Adventures in Downgrading

Recently, I was jamming out to my Olina SEs on an Apple Dongle and wondering why I had so much expensive equipment on my desk when this sounded fine. Still, I didn’t want to give up my Custom Cans-modded HD6XX, my Atrium, or my Bottlehead Crack. But since I got the Crack, I’d been using my RebelAmp a lot less except as a Preamp for my cheapo speakers (I’m not able to use speakers much because of my living situation). I did have a Schiit Bifrost 2/64, but if the Apple Dongle sounded pretty good to me, did I really need something so expensive? Anyway, the 2/64 seemed to add a little bit too much, I don’t know, texture? Graininess? Something. Anyway, I also have a Schiit Modi+ in my closet and that sounded pretty good, but what if I replaced the Rebel and the Bifrost with a nice, compact little package that wouldn’t take up much space on my desk? What if I replaced them both with the inexpensive, feature-rich, and well-reviewed Fiio K7 Pro? Think of how much money and desk space I could recoup then!

So I bought the K7, plugged it in, wired it up and…

And it was terrible. Just glare-city, glassy, overbearing treble without much depth or detail. Keep in mind I’m listening to this with the HD6XX and the Atrium, and in both cases using the balanced out so getting the (theoretical) optimum experience. Likewise on my cheapo Edifier R1700BT speakers, there was a glare and treble that I’d never experienced with the Bifrost/Rebel setup.

How does this thing have so many good reviews? I’ve even seen people on Discord say this is the default budget recommendation over the Modi/Magni stack. Is there something fundamentally different about my hearing from other peoples? Because this thing sounds unbearable to me, and it clearly doesn’t to a lot of people, I just don’t get it.

But this isn’t the first time I had an experience like this. My first proper DAC/amp was the Zen DAC which I loved and paired with a Sundara. I then added the Zen Can to it and thought it was even better.

But then the GoldenSound MQA video came up and one of the things he said there was that the Zen DAC applied MQA sound even when not using MQA (though I found out later this was apparently only if you applied a firmware update?) and in disgust I resolved to replace the Zen stack. I’d also started reading ‘Objectivist’ stuff online about how you only need something basic with low distortion and everything else was snake oil anyway, and so on that tip I replaced the Zen DAC/Can with a JDS Labs Atom stack. And… at first I tried to convince myself that I liked it but really I didn’t. At all. The Atom stack sounded harsh to me, some songs I couldn’t even listen to anymore, it was painful. In the end I had to face that I refuse to believe that an amp that made songs sound worse can be ‘better’, this was obviously wrong, I don’t care what the SINAD numbers looked like.

The K7 was not as bad (at least from memory) as the Atom stack, less harsh and more glare-y and glassy. Still, this was not good.

So I returned the K7. But I wasn’t done. I already had the Modi+ and knew I liked that, and I’d bought my father a Modi+/Magni+ stack for his HD6XX and I knew that sounded great. So why not downgrade to that?

And so in comes the Magni+. And it sounds pretty good, definitely miles better than the K7. Maybe a little less resolving than the K7, it’s true, and much less smooth, detailed, rich, and deep than the Bifrost/Rebel stack, but good. Good enough? I definitely loved getting all that space back on my desk, I’d forgotten what it was like to actually have space there.

But while the Modi+ didn’t have the texture problem of the 2/64, it did have a bit of the glare that the K7 did, and obviously not as much depth and detail as the 2/64.

Around this time in came some new budget speakers I’d been meaning to buy for a while, an upgrade from the Edifiers but a small one: the Kanto 4” passives driven by a Parasound Zamp with the matching Kanto SUB6 subwoofer. And that sounded pretty great with the Modi+ and the Magni+ used as a preamp, certainly better than the Edifiers. A little harsh in the treble, sure, but a little EQ made that basically go away.

Still the Modi+ just didn’t do what the Bifrost did, and after talking with people on the Sonic Visions Discord they suggested that maybe the Bifrost 2 OG would sound better to me than the 2/64. Now one of the most amazing things about the Bifrost 2 line is that it’s modular, meaning that if I wanted to try the the Bifrost 2 OG I didn’t have to buy a whole new DAC, I could just find a used 2 OG card (which run about $100) and stick it inside. So much less expensive than buying a whole new DAC. Props to Schiit, more companies should do this sort of thing. The only problem is that there’s apparently two versions of the Bifrost 2 OG card—the original one which has Nichicon capacitors, and the second one which has WE capacitors which was used apparently beginning in the pandemic due to supply chain issues. So I did the obvious thing for someone with an audio addiction and more money than sense, I bought one of each.

