Super Best Audio Friends

I have a story behind this. Well, not the coaster. The original Vali amp. The coaster Vali isn't quite as good as the original Vali, but it's close. I was going for a futuristic Ancient Aliens look with the Lego blocks, one that would be compatible with the Schiit aesthetic.



@Psalmanazar mentioned something about idm in another thread. I am listening to early 90s The Future Sound of London.

Not sure if this is some kinda collaboration with Sony. In USD, $1,240 for dynamic driver version and $4,850 for planar driver version.



References:
https://www.facebook.com/HiFiMANElectronics/posts/3207687632661338
http://www.erji.net/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=2196985

The Kali KP-6 monitor has taken the world by storm for two years now. For good reason, it's dirt cheap for 6.5" woofer, and so popular in fact that it's brought down prices across in the board. @Psalmanazar asked me about the Kali a while back and I mentioned that I would do a more formal review. Here it is.



One of the most amazing things that Kali has done which I don't think any other competitor has done, at least not to this extent, is provide an insane level of adjustability. There is serious pro stuff here. There are adjustments for half-space, quarter-space, free-space, and anything in between such as how far away from the wall the speakers are place. In addition, there are separate LF and HF trims with a center point of 700Hz with a slow rise to the shelf. The LP6 is also enormously versatile in terms of inputs, offering RCA, TRS, and XLR. There is a variable gain knob in lieu of an input sensitivity switch. Everything is illustrated on the back of the cabinet! There is no need to RTFM. Kali makes it easy.

The amp started off as a 445, but getting easily bored, Craig wanted to try something different. He rigged it up to use 6L6 power pentodes wired up for ultralinear operation. There are x2 pentodes per channel, so one may think this would be push-pull, but it isn't. It's single-ended all the way. The original OPTs were for single-ended designs anyway, so Craig had to keep this single ended. The outputs of the 6L6 are paralleled. This amp doesn't have any interstage coupling caps either. It uses interstage transformers.



Ultralinear is more powerful, punchy, with sharper and stronger attacks. Triode is softer, more rounded, but offers space, texture, and plankton. Ultralinear is clean, with straight lines, maybe even a bit simplified. Which one is more true? I'll be a weasel like the audio magazine reviewers and say that I do not know and that the listener must decide! My bias is obvious, but it's not nearly so black and white, it depends.

A few weeks years ago, I called the Garage1217 Project Ember a POS** on SBAF. Probably not a fair thing for me to say; but nevertheless, I still don’t care for the Ember. I don’t remember exactly which version of the Ember I had (I think it was 2) ; but I did play around with all the switches to get the best sound, and even used Yggdrasil as the source, as well as several different headphones (HD800, HD600, Code-X, Abyss, etc.). The Ember sounded bloated, veiled, too tubey, slow, unlively, glossed over, and with some grain and dryness in the highs. My experience with Project Starlight wasn’t all that great either (boring and unengaging). So I completely wrote off everything from Garage1217 for years.



@Luckbad, seeing my post, offered to send me his Project Horizon to try, assuring me that the Horizon was different – better. I decided to accept this offer. I may have strong opinions, but I want to be fair. My motto has always been “prove me wrong”. BTW, the Horizon supposedly has a different topology from the Ember. I am not sure about this, so I would defer to all questions to either Luckbad for Garage1217.

As well as high-end two channel speakers, headphones, and nice car speakers, Focal makes monitors for the professional market. It's my understanding that one goes Focal for the service. For professionals, service can be crucial. The Alpha 80 is Focal's model with the 8" woofer paired with a 1" tweeter. Focal also has an Alpha 65 and 50 with 6.5" and 5" woofers respectively. The woofer looks to be some sort of glass impregnated paper. The tweeter is an aluminum inverted dome mounted on a shallow waveguide.

