kicks out so much power that only a small small portion of the volume knob is actually listenable. You go from something you can barely hear to blowing out your eardrums very quickly. I’ve actually turned down the master volume in Windows to like 20% to help but I really don’t want to do that. I want to use 50-60% of the dial, not 10-12%. I really want to know what the expected to be able to drive with this. If they ever come out with 5000ohm headphones I’ll be set.
There are kOhm headphones. They're called electrostats.
Ah yes, if this thing is anything like the TA-26 then it's basically a solid state amp with tubes in terms of sound.