And I liked the Bifrost 2 OG WE cap edition I got first I think better than the 2/64, it was a bit mellower and less etched in the treble, but the OG OG Bifrost 2 card was the one I liked best. Except, that might not even be true. Another thing that came out of the Sonic Visions conversation was the consensus was that the Bifrost 2 DAC should never be turned off, and that it only really shines after it’s been on for about 10 days. I’d been turning the DAC off every night along with the rest of my electronics. So I left the newly minted 2 OG OG on. And after about a week all the problems I’d had with the BF2 line seemed to disappear. So do I really like the OG OG better or is it just because I finally left it on? The only way to know would be to put the 2/64 and/or OG WE Edition back in for another 10 days and see, but right now I’m enjoying this thing too much to do it. (I am going on vacation next week and I’ll turn my power strip off then, so maybe I’ll stick the 2/64 card back in before I turn it back on.)

But… well, now I’d put the BF2 back but the Magni+ just wasn’t cutting it. Yes I still used the Crack a lot, but sometimes I wanted to use my ETA Mini S or an IEM or something and also there were the speakers, and while it sounded good… my memory of what the Rebel sounded like haunted me.

So I got the Rebel back out and hooked it up. And holy God the smoothness… like I didn’t need to EQ the Kantos anymore. They just sounded good now, the Rebel smoothed all the harshness clean away. And paired with the newly amazing sounding Bifrost… did I like the Rebel better than the Crack now? Sometimes, with the right music, maybe. Like with stuff that has more atmosphere and space to the sound, like TV on the Radio’s Return to Cookie Mountain, the Crack was still king, just heavenly. But with more straightforward music with less reverb and harder-edged instruments, like Rush’s Moving Pictures or Daft Punk’s Discovery the Rebel could really deliver something satisfying.

Part of the strangeness of this for me was that the guys on Sonic Visions don’t seem to like the Rebel. They call it “dull” and “flat”. And while the soundstage doesn’t have a lot of depth (though plenty of width) on the Rebel, it sounds anything but dull to me. Like the way there’s just no grain or edge to music on the Rebel at all is addictive and what I’m looking for. Maybe that’s what they think it dull? But it doesn’t seem like it even rounds things off to me or anything, you’re still getting lots of detail, there’s no grain. And it sounds like it has plenty of dynamics and “oomf” to me, especially paired with my particular headphones.

It’s another situation like with K7 where it feels like I’m just hearing something that other people aren’t. Of course, plenty of reviewers and non-reviewers love the Rebel too, so this might just be a quirk of the particular people who hang out at Sonic Visions, but like it makes me question my hearing and what they’re hearing that I’m not.

Maybe I need to hear more solid state amps or something; I made the mistake of bringing the ETA Mini S to the last CanJam because they’re so portable and have better noise isolation than my open-backs, but they just don’t scale, they sound basically the same kind of great on everything. Next CanJam I’m planning on bringing my HD6XX and give the amps there a workout (and I can use the Atriums in the ZMF room a try with different amps there too). Of course, the problem there is that since they’re on different DACs than mine, you necessarily know what’s the amp making something sound a certain way and what’s the DAC. And of course CanJam isn’t the best listening environment. But I don’t really want the cost and hassle of buying expensive amps and returning or reselling them right now. (And for financial reasons, I’m off buying expensive gear for a while now anyway.)

In any case, for now I have a system that sounds amazing that I love to listen to, and if I had any brains I’d probably just quit while I’m ahead. My downgrade failed, it’s true, but I discovered the OG BF2 and leaving my DAC on, so that’s something, and I also gained a renewed appreciation for the strengths of the ol’ Rebel. (This isn’t the first time I tried to replace it with something smaller either. I previously got the Magni Piety intending to replace it with that, and then it seems like I’m the only person in the world who didn’t like the Piety at all. It just sounded fuzzy and grainy to me. Maybe I’m more sensitive to grain than other people, i don’t know.)

Do any of you all have experiences where it feels like you’re just hearing things in a way other people don’t seem to be? I’d be curious to know.

