Audio brands that fall out of popularity?

I remember at certain point in time at headfi:

Benchmark Audio DAC was the hype. Everyone including your brother/sister were recommending this dac.

Ibasso DAPs, at one point in time, DX100, DX90, DX80 were like the go to DAP, especially the DX100 with it's headphone capable amp.

Another famous on headfi was Ray Samuel Amps, e.g. RSA Shadow, Darkstar and SR71-B

Also at one point in time, it was quite common to hear people recommend Centrance DAC Port series.

There's also a point in time where Empirical Audio, Leckerton Audio, Matrix Audio(even NAD to a certain extend) and etc were quite legit on Chang Star. Now hardly a whisper on SBAF.

Please note I am not trying to discredit these brands, some of them are really awesome sounding stuff like Leckerton amps, but I really wonder what has happened?

 

Since I'm procrastinating on my Spring DAC write-up, I'll throw in a few thoughts on some of these items with which I had first-hand experience/ownership of.

I never did the get the hype around the Benchmark 1. I didn't participate much, if at all (lurking, mostly) in online audio forums when that thing was getting hyped to buggery. First time I heard it I could not fathom what the excitement was about. One listen was enough to know I didn't want to hear it again.

The iBasso stuff ... never worked for me. Never got as far as it being about how it sounded - the shit just plain never worked reliably enough to bother with. Their stuff remains the only gear out there that has never successfully indexed a single of my SD cards without totally shitting the bed.

I enjoyed my RSA Intruder. I liked the sound ... dark though it was. I even enjoyed the rate-limited built-in DAC. It was over-hyped. It was never "silent" with my IEMs, and was, in fact, the hissest of the three portable units I had at the time (Intruder, ALO Audio International+ OE and Chord Mojo), and the volume pot was noisy (and would never clear up no matter what I did to it). If it had been USB-chargeable and not needed a powered/faked hub to talk to my iPhone I'd likely NOT have sold it!

I quite liked the grip the DarkStar had on headphones too. I didn't think it was worth remotely close to $3500, however.

 

APOGEE. The Apogee MiniDAC is one of my favorite pieces of old headphone gear but the current stuff they make is terrible Apple store plastic crap. The Groove is your typical, underpowered better than FiiO but still shit Sabre dongle with custom filter.

WOLFSON. Remember the hype around Wolfson DACs. Remember how thin and awful they made everything sound? Sabre's at least can present a coherent sound stage.

YAHAMA. Yamaha white cone speakers were meme gear for a reason. The better NS-10 models weren't as brittle and sounded very uncompressed for bookshelf/near field speakers. The current powered monitors are super compressed with laser pointer glare.

I find most Schiit amps to have off but tolerable treble. They're perfectly listenable at high volume but the off timbre is more fatiguing to my tinnitus over longer listening sessions than more righteous trebles. The oddness is still less than adding in a typical ESS Sabre implementation to your chain though. Sabre -> Yamaha powered monitors is the epitome of "SAMURAI, SUN AND STEEL" treble. If the Jotun is equivalent to Samurai III: Duel at Ganryu Island which looks great, ESS -> YAHAMA CLASS D is BEING the guy in Shogun Assassin blinded of glare reflected from the mirror on Daigoro's head before Ogami Itto decapitates him. IBasso would probably just sound being cut open with shards of glass.

About Matrix, even the new HPA3 series has the rolled op-amp Chifi sound to it. Xsabre is your typical massively overpriced Sabre that's good but not great and gets killed for treble timbre by 15 year old DACs that don't suck. Has the weird "softened" glare sound like most better Sabre implementations do

 

I remember once when the K702 and Q701 was popular you could not go through a thread without seeing the Matrix M-Stage mentioned.
It's as if the M-Stage was meant to be paired with that headphone.

When the O2/Magni and Fiio stuff came out it seemed like I saw the M-Stage suggested a lot less. Much less talk about it in general.
It always made me sad when I'd hear people on HF suggesting stuff like the O2 or Magni for the Q701.
Those were never really a good match IMO. Even the lowly Fiio E9 sounded better for that headphone.
Somehow I imagine the Matrix M-Stage being like an E9 on steroids.

I also remember the Burson amps being suggested almost all the time..now just about never that i've seen.

Then there is Headroom. I think their stuff was once very popular way before I got into audio. I might be wrong on this though.
I'm a huge Headroom fanboy and I only have 3 of their products I've never loved a product as much as my Micro Amp.

Unfortunately the most popular amps seem to be the ones I don't like much at all
The Ifi Ican is the rare exception. Usually the very popular amps have poor synergy with a larger variety of headphones.
I absolutely hate all this synergy nonsense.

I have a feeling some of the best amps are just pretty much unknown by most or just not hyped up.

