Just an update of what’s in the headphone queue. I know we traditionally don’t do a lot of headphone reviews, or headphone amplifier/DAC reviews. But we want to change that, so look for more can coverage in the future.
I’ve received some lovely headphone amps/DACs for review courtesy of Edward Ku at Element Acoustics over the weekend. The SPL Phonitor X ($2,500 USD), and the Naim DAC-V1 ($1,800 USD). These will also help with comparisons for my upcoming Part II review of Roon with the totaldac integral, and it’s built-in headphone amplifier.
I’ll be using the classic yardstick for transparency: The Sennheiser HD800 ($1,399 USD), along with big guns the Audeze LCD-3 Fazor ($1,945 USD), and the MrSpeakers EtherFlow ($1,799 USD) to conduct my reviews. I’ve been listening to these three ‘phones for the last few months on a regular basis, with a wide variety of music, and file types, so I’m quite familiar with each ones sonic signature.
This should be an interesting review, I’m breaking-in the SPL, and Naim as I type this, and won’t be doing any serious listening until I’ve got at least 75 hours of burn-in on both amps. Check back later, I’ll be posting updates as the time to the reviews approaches.
Thanks for stopping by.
–Rafe Arnott
Did you mean the 800S?
No. The 800. Sennheiser is still selling them… many prefer them to the S version, but I haven’t been able to A/B the two yet.