Audiophilepure

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” A true revelation was the ability to listen to the Rolling Stones on my HD800, any track, off of any of their albums, yes they remained poorly recorded, no “silk purses out of sow’s ears” (I was due a cliché). This is just place where my LCD-3f had always been my first choice, by a wide margin (yes the Audeze bass still makes them the first choice, just less so). The Heron 5 added warmth and bass punch as compared to the Taurus Mk.2 and was huge plus with less than stellar recordings with the HD800 and the Ether C’s that I listened to briefly at the Music City Meet. Several of the Ether C owners reported that the Airist Heron 5, in my setup, was the best that they had heard these headphones sound.

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” The Abyss headphone is capable of delivering all of these things, but only—in my experience—when pushed by true top-tier components (merely good gear simply isn’t good enough to elicit optimal performance from the AB-1266 headphones). But the Schiit components more than rose to the occasion; in fact, they helped my AB-1266s sound better than I have ever heard them sound in my home. Their power and control on the low percussion section was almost frightening, while their burnished, golden treatment of the brass fanfare was similarly intense, yet beautifully balanced and realistically weighted. But the piece de resistance was their handling of the violin solo, which I noted caught the “light, sunlight-sparkling-on-open-water, dance-like quality of the violin.” The Abyss is capable of great performance, but only when the DAC and amp are up to the task, as the Yggdrasil and Ragnarok plainly are.”

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” Op-amp rolling is very popular among audiophiles and the Lycan encourages that tradition. The sonic characteristic of the Lycan changes when different op-amps are used. Its open frame design and gold plated DIP socket make op-amp rolling with the Lycan fun and easy. The SS4 op-amp was sent to Nathan and me when it was first launched but up to now I never had the possibility to try it out. The SS5 compared to the Gen 4 SS op-amp requires less voltage and current. That means peak performance can be reached using less power. There is no sonic difference between adopting one unit of dual SS op-amp and 2 units of single SS op-amps. Gen 5’s cascade output stage is the result of over 10 years of research and five generations of designs. According to Burson, its sonic signature is the most refined we ever created. Burson also just launched the V5i just last week but it hasn’t reached us yet.”