 

At the end of the day, we're all trying to find what works for us within the scope of what we're able to afford. I definitely crap on a lot of gear that others swear by, but while it's definitely a bit of a cop out used by some who insist on liking something that they spent a great deal of money on, the line of thought that the whole system just isn't self-complementary ergo the individual component you're trying to evaluate isn't able to present itself in the best possible way is valid. Sometimes something actually is sucky, sometimes it's preferences, but other times it just refuses to play well with the other kids in the park (i.e. the other components in the system).

I'm in a mic Discord server where I'm having fun learning about the other end of the audio chain and practising my vocals again (singing and narrating-- started posting publicly which I'm nervous about but hey making stuff is fun!): there was one dude there yesterday who asked why microphones aren't evaluated solely by merit of frequency response like headphones and speakers are, so it's evident that there is a great drive towards oversimplification.

They had the audacity to claim that they spent months researching headphones, but felt that only FR mattered, never mind CSDs, distortion, transient response, or any other chicanery.

... Suffice to say that I went off on a bit of a ramble despite my knowing better-- people will believe what they want to believe, but I was fully of the same mind as them over a decade ago so I had some degree of empathy for their case and had an idea of how to approach it; sometimes you're just a broke high school or college kid that wants to feel better about not missing out on anything within the scope of what you can afford, and that's every bit as much missing the mark as people with more money than good sense in-SIS-ting that, just because they spent car money on a pair of cables, their system is inherently better. The issue lies in how there's (I'm sorry this is the only word that comes to mind) radicalisation in this hobby with diminishing space for nuance.

What I appreciate about SBAF is how it tries to take the middle path despite everyone and their great aunt leaning one way or the other. This goes for approaches to audio gear and life philosophies (among a lot of other aspects of existence that may or may not bear talking about just now). Subjective opinions can be very much tainted by biases, but measurements can be falsified or otherwise compromised (like with certain prominent entities in the audio space half-assing taking care to lay power cables in a manner that WON'T introduce noise into their very expensive squiggles)-- the game and the aim is a marriage of the both to arrive at what "is", not what is desired.

I like the Piety a lot, I'm actually more keen to get a better DAC than get another amp, but there are times when the MCTH (NOT an amp known for being competitive in resolution, mind you) takes all my attention and draws me more into music that I love despite its not being as technically competent as the little Schiit. Any metric for that other than "TUBES DISTORT SOUND AND ALWAYS HAVE A WARMER VOICING" (which I vehemently disagree with, having heard nicer amps now)?

Yes there are objective measures of performance, but it's ultimately all preference-- you'd have to pay me a stipend to daily drive an ortho rig in lieu of my trusty basic HD600 stack!


P.S.
@Eric Rosenfield Bruh leaving Schiit DACs on is like a meme at this point, I'm surprised it took you so long to twig onto that

 

I could go for awhile on this subject, but this is what my main listening headphone setup is now a days. I've got a pile of gear in the corner that people covet that I don't listen to. I don't even see it as downgrading, I think ksc75 is better built, has better technicalities, timbre and presentation than most the $500 - $1.5k headphones I've purchased. Find what you like in this hobby and just be honest with yourself, seek good sound and the sound you like.

 

It’s not really a failure if you come to some conclusions. That may be what you like, what you don’t like, what you can live with, what works for you, etc. At least you learned something.

 

he's a 90s cardigan wearing, app-loving gen z Discord boy at heart, ya can't blame him for not knowing how hour 98 differs from the 277 hour on mark wrt to sq lol. but fr, @Eric Rosenfield if you don't leave ur bf2 24/7 on i'll learn complex ee & come to your house and find a way to reverse the polarity of it—thoroughly confusing the shit out of you.

to add something to the spirit of this well-written thread (i haven't read it all tbh bc eric and i frequent the same discord and he wouldn't stfu ab his every exp trying to downgrade his sys):

I am running an Adcom GDA 600 DAC (PCM63-J) not as a downgrade from my SFD-1 mkII w AD1862 module, but as a stopgap converter until I receive this dumb, arcane 11 ENOB DAC, which in all likelihood will be an unwilled downgrade from the SFD-1 with UA, and probably even it w AD IC...

but ya know, ya gotta roll the dice and try things for yourself, who knows? maybe it will be a sidegrade like I'm hoping lol. I'm sure I'll post ab it in the appropriate thread when I get it in the coming months.

 

listen if you want me to stfu you can just say so… but who else am I going to bother with this nonsense?

 

dude if you stfu, i would be so sad. pls don't ever stop posting |saluting emoji|. i just can't change up my tone and not break ya balls like i do over there lol.

