Feliks Elise, finally arrived.
tldr: Holy Schiit, this is some incredible polish engineering witchcraft.
First I will start with stating that my expectations were low / mediocre, I did not expect too much, honestly I bought it because I love the WA2 and Clears and it just doesn’t pair well naturally, due to impedance issues and I had to go thru all kind of loops to get it working somehow. And there was so much hype about this amp so I wouldn’t be able to sleep if I did not try it out.
I started my testing as I usually do, with the legendary HD650’s, paired with some Tung Sol 7236 power tubes, that came with the amp from previous owner. Didn’t really bother with stock tubes since those are kind of low-end as far as I know.
I just wanted to know if the amp works first and let it warm up properly, there were some weird cracks in one of the driver tubes which scared quite a bit, but seemed to go away after some time.
When I started my “critical” listening session I kind of… could not focus, it sounded so good that I just listened in amazement, mesmerized. It’s like talking to some incredibly attractive girl while struggling to pay proper attention to actual content of conversation. Just staring at her …
Instead of going thru 5-6 test tracks, I spend about hour just enjoying the music. Till I remembered that the new Tung Sol 5998’s arrived yesterday and were amazing in WA2, so I swapped the tubes and those are just one of the best so, it got even better, better bass and now perfectly smooth treble. That led to another hour 2 hours of listening, lost track of time… completely forgetting that I got this for the Clear Pro’s not for 650’s.
I’m waking up from this Elise trip, plugging in Clears with curiosity … btw this is what I was using to EQ down the completely busted damping factor on WA2 with Clears, and it was still loose and boomy on some tracks, but allowed me to listen to them and enjoy them on many other tracks.
So, Clears are in, exclusive mode, no EQ and … wow, the bass is actually tight, well textured with strong attack, this is crazy. And in terms of power, thinking this might not have enough power… I’m at 9 o’clock and Taylor Swift - Wildest Dreams are clipping the driver if I go higher I feel like I plugged in some sensitive IEM’s, not full size headphones. This thing has ton of power with 5998’s. 10 o’clock or higher would blow my head off. And it’s similar story with HD650, 9-10 is very loud and that’s coming from someone who listens very loud in general, I would say.
I don’t know what to say about this, it’s insane, it’s super smooth, bass is tight, midrange is all that you would expect from high-end OTL, this is well worth the price tag they put on it. And I would recommend it to everyone who is looking for that smooth enjoyable experience.
I just can’t believe what is coming out of this black box. Every single track I run, it’s amazing from Slipknot to Vivaldi.
Lukas from Feliks certainly wasn’t lying when he said that it will work “well” with Clears.