Huhnkopf

IFL the HE4. Best single-sided planar ever made IMHO. It's a planar ADX5000

Never listened to the ADX5K unfortunately. Not yet. I'm amazed how great the HE-4 remains and how it got even better, cleaner, how capable it is: punchy, fast, yet light and very agile. Gives me more joy than most of all the new Hifiman headphones that followed. What an unsung hero. Now I gotta save the 5LE and its dead screws etc.

As someone who owns all three... no. HE6 is a fickle bitch.

A pity, kinda hoped there was at least a noticable upgrade.

You could flip your V281 for a Schiit speaker amp (or two) or a First Watt clone + used OG Saga, which would yield gains with your current headphones and would also give you better drive on the HE6.

Have you heard a ZMF Auteur with suede pads?

I expected ZMF to get mentioned, heard none of them yet. Not ready to shell out over 1k for headphones again since SBAF made me a used gear hunter but I will look into the Auteur. Gotta read on the wood types a bit. Thankfully they seem to have a very dedicated german dealer.

Consider the Borealis when it launches hopefully this year.

I’m a Sony fanboy and wouldn’t buy their phones anymore. This is someone who owned four different compacts from their line.

Ideally 4 AES out + BNC word clock, shorter than 1,80m.

I've got a Lynx break-out cable if you need one

Yikes, that is a bit unfortunate. Could look into putting an Audeze headband and yoke on it.

I'm very interested in your opinion.

HE-500 with the VelPads or Focus-A pads (depending on chain / source material / preferences) is legitimately one of the best headphones i've heard overall. Works best with a chain that gives it some oomph and eases the 10khz peak, but they play pretty well with most gears. IMO if you can get over some of the comfort/usage qualms (which i was able to achieve through mods), it's still one of the best.

Interesting. Can you elaborate on what the Focus A pads change vs the VelPads? I notice the 10Khz too.
Right now I like them more than the LCD-2C+Reveal, especially since the mids are not hazy like the Audeze.

For that i will refer to the awesome HE-500 pad rolling compendium by @cskippy : https://superbestaudiofriends.org/index.php?threads/hifi-man-he500-thread.431/page-5#post-200892

The Velpads/Focus-A sound to me pretty much like the measurements would indicate. Focus-A is hazier and more laid back; VelPad is more clear sounding, larger soundstage, bit more punch. Both good in different ways IMO.

Low distortion while under loud levels I get, also fast decay, impulse response and extension ("lack" of audible rolloffs).

Power handling, low thd and a lack of non-minimum phase effects.

Being able to boost or reduce parts of the frequency scale without making the rest sound like crap?

(Although that could also be described as having the basic skills of EQing. Just because graphic software makes it look as if it should be easy doesn't mean that it is.)

More importantly, I am going to acknowledge the elephant in the room: why is the @schiit logo on the front of Gungnir so small? ;)

I don't know how well Schiit does in the EU but they'd indeed have quite the niche for a higher end OTL.
Sure there's Feliks Audio, Malvalve (too expensive) and Cayin (not my cup) but there's simply no contest when it comes to availability and competition as it is in the US. By far.

All the other American brands are a nogo simply due to shipping back and forth in the case of repairs/warranty. It's quite the hassle and involes a lot of money if you have bad luck.

It's why Schiit UK and EU are godsent given that they offer service/upgrades. Very smart move by Schiit.

Do you have any issues synching the audio?

I might be talking to myself here. Anyway, No headphone does the non-speaker cinema experience like the HD 800 SDR. Gungnir Multibit made me a total DAC believer. The 1260€ I paid are a bargain somehow.

I didn't give any details, sorry. I'm using the Gungnir Multibit on Gen 5 with the Dolby Access plugin for headphones + movie of your choice + , preferrably with Atmos. However any other movie works as well as long as it has workable audio design. I used to watch movies with other DACs like the RS06, Anedio D2, Matrix X-Sabre but this is quite another league.

I get hum when I connect the SE output of the Gungnir Multibit to my Denon AVR. Doesn't matter if AVR and Gungnir Multibit/V281 are on the same electric circuit or not. Gungnir Multibit with nothing connected except power and SE to AVR, still the same.

With my other DAC (Lake People RS06) I had to move a jumper inside to LIFT position (instead of GROUND) at the corresponding output and the hum was gone.

It's not that easy with the Gungnir Multibit it seems. Really want to listen to it with my vintage JBL L7. Gotta test with modded cables I guess before splurging out those bucks.

I feel your frustration. I had no luck with any kind of "custom" cables. Next up have to try RC network for the cables.

Instead there's almost always need to reterminate to 4-PIN XLR or even buy a new cable because the standard cable is too short (hello LCD-2C).

It's principle. A balanced termination cost at least 200 bucks extra.

Sorry to hear it. Might be worth looking at some logs and seeing if the card is being thrashed with IO for any reason (though with 2 weeks it's probably just a lemon!)

What brand and model was the card? That seems highly unusual. What's your use case?

Just running Volumio off it. First brand was Transcend and second Intenso. I know I kinda cheaped out on them probably but I thought we'd be over the worst days of SD cards.

Couldn't format any card or remove partitions. The reader simply could not access the card properly.

That's going to happen inevitably.

Windows Sonic is built into win 10 and if it isn't in the ecksbawks it will be soon. That supports up to 1000 objects I believe?

It's also necessary for proper vr audio.

It's going to be in every major middleware in short order, though game development being what it is, it might take several years to permeate.

Overwatch already does this, has Dolby Atmos support baked in from the start. The atmos renderer gets proper positional information to work with. It makes it really easy to detect inbound enemies from the sound of their footsteps, spin around to where they are and shoot them in the face.

Additionally, NVida have a positional audio API that does GPU-accelerated acoustic raycasting, interesting times.

https://developer.nvidia.com/vrworks/vrworks-audio

ok, you know what I did? I skipped the NUC and bought a RBPI3 and the Alllo Digone SPDIF/BNC out, also to avoid buying any current Intel platform. Will set it up tommorrow if it arrives and listen for a few weeks until I go for a PSU - nothing crazy though.

Iirc you need some really premium linears to beat the iFi iPower.

In any case, have fun playing with your pie :D

looking forward to it =D, and how it improves upon my PC. I have my eyes on the iFi iPower already.

Thanks for all your suggestions!