Audiophilepure

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“Before I talk about sound, I want to lay bare my preferences. I was at a meet a last year, and a guy there had a moded HD800 there with a few high powered tube amps (I don’t remember the names of the amps, sorry). They added a lot of warmth to the HD800, but I missed the deeper, tighter bass you can get with SS amps, and all the warmth seemed to be fighting with the natural signature of the HD800, and not working with it. Listening to it on my SS setup wasn’t any better. It was cold and ruthless. The guy called me back over and told me he wanted me to hear something. He broke out a hybrid amp (again, I don’t remember the name) and had me give it a listen. It was perfect. It was very linear, with very tight and deep bass, while adding just a touch of smoothness to the sound. To me, instead of trying to make the headphone something it wasn’t, it complimented the HD800, adding to the strengths of the headphone while smoothing out the rough edges. It made no effort to change the sound. Now, I am not saying this to dump on OTL tube amps, and I know, with different tubes, you can alter their sound quite a bit, but I want to be clear on what kind of sound I favor.”

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