PS someday I'd love to compare the Ifi I can, Matrix M-Stage & Headroom Micro Amp to Schiit's best amp under $400.
Not just with one headphone, but with maybe 5 or 6 of the best mid-fi headphones.

 

@Psalmanazar

Yamaha HS8 isn't the worst offender of Glare. There are plenty of stuff out there that out glares HS8.

Ultrasone Edition 8 (poor @Tyll Hertsens) is the worst I have ever heard in my life, I have heard them with IBasso DX100 back in the day. My ears can't take more than 5seconds of it. Yes, this is coming from a HS8 owner, Think of it as staring directly into the Sun without sunglasses at 12pm on a clear cast day at a tropical country near the equator.

I listen to my HS8 Everyday, so does it mean I am immune to glare? Hmm... actually not. I hate anything that has glare. Yes, I do believe that HS8 can show you what's glare if you pair any kind of sigma delta dacs and any kind of modern bad recordings. But if you feed it with highly refined source like Yggdrasil or Master 7 along with highly refined power conditioning, the glare goes away completely. Maybe the tweeter on the HS8 are way brutally honest or there's more to this(e.g. Madaboutaudio has fucked up ears or doesn't listen to bad recordings).

Also I find Ess Sabre soundstage to feel too artificial, sometimes it seems too hollow and fatiguing for Long listening. AKM and Analog Devices sigma delta dacs were better than ESS in providing a more believable soundstage. It took me quite alot of careful attention to notice the sigma delta gremlins with the AK4396, it's almost like trying to find where's Wally. And the AD1955 is one of the smoothest sounding sigma delta I have heard.

 

I wish HeadLamp would make some new stuff :/

And to a lesser extent Eddie Currants.

 

I liked that DAC, had it for many years. Never knocked your socks off, but very good tonality and very natural sounding. Also responsible for me not really believing in the importance of digital source for a long time, because you could put any old crap in front of it and it didn't seem to get tizzy or harsh. Seems like Dan Lavry really nailed the clocking section - I'd love to compare it with the ones on more recent DACs.

 

In the "old" days it was all Grado v Sennheiser. Then planars turned up & for most people Grado didn't make the cut.

Not such a bad thing imho as I still have scars on my ears from those Grado bowls (maybe). Sadly it seemed to take Mapletree Audio Designs with it, as the MAD amps were so highly associated with Grado (I had one myself). Lloyd is still around though, and his new designs look interesting. Such a great chap to do business with, very flexible with custom orders.

I actually checked the other day to see if Ray Samuels is still around, which he is. I wonder if it's a Head-Fi sponsorship thing. His stuff used to be all over HF. Maybe he's not willing to pony up for the exposure.

 

Are you surprised? Grado are just as uncomfortable as Audeze in their way... but in addition the tuning is... overly characteristic. I never owned any Grados, as I didn't feel like paying that much for those downsides. I think a lot of these brands have a common theme- charging a lot for mediocre products in the absence of reasonable competition.

Some of the makers of very unimpressive but fancifully-priced amps took a real hit when Schiit started cranking out units with insane price/performance ratios, too. Not all of them managed to either up their quality or reduce their prices. A lot of the niche guys making really high-quality low-volume gear thankfully still exist, as an upgrade path, though!

Obviously, some brands just dwindled of their own accord, but I think that some were coasting on the profits of a captive audience for a long time.

 

Not surprised at all..Grados are (imho) for the most part awful. Construction was often crappy and the bowls were just horrifically uncomfortable. Whilst I did have a brief flirtation with a Headphile MS2, I quickly realised they sucked. The HF2 was almost ok...enough that I kept it for a few years (and it kind of felt a bit collectible). Sold it last year to a complete Grado nutter...a proper completist with just about every model they've ever produced. Poor guy's ears must be shredded by now.

Ooh, do you guys remember the Headphile Darth Beyers? I fell for the hype. They were the most bass-filthy headphones I've ever had the misfortune to own. Horrible.

 

Little crappy wooden bowls with cheap foam on 'em, what's not to like?

 

This is pretty normal that brands disappears . Not just in headphone world, but generally hifi too.
Audiophiles are a fickle bunch - easily distracted, short attention spans and money to spend...

 

I never tried them, but I do remember them because I enjoyed the Beyer house sound.

I guess I lucked out when I bought a Headroom modified DT880 and stock DT250 80 Ohm. They were decent mid-fi headphones that have served me well for a number of years as office cans.

 

Well, in their defence, the Darth Beyers were quite fun for movies & games (BOOM!)

 

HD650 balanced out of a Jotunheim is.. quite laxative too, when the shooting starts

 

The Darth Beyers were literally like listening through a sweaty sock. Even in my early days of headphones, I could tell something was really off with those.