In light of the contributions, I will be making all my headphone data available on public GitHub:
https://github.com/superbestaudiofriends/headphone-measurements


One step at a time, so I want to start with frequency response first. This will be the most useful for people who want to create their own EQ profiles. The headphone frequency data I have put up there is compensated for a perceptual neutral as a straight vertical line across. For now, this data is copyrighted. However, can any of you guys who could tell me exactly what I need to do in concise steps to make it Creative Commons with Attribution? I don't care how the data is used, even if people want to make money from it with fancy EQ plug-ins. It would be great if someone can take the data and make a frequency response comparator. I'm too busy and most of my coding has been for tougher things involving numbers, e.g. attack and decay envelope for burst responses, etc. I know some of you guys have mentioned how you can help with coding stuff. Here is your opportunity.

Notable highlights:
Dynamic Range between 125 and 128 dB on all outputs
Residual noise < -127 dBFS on Bal outputs
Residual noise < -123 dBFS on SE outputs
Balance output cross-talk is dual mono with > 140 dB isolation



Notable anomalies:
Morpheus ASIO USB driver frequently crashed dScope measurement application requiring manual measurements with mitigations including ASIO4ALL and Morpheus driver via WASAPI. JRiver also had issues with the ASIO driver. WASAPI again proved more successful. Distortion vs amplitude exhibits a large spectral change when transitioning between -54.5 dBFS and - 55 dBFS. See the distortion series part A & B.

So I got to thinking: Something that works with IEMs. That's what I need. I had a conversation with a member a while back regarding an small amp that would work well with hybrid DD/BA IEMs, namely the Solaris (OG or 2020). I've always ran CFA IEMs from the Sony ZX2 ever since I've picked it up. The reason is that the ZX2's organic sound, it's organic lows, mids, and highs, meshed really well with the OG Andromeda. I added the OG Solaris to the mix and it worked well enough. However, it wasn't as perfect as I wanted to be. While the organic highs of the Sony ZX2 player does wonders with the CFA BA drivers, the DD drivers, with their physicality, slower decay, and softer attacks, didn't gel so with with the ZX2. It wasn't bad, but it could be better. Similar issue with the Drop JVC FDX1. It's upper midrange emphasis is tamed by the ZX2, but it's bass really needed some help. So ahead I forged on the Apos website.



Wait, what's this xDuoo boopy doop thingy? Hmm, the Force or Magic Eight Ball is telling me something here. "Hey, @CEE TEE, can you get me the iDuo duodenum X15 ZYX +++ mega version edition doodad?"

Well it turned out my hunch was right.

Geekria provides several types of pads for Grado. To be specific, I am taking about these below. In terms of thickness, they are somewhere between the stock L-pad and SR60 cushions, but of larger diameter. The Geekria material is softer and more pliant than the Grado pads. In other words, more comfortable.



@Hands already did a lot of the heavy lifting in his Symphones V9 build review, going through 100 different pads. He zero'd in on the Geekria as being the best for this headphone, so I just went along with it. FWIW, I also agree these pads worked the best. For kicks, I also tried these pads with the Grado HF-3, and they worked quite well (more later).

Picture or didn't happen. This legal drug arrived at my place today. I could finally convince myself for the following reasons: (1) I need a summer pair of headphones; (2) My b-day is coming. Wanted a little special gift for myself; (3) F*** that's too beautiful to pass.. I'm not immune to "limited" marketing, either....



I'm posting measurements first, as I immediately noticed I had to measure today -- otherwise I would not be able to do forever. Sounds holy-shit-oh-my-god-homerun-good to me.

This is the companion unit to the iFi ZEN CAN. I'm going to ship this to @ChaChaRealSmooth to get his take on it because he's heard the regular iFi ZEN DAC/amp AIO. From the sounds of it, it seems like the Signature is a more grown up version. The Drop x ZEN DAC Signature is a DAC only.



Overall the sound is warm and a touch on the polite and forgiving side in the overall universe of DACs, cheap or expensive, that I have heard throughout the years. The ZEN DAC Signature is a still delta-sigma DAC, but iFi seems to go for a house sound that doesn't shear your ears of with digititus. The highs are plenty natural or as natural as can be. I'm assuming iFi is still going with the BB PCM179x series chips for this listenable quality. These chips are a bit dated. They are not the last word in microdetail compared to today's latest and greatest AKM or ESS parts. However, they don't suffer from the dreaded VELVET SOUND that every other person seems to dislike around here, or the still slightly unnatural highs of the ESS.