NSFW: SuperBAF Best of 2015 Golden Schlong Awards

I have been very impressed with everything I've heard from EC, but FWIW, this does come across as a little over the top to me and, I suspect, to others as well. Notwithstanding Purrin's relationship with EC and the fact that many of us really like and respect the brand and the people behind it, I don't think we want SBAF to be seen as hyping it too much relative to other very well designed amps out there.

Unfortunately, I have not heard the ZD:S, but I really enjoyed the earlier ZD - and have a distinct and lasting memory of closing my eyes and listening to a great vinyl copy of HDS 701 on it. That said, I prefer the presentation of my mainline with hd800's to the presentation of that ZD, and one ZD owner on HF posted that he liked his modded crack better than his ZD (note that although I like my crack quite a bit, I would very much disagree with that preference). Nonetheless, a mainline costs a lot less a ZD (admittedly it is diy and much less sexy to behold from a physical standpoint), but I just want to underscore that reasonable minds/good ears can certainly agree to disagree as to which they find better among a certain level of high quality amps. On the solid state side, many have praised first watt gear as having some of the same qualities as the BW (most importantly, no typical solid state nasties). Many first watt amps can be had for substantially less than $3k and some (used) for less than the price of a BW. My F3 clone was $400 on CL.

At this level of amp design, what is "best" or worthy of recognition on a site wide basis boils down to subjective preferences and also synergies with particular headphones. ZD's opinion is certainly every bit as valid as my own - probably more so. But for the sake of a little balance and carrying on the discussion, these are my 2c.

 

There are other impressions of the BW around. I may have my own impressions soon enough and maybe compare with the ZDS if timing works out.

 

I understand your concern, we don't want hype trains around here even when it comes to respected brands like EC.

But, if you've only heard the ZD and has yet to hear Black Widow and ZDS, then you ain't heard nothing. I haven't heard the Cinemag BA or Studio and won't be commenting on them, but I did own both ZDSE and ZDS, and also listened to BW. Based on my experience, the BW and ZDS destroys the previous ZDSE which you might have listened to. There are on a whole new level, an entirely different league.

I too had thought ZDSE was a great amp when I had owned it, but I didn't really think it deserved to be calle dTOTL compared to other amps out there. It was a bit too warm, congested and--counterintuitively--sibilant at times. I eventually replaced it with an ecp L-2 which I felt was the first amp to deserve the TOTL title especially for driving the HD800.

Then came along Black Widow, which ruined everything for me.

On a performance scale of 1 to 10 (based on their ability to drive HD6X0/800 for the sake of reference), if the current ZDS is 10, I would say the older ZDSE is only about 8, whereas the BW is 9.5. The BW is much better than ZDSE in terms of transparency, resolution, frequency response across the board, not to mention the fact that it is less sibilant and more organic sounding and turned out to be my most favorite SS amp for the HD800. This is one of the reasons ZDSE was upgraded to ZDS. I actually preferred the BW to L-2 (I'd give the L-2 a 9 on the above-mentioned scale), and L-2 is one of the most coveted amps for the HD800. I never thought an SS amp could topple L-2's spot, and never have heard an SS amp that sound better than this.

The ZDS is still better but only by a small margin, and that's only when you're using headphones like HD6X0/800. If you consider the fact that BW excels, or even may be better at, driving orthos, for only about half the ZDS's price, I cannot possibly think of a greater value and believes it solidly deserves the Best of 2015 Award. If I weren't such a Sennheiser fanboy, I would've picked up a BW in a heartbeat.

 

As an owner of ZDS which is OTL in design, all those talks about exotic transformers make me a sad panda...

I wonder why Marv, who now works at EC, still sticks to ZDS as his primary amp. Not that ZDS is bad or anything, it's just that he should have access to higher tier amps like Cinemag BA or even Studio. Are there certain qualities of ZDS that makes them preferable to BA that you'd spend more time with it?

 

We need to have you give it another shot

 

Thanks for the further explanation and descriptions of the latest generation of EC amps songmic and zd. Sounds like I'm really going to have to make a point of breaking away from the family for day when SBAF has its next SoCal meet so I can hear these amps myself!