<3 all love baby, thank you for posting A1, quality content and starting a truly valuable discussion during the slower months when we need it the most!

 

Plenty of well loved gear on sbaf/head-fi I've shitted on and was raked over the coals for not conforming to the hive mind. At the end of the day who cares? They certainly don't, so why should you? Your ears your preferences.

 

@Eric Rosenfield I want to take a minute to chime in on this because, its very funny that I had nearly an identical situation to you.

I also at one point earlier this year had a Bifrost 2 OG, and a Rebel Amp. Most people like this pairing for sure. But I also had a mindset to try the FiiO K7 as well. Now for my experience, I had the exact opposite experience than you, because I found the K7 completely in-line with the signaure AKM Velvet Sound - rounded top end, smoothed over, no glare, smeared details, especially when in comparison to the Bifrost 2 and its more accomplished resolving capability. If you told me you had the K9 Pro ESS version instead, I could definitely understand the "glare" issue, and I've had friends who are very treble sensitive have some complaints of glare with the K9 ESS ver. I also happen to have the same Edifier speakers, and no glare with the K7 for me.

Have you ever tried a traditional R2R dac? I'm wondering if you would favor that more in your setups if you are that Treble sensitive?

I sold my Rebel Amp when I acquired a Holo Spring - that was way too much of a good thing, too much richness/thickness, and lost details.

So yeah, I suppose I am proof, with nearly identical hardware, we hear it differently. Just as - I disliked the Bifrost 2 OG / Rebel Amp. I think I would have preferred the 2/64 version with it, as I enjoyed it alot more with a more incisive dac like the Yggdrasil A1. But that's just me and it comes back to "Different Strokes for Different Folks".

 

Also brings me to the counter point of this. Sometimes people will equally just like hated gear on Sbaf or HF, and you end up really liking it. Hive mind isn't the universal truth, and as @ColtMrFire says, your ears are your preferences, and that is all that matters at the end of the day.

Case in point, after acquiring the Holo Spring, I wanted a very neutral/transparent amp that really opened up low impedance cans - I ended up with the microZOTL MZ2. Reviews were more or less luke warm here, and probably more over-hyped on HF, but it doesnt matter, because paired with the Holo Spring, and rolled with certain tubes, it found my Goldilocks zone of synergy, open, holographic sound stage, speed and clarity, with note weight/heft and textured bass. It really brought everything together. The MZ2 was one of those amps for me that really got out of the way, and it just really let the music shine.

My own adventures in downgrading really start here. I ended up with a 2K system powering a 400 dollar headphone. I enter the mindset of whether or not the value was worth it in the end...coupled with the fact that I don't listen to headphones as much these days, I decided it wasn't worth it that much for me - I've tried most of the gear I ever wanted to try. I remind myself that I enjoy regular radio, even old vintage radios (have you ever taken the time to enjoy music on a mono setup? - it conveys such a different presentation and feeling). So that said, I'm starting to downgrade. I have enjoyed the Schiit dacs, and will soon acquire a Modi Multibit 2. Probably just add an Asgard or Lyr and call it day. I'm cool with 80% goodness by today's standards.

TLDR: Whether its 3 dollars or 3000 dollars, and despite all the reviews in the world, you gotta like how the gear sounds to you.

 

Audio preferences can be highly subjective and vary from person to person. What works well for one individual might not necessarily suit another due to differences in hearing perception and personal preferences. Reviews and recommendations, while valuable, are still based on the subjective experiences of others.

It's important to remember that audio perception is influenced by various factors, including the headphones or speakers being used, the source material, and even the acoustics of your listening environment. While some may find certain equipment to be a great match, others might not share the same sentiment due to individual sensitivities to sound characteristics.

 

Just saw this thread.

I tried to "downgrade" from the Stellaris only for the summer time b/c it's hot and the amp is hot. Long story short, let's just say I enjoy my other equipment, I've found some really nice combos, and have gotten friends setup on some of these said combos... but so far, I haven't found a way to replace the Stellaris.

Also, just in general for anyone - my beliefs are what coltfire said - your listening, your ears, and your time and money - who cares. Even if you hated everything SBAF recommended and went full ASR-fi - no one can argue against personal happiness in a hobby like this. The problem for me only exists when the half-baked logic of places like ASR start to penetrate the market b/c they went on a personal money grab / ego booster adventure and their actions take the market in a wrong / bad direction. Tons of keyboard smash BS brands of crappy products turn people off to the market long term - killing happiness. OR on the flip side, crappy products burn up the existing supply of good vintage tubes and the like - also killing happiness.

