Transparent Portable Amps

So, my iBasso PB2 died on my yesterday.

Has any one tried the RSA SR 71B or the HeadAmp Pico Power? If so which would you recommend. I had LME 49990 OpAmps and Dummy Buffers in my PB2, and it was glorious

I don't really need balanced out, so much as I want an upgrade or side grade to my Pb2, which was VERY similar sounding to my Audio GD NFB10ES2 [when sourced from it's dac]

I really only need the amp to run low R dynamics, not going to be using it with my HE 4 daily. But I like to have that option available

 

Look at the Neco Soundlabs V5, best portable amp I've heard and significantly cheaper than the two you listed. It shits on the Pico Power, unsure about the RSA. Gain is too high for most IEMs but it's fine for full-sized headphones.

 

Neat looking, the Dual Mono configuration sounds nice, I need to replace my iBasso PB2 which was a balanced amplifer, it ran a quad of LME 49990s, hard specs show a cleaner output on the LME 49990s vs the LME 49713s

I did get my iBasso PB2 to produce some sound! So I've found that my problem with it isn't the opAmps but something else. I think the battery might be dead, it should output near 16v but I only got a reading of .7, which would explain why even with Balanced out my LME 49990s, the amp is barely audible

so hopefully I'll get it repaired

Though, other mentions of the Neco Soundlabs V5 compare it poorly to the RSA SR 71a, no reason on why. A few of the PicoPower owners also prefer the PicoPower over the RSA SR 71a, really I'll need to listen to the Pico and decide for my self, some of the iBasso PB2 guys also recommended the Pico Power, worse comes to worse, if I hate the Pico Power, I can compare it to this directly and hopefully sell them both for just under what I'll have paid. Hopefully, by the time I compare the two, my PB2 will be operational again