The All Purpose Advice Thread

Hi,

I´m almost new in this world and I would like to ask you guys for advice.
I have the Shure 535 Ltd iem, and recently a Chord Mojo and a Hifiman he-400i.

Coming from 535, with "clean" records, the 400i are awesome in lows and highs but in the mids, with voices sound a little unnatural for me and maybe with a little "V" signature. I love the voices in my 535, of course sometimes are to much upfront but just gold for me.

Do you guys know a budget headphone that pairing great with a Chrod Mojo with gold mids? I don´t know if HD650 needs to much power or I´m going to lose to much highs. I said HD650 because many of you are always talking about thouse.


Regards

 

@jdev
You are in the rare position of having the world as your playground. Buy used and resell at minimal loss and just experiment. We're all a bunch of quacks here.

Some starting points:
Schiit Gungnir multibit and Mjolnir 2 with the solid state "tubes"
Bryston BDA-1 or 2 and the BHA-1


@Mr.Pizza
If you like the 400i but want something a little flatter in signature, the 500 or 560 might be up your alley. They are not too efficient, but I find more amp friendly than the Sennheisers. You already have decent cans, there's no sense downgrading with "budget" gear unless you're looking for something for different applications or just to play around.

 

Hey guys, I am an Audirvana user and am interested in finding various settings people are using so I can try and squeeze a bit more performance out of my setup. My setup is Audirvan 3.1 (mac) -> usb -> Aune X1s -> Nuforce Ha-200 -> K7xx.
Attaching screenshot of my Audirvana settings.



Steepness: 24
Filter length: 545k
Cut off freq: 0.97
Anti aliasing: 100
Pre-ringing: 0.36
Integer mode: 1

Sound-wise. Mostly fine. Not the biggest headstage. Sometimes a bit too aggressive/edgy sounding (esp. my sabre dac). For most of the music I listen to (my regional music) it's quite engaging.
I would love to know if there's a tried & tested config that sounds a little bit laid back, or in general any alternate settings that the rest of the users are happy with.

 

Beyer dt-150

 

Hi
A friend of mine is considering an Audiovalve Luminare, for the time being as a tube amp as he doesn't own any electrostats (yet). Has anybody heard it? (@Marvey @Hands @sorrodje) Where does it stack up as a tube amp? I own an Icon Audio Mk2 and a Feliks Audio Elise which I don't use any more since my DNA Stratus arrived. How would the Luminare compare to those e.g.?
Most impressions I find are for it as an electrostatic amp... Thanks for your help!

 

Thanks for this opinion. What would you call cheap enough? Is €2200 reasonable? Apart from him paying for a DAC he doesn't need and an energizer he doesn't need yet... but if the dynamic amp pushes above it's price tag it might still be not that bad a deal... he apparently liked his listen a lot, but then again he never heard a tube amp before, not even mine (we live far apart and our hifi-meet always gets postponed for some reason)

 

Are there any hyper-portable USB-C DAC/amps that are worth looking at?

I'm going to get a new phone soon, which means no built-in headphone jack, which means a USB-C DAC/amp "headphone adapter" cable. If I'm going to have to carry a little dongle thing around anyway, I might as well get something good, but I'm not sure if there's anything in between simple adapter cables and full-sized GO2A/Fulla/Mojo/iDSD/etc. units (which are fine for transportable purposes, but too much for just carrying around shoved in a pocket with IEMs).

Anything out there, or just get the generic adapter cable?

 

Thanks guys. I have heard that the 334 has some of the best mids for an IEM too.
Anyone mind chiming in with IEM(s) that they think are the best for vocals? Thanks!

 

@ductrung3993 "Best" is going to be a very subjective thing. People's tastes and preferences are different.

Try the S B A F S U P E R S E A R C H function. I just plugged in "iem vocals" and most of the hits were from shotgunshane’s IEM thread. In addition to the list, there's lots of great info on IEMs in there. If you don't want to read through all 59 pages, search within this thread for "vocals". That narrows it down to 4 pages of results.

Then, I suggest you ask specific questions in that thread about IEMs that pique your interest. You will get plenty of responses from people who are really into IEMs, more than here in the All Purpose thread.

This approach (do as much research as you can before asking specific questions) will get you much better results than just throwing out a "which is best?" question.

