Campfire Audio Andromeda Review: Holy Cow, This is a Dream, Awesomesauce!

hello,

damn it, damn it, damn it... MrsForBin only said okay to the MassDrop HD6XX.

 

Yeah, but you go both ways.

 

Sounds like Schiit needs to make a Fulla successor with multibit and downsized pivot point amp topology single ended and TRRS balanced (I know this probably won't happen, at least for a while.).

 

just ordered the andro B-stock... will be interesting to see how "B" the stock is, it's cheaper than a mint condition used one locally. Might also give the Massdrop Noble X a go if my colleague is willing to buy the Orion off me.

thanks for all the impressions and reviews shared here thus far!

 

$750. Crikey thats a serious discount.

 

Btw zero, how are you managing volumes on Windows with GOV2+ and Andromeda? Just got mine and I find that there's no room on Win10 (max listenable volumes @ ~15/100 with Spotify/Musicbee volumes maxed). Do you just have to lower the volume on your apps?

 

Yeah Windows trying GOV2+ on ChromeOS right now and the headroom is a bit better. Haven't tried Android yet

 

Trying GOV2+ on Android, do you find that when playing sound through Spotify you have to max out system volume in order to get playable volume out of the SE output? I'm enjoying the sound of this better than Mojo but usability has proven to be a bit of a pain so far.

 

Ha, ha, yeah I shouldn't post after a long day at work. Looks like they are already sold out of B-Stock Andros so glad I saw the post.

 

I do think in this case it's like the saying "if you think everyone's an asshole, than the asshole is likely you" i.e. with Andromeda hissing on basically everything in the planet, it's likely the Andromeda design causing it. Definitely a sticking point for otherwise great IEMs.

 

thanks @KenBall my B stock andro arrived last night !! the blemishes are so minor that i couldn't spot them until this afternoon.

i get what @Marvey meant by the Orion being a bandwidth limited Andro or Andro is an evolution of the Orion. the sense of space and extension of both ends of the spectrum are immediately apparent from the brief session i had.

EDIT : on the teac ha-501, using the litz cable, it sounds most balanced at the mid-low (z=3.5) DF setting, and mercifully hiss free despite using the mojo as source.

goose pimple city, esp with atmospheric/wet recordings!

 

Yep, got my B stock's tonight. So far everything everyone has said about them sonically is true…even the hiss. I will play around with amps to see if I can eliminate it, but honestly it doesn't bother me all that much. What does bother is that they have confirmed I really don't like the sound signature of my AK100ii. Plugged a portable amp into my phono stage and they are really very, very good spinning vinyl.

It will be funny if the andros turn my home setup into turntable, RSA Nighthawk, Leckerton UHA6. Kind of feels wrong, but it sounds good.

 

After reading about these for so long, I finally got to listen to them today at a "headphone festival" here in Taipei. The local CA distributor had all the models out and I worked my way through Orion, Nova, Dorado, Jupiter, and finally Andromeda. The silicon tips were a rather finicky and the sound went all tin-can when I tried to shove them into my earholes like I usually do with my Etys. But I remembered Marv said a loose shallow fit was best and I think I was able to get a representative sound out of all of them. Out of the first 4, I liked the Nova the best, all played directly out of my Note 3. Then I tried the Andromedas out of my micro iDSD with iEMatch set to High Sensitivity (4Ω). Yup, it sounds fantastic. Even extension at both ends, wide stage with tight imaging, good detail/transients/dynamics...I don't know how to describe it properly, but the music sounded "alive". I listened to all my test tracks and thought I'd better start saving up for these.

Switching iEMatch to Ultra or Off (<1Ω) made the bass sound bloated/bloomy. Directly out of my Note 3 it also sounded that way. I don't know what the output impedance is for my Taiwanese LTE model (Golden Ears measured a Chinese 3G at 3Ω and Korean LTE at 10Ω), but from the effect it had I'd guess it's low.