Ferrum OOR / HYPSOS Headamp Review: Girl You Know It's True

Maybe is my forceful personality (also doesn't help that I am a people manager at work), but if you got something to say, say it.

My work-side is not best side.

 

Question somewhat unrelated to the amp... and I'm sure I'm showing my extreme ignorance when it comes to the EE side of this kind of stuff (which usually flies way over my head)... but if the hypsos is being touted as a better PSU, then why is the mains noise so bad?

Does this mean its even worse without the Hypsos in the loop? If I'm way out in left field, then please tell me and I'll just go back to lurking on this one...

 

To add a few of my impressions of the Oor:

While I don't have enough confidence to say that it sucks with dynamics but excels with orthos in general, it does fit my experience. For reference I have the Oor and a starlett. Compared to the starlett the verite open sounds boring and the utopia is weird: it sounds like the music is very "rushed" out of it, the starlett is much much better on both counts.
However the Lcd-r sounds so much better out of the Oor than it does from the jot-a, the difference is stark. Most importantly for me though, and the reason I still have it: the lcd-4z sounds fantastic out of it, not as magical as the utopia does out of the starlett (with a very different sound of course) but I've yet to be as impressed by the 4z with any other amp.

 

This is all relatively low-level stuff but the fact that there's not an insignificant amount of research looking into the deleterious effects of ultra-and-infrasonic noise on the human person does make me wonder whether this could all contribute to gradual shifting of mood towards "eugh" in the longer term.

As was pointed out elsewhere it seems like ESS and other chipmakers have been taking strides towards improving ultrasonic performance with their newer releases, and I really rather doubt that this'd be something they'd invest money into solving were there not halfway decent reasons to do so.

Also, while I do appreciate the reduced ringing on something like the FiiO BTR7's "fast" filter (linear phase IIRC), there's just way too much brightness with something like the Andromeda 2020 out of the Pentaconn jack; just going by measurements both should extend cleanly to 20kHz, so what's the big deal, right? I can't identify clean tones above 18kHz (SCREW YOU, MCCORMICK), but the fatigue is still there for longer listening sessions.

 

My aggregated impressions (I own all of these)

Caldera: Oor > MJ3 > Stellaris > DSHA-3F
Atrium: Stellaris > DSHA-3F ~ (not the same, but different strengths) MJ3 > Oor

Sources: HQPlayer DSD256 (poly-sinc-gauss family upsampling, ASDM7EC-super modulator) > Holo May KTE (Oor, MJ3, Stellaris #1) or Holo Sprint 2 KTE (DSHA-3F, Stellaris #2).

I bought Oor (+Hypsos) on impulse because at the time I had nothing that worked well with Caldera. For that, and for the fact that it does not need N minutes to sound good, I'm still using the pairing. Some modern jazz and classical pieces still work best for me with the pairing. But realistically, with MJ3 I get >90% of what I want from Caldera, and with Stellaris or MJ3 (different moods), I get what I want from Atrium.

 

With so many amps at the high end to compete with, perhaps it makes business and marketing sense for the amp manufacturers to have a specialist application.

Will sound great in the demo and people are happy long enough with them.

 

Above a certain price point (or any price point really), I'm happy with a new piece of gear for precisely as long as it takes until I get (or set my eyes upon) my next toy.

 

It may be totally irrelevant (different problem), but the Hypsos I got originally had substantial transformer hum even with a CMX-2 DC offset filter. After some back and forth I got a replacement that does not hum. Reason I'm noting this is that maybe their build quality or quality control are not commensurate with their pricing

 

I for one am grateful to learn about the hidden side of the OOR, because I thought it was something I should target for from what I’ve read. It would be great for that one special planar headphones that I have. The value goes way down if you have dynamics too and limited resources.

I think the real disappointment is that some gears are just one trick ponies, but nothing wrong with that if it’s quite a trick and if you know what you’re getting into. Like those with Stax, Susvara, HE6 or Utopia…looking for the unicorn complement. You can’t expect an “energizer” to work well with anything other than Stax, or a Crack to work well with anything other high impedance headphones, or in the case of the OOR anything other than planars it seems.

The real service here is knowing about the exceptional tricks an equipment can do, but also learning its serious limitations. The disservice is knowing only the good side, or only of the bad side.

 

Yikes. What's the case made from, papier mache? Because it sure as shit isn't doing any decent shielding.

 

You call that ambient hum? Bah:

 

This was the genesis of my question... its a $1200 PSU that has less performance than a meanwell switcher? I guess the advantage of being able to somewhat tailor the sound of the amp via the voltage holds some advantage, but $1200?

 

And if they really intended for them to stack, then an argument could be made that they could have gone with a more traditional EI core. From my (albeit limited) understanding, toroidal is efficient and doesn't emit much magnetic voodoo away from its axis which is great when it's close to other circuitry in the same box, but it does project the bad mojo along its axis which is where the stacking shenanigans come in.

 

At >$1000 for an 'audiophile' power supply, I'd expect a shielded toroid. There's just no excuse for magnetic hum to propagate through high end equipment.