 

Hey guys, new guy here (@sorrodje I bought my Yggdrasil from you on HF! )
Anyway I am contemplating on upgrading my Lyr 2 to MJ2 but I have a few issues that I need some advice on.

First of all I want to get a better amp that can use the same tubes as the Lyr2 as I have a ton of those so that's why I've set my eyes on the Mj2.
Currently all of my gear is using single-ended connections, so I would need to switch to balanced cables, which is fine for my headphones as I can recable them, however my speakers can only take RCA.
So I need an amp that will use the same tubes, will have balanced input and output XLR to my headphones and RCA to my speakers.

So if there is such an amp (other than the MJ2) please let me know (and in the similar price range and that can feed the same range of Dynamic / Planar magnetic HPs)

If not that's where my problems come in:
1) I've read here and there about MJ2 SE preouts being gimped. How bad of an issue is this and will it make my speakers sound worse than with Lyr 2 SE preouts?
2) It seems MJ2 does not mute the preouts when you plug in a headphone like the Lyr does. This is something I definitely need done as when I plug in my headphones I expect no sound going to my speakers. To solve this issue I've been thinking of adding a Saga or a Freya. But this leads to its own set of questions:
2.1) If I get a Saga - I will use it in passive mode, just feed it RCA from MJ2 and use the two outputs to my speakers and sub so here problem 1) exists (does it?)
2.2) If I get a Freya - again I want to use passive mode, but do I feed it XLR out from the MJ2 ( I guess in this case the summing will happen in the Freya?) or SE from the MJ2.

Sorry for the wall of text and appreciate any responses to my dilemma!
Cheers

 

TG334 is too slow for me to take it seriously.
C435 was magical but Suyama wrongly decided to retire that model.

 

I can't disagree with that

If it works for him, that's great.

 

Maybe I'm missing something obvious, but if you're going to be using this preamp passively and single-ended, why not just get a SYS? Seems like that'd be exactly what you need and it'd save you a lot of money.

 

MJ2 sounds pretty decent for your headphone needs and is pretty responsive to tube rolling if you have a stash. However I would say that none of the Schiit headphone amps are all that great as speaker preamps. The MJ2 even balanced is not really very transparent as a preamp and will mess up soundstage and dynamics. For sure it will limit the Yggdrasil, though your speakers may limit it first depending on what they are. Really it depends on the rest of your chain and how much you use speakers vs headphones whether it's worth the extra cash, but as a general principle Saga is going to sound significantly better as a preamp to speakers. If you were to get a Saga, just feed it direct from Yggdrasil RCA outs, and run the MJ2 in parallel, then you avoid your speakers going through the MJ2 at all. I don't see any point in getting a Freya since you don't need the balanced outs. Also if you get a Saga don't automatically discount the tube mode. If you can psychologically square it with yourself not to go mad with tube rolling then top-drawer 6SN7 singles are cheap and plentiful (WAY more reasonable than 6922).

 

Yeah I forgot to mention I really want remote control. I am currently using this one -> https://www.keene.co.uk/keene-volume-remote-control-worldwide-psu.html but I don't like it as it has some issues (like crackling if my Lyr2 is over 75% volume on low gain and even if the remote control is set to like 10% so pretty quiet some tones cause crackle).

Hmm damn I was hoping to use the MJ2 as a preamp so I can also affect the sound of my speakers (AVI DM5 which are supposedly pretty transparent, their creators compare them to HD800 but eh who knows, I won't make any claims, I like them a lot in general) with my gorgeous 6922s and 2C51s I did not want to go into 6SN7 Saga because if I were to buy tubes for it I would not be able to test and match them in my Tube Imp (600mA heater current required for the 6SN7) and I would have to trust the sellers (which from my huge experience with 6922s and ebay cannot be trusted, well some are ok).

Alright thanks for the advice I might do just that - go Yggdrasil -> Saga -> Speakers and Yggdrasil -> MJ2 -> Headphones so I wont have the preamp mute problem. And I can decide if I want to roll 6SN7s as well, or even compare the sound difference betwee Yggdrasil->Saga->Speakers and Yggdrasil->MJ2->Saga->Speakers

 

Anyone know what I can do?
My AK120II just broke. I'm not sure what happened. Was listening to music, then it just started to make a high pitched sound, and screen is blank.
I cant turn it on and the noise continues through headphones.

 

Did you by chance get it wet? Usual wet electronics drying technique if that's the case...