 

And we have the synergy special sound post to give ppl an idea of what that's about:

https://www.superbestaudiofriends.org/index.php?threads/system-synergy-special-sound.11676/

 

Thanks for this. I do think that I particularly like the "smoothed over" sense I get from the Rebel. I have the Pendant now and I love it, and in terms of almost every measure it creams the Rebel, except I find myself missing the sense of smoothness I got from the Rebel. I guess I just really like smoothness? I'm wondering if combining the Pendant with a different DAC than the Bifrost might improve things in that department, but I don't know.

The only thing I'd take issue with is this:

I think it's dangerous to make accusations like this without evidence. A "shill" is a very specific thing, someone pretending to be a neutral party and praising a product while secretly on the payroll of the company. Getting free gear doesn't necessarily make someone a shill--reviewers have always gotten free gear or at least loaners (even the big YouTubers usually have to give back things that are at all expensive). That's how reviewing works--companies provide products to reviewers to review, they don't expect them to buy everything themselves. Professional reviewing wouldn't be possible otherwise.

But to say they're a shill you'd have to establish that they always give good reviews to products because they get free products. What I often see in the audio community however is people saying "they like this thing that I don't like, therefore they must be a shill", which is, you know, not evidence. It's true that many reviewers try to evaluate who a product is for rather than dismissing things as 'bad' outright, but that does not make them a shill. Almost every review, for example, has a reviewer saying whatever product they're reviewing is better or worse than some other product they've also reviewed, usually in the same price category. It seems unlikely that every time they do this they're weighing some kind of cost-benefit analysis of what's going to get them the most gear or sponsorships.

I'm willing to say that given reviewers don't have the same taste I have, that you should take their reviews with a grain of salt, that you should look at many reviews including comments here and in other places before making purchasing decisions. I'm even willing to say that some reviewers probably are just doing it for the freebees and sponsorships, though I'd hesitate to point a finger without some solid evidence to that effect. Stating 90% of reviewers are shills, however, seems unjustified by evidence.

 

The thing with the Rebel - well, the M3 that it is based on - is that it just isn't a great match with high impedance phones like the HD6xx series. Classic Sennheiser veil, which could certainly be interpreted as smooth. I'm pretty sure it's the low output impedance; too much electrical damping and feedback, on top of phones with strong mechanical damping. Whereas OTL amps with a higher output impedance let the phones show a lot more of their own character. Ultimately, I much prefer the HD650 from my Crack than my M3.

But I can tell you for sure, the Rebel/M3 certainly isn't smooth with phones that need more damping like Focal and Grado. The hard edges and impact can blow your f'ing head off if you're not careful. Ultimately, my Focal Clear from my M3 absolutely spanks the HD650 from the Crack.

Not sure what this adds to the discussion, other than to support the importance of synergy, and looking at the whole chain. And saying that one piece of gear has a particular character can be highly context dependent.

 

This is absolutely fascinating and thanks for sharing it.

I did have a Focal headphone in house, the Elex, and used it with the RebelAmp but honestly it was long enough ago that I don't remember that much except that I didn't particularly like it and sold it off.

Is electrical damping and feedback the sound that I like? One of the reasons I want to try the Mjolnir 3 is because it has a literal feedback switch, so I can hear directly how feedback might change the sound (at least in the context of the MJ3). I'm not even sure how one would evaluate how much electrical damping and feedback a product has to know if that's the thing I like or not. (Low output impedance by itself, on the other hand, well, most everything that isn't a tube amp has that these days, right?)

Another thing I should probably add that I realized: I like the 6XX plugged directly into the headphone jack on my MacBook Pro (one of the newer models with the high impedance support) significantly more than the K7. It still sounds unsmooth compared to the Rebel for sure, but otherwise it's pretty great. No Pendant/Bifrost stack obviously, but plenty pleasurable.

 

Does the Rebel amp sit on top of the Bifrost 2 well? I might give it a try with my OG Utopia.

 

Do you mean physically does it stack well? If so, that is a no. Rebel Amp is considerably wider by about 4 more inches and deeper by about 3 inches.

As far as pairing goes, many do like the BF2 OG/Rebel Amp pairing in general, its mostly well received. I can't say how it will be with the Utopia having never heard it unfortunately.