 

Everyone knows what VG is alluding to, right? Just so we know what theme we have going on here.

 

There's probably some inappropriate joke I'm missing, but I've been reading it as Excellent, Very Good, Good, Mediocre, and Shit (but it does say Special now, so I'm glad it's been cleared up).

 

Vagina. Huh huhhhh, thut up Beavith.

 

Hi folks, sorry for interrupting your ongoing subject , but could anyone elaborate K712's rating summarily? I truly respect the honesty of people's reviews and opinions on this community , and that's because sometimes I hate it when an expensive product isn't treated impartially (and yeah, to not sound stupid, I know everything in this domain is based on subjectivity, but I find it quite biased when one overestimates some hps only to justify their high price)- which of course isn't referring to SBAF. Since it doesn't seem written down anywhere, is there any way to find out what the K712s have been tested on ? For example, is this a case of using TOTL equipment, resulting in losing in "score points" because it might have lower scaling potential compared to others, or is the evaluation done on various equipment (thus all price ranges) ? Also, for example, when it's about stuff rated as s***, is a high price considered a major factor when drawing the conclusion- if T1(v2)s were half their price, would they be placed in a much higher rank ? Also, I know I could probably find out a lot of impressions on different amp-hp pairings on head-fi, it's just that after going through hundreds of pages, there never seems to be a consensus, so that's why something such as this brilliant award system proves much more useful for newcomers.
To justify my curiosity, I'm kind of reluctant to travel half a day just to try a model out, so most of the impressions I take for granted are based off what well-known reviewers post.

 

You answered your own question about why there is no consensus. There will never be a consensus as someone out there will have opposite tastes from someone else. If they both post about their opinions on a pairing, they will be in disagreement.

 

Yeah, that's right and I should probably cut out part of the post, but the thing is, there is a major difference when someone experienced, in other words, someone who's had the opportunity to test out a wide variety of phones extensively, voices their findings. It's primarily the consumer niche, which can make things quite vague: someone who bought pair X and was pleased with it will (perhaps) be able to post their review on it, but it holds much lower validity compared to someone who's been in this "sport" for years, conducts tests and can compare pair X with pair Y and pair Z based on their own facts. As an example, me saying "hey I got these X1s 2 years ago, and the bass is so good compared to these crappy logitechs" would really hold no value until I'd grab a few more cans in this range and perceive their sounds ad-extenso to create sort of a "common ground". Otherwise it wouldn't really give anyone any decisional insight. It would only be relevant when I could pinpoint their differences and distribute them in a category. Well, at least, that's what I'm aiming for when searching for reviews.

 

Actually, if a headphone is tested on TOTL gear, then that should be a fair test for its potential. There's no excuse for its performance any more when the upstream gear is top end stuff.
Price seems to factor into the equation, but not in the way of E/VG/G/etc. If it's overpriced, it's marked "overpriced".

 

Of course, I never thought it would be unfair, I just wanted to know how it's evaluated in this sense. Since there's stuff known to scale much higher like the 650s, I'd like to know how much the scaling ability affects a product's rating. If 2000$ gear doesn't sound much different with it compared to 1000$ gear, losing some score points would make sense I guess. Same goes for the pricing theme, if it's overpriced, is this just a separate mark or does it affect how it's been evaluated ? Heck, for 1000$ I'd expect that can to make wonders, yet we hear about all sorts of cases.

 

Yeah, I've seen you say pretty good things about it, that's why I was wondering whether something made you change your mind or scaling potential weighing a lot when it comes to making an impartial list of contenders. And the quick rating method is totally understandable (really wasn't any intention of criticizing any rating, but rather understanding), I actually imagined there was a whole staff having to decide all that, I'm sure even if swiftly, it still took quite some time and effort to finally make this list. And I'm sure it would be invaluable for others as much as it's proven for me.
Somehow I missed your K712 thread, although I've searched it. I will casually say you and takato deserve a privileged spot in the reviewer's lounge, I always prefer the straightforward approach, like you don't really have to please anyone's expectations, just state things as they are. As for the DAC talk, I think everyone should also check out that list you guys made after some testing/blind testing. Now back to checking out that new vali thread !
Ty for the explanations!