Thanks for taking the time for that great write up. Especially taking the time to compare a few of the most talked about op-amps for the Soloist.
I’ve heard the GSX Mini doesn’t have as much treble emphasis as it’s big brother (GSX mk2), but that it still likely has a small bump somewhere.
Glad to hear the GSX Mini and BF2 seem to synergize well. I don’t think I’ll be disappointed pairing mine with a Yggdrasil, knowing the BF2 is sometimes called the mini-Yggy.
I’ll add my thoughts on how the GSX Mini and Yggy pairs once I have both in house. Though could be a few weeks.
Thanks. I think the Bifrost 2 and GSX mini synergize well in terms of warm vs bright, but I’ve been told by another Mini owner that the Bifrost 2 is still the bottleneck in terms of detail and resolution, which I fully believe. Spring 3 is currently on my radar as well as the rumored Yggy A3.
I was thinking of trying the sparkos op-amps too but it looks like I’ll stay away from them. I do have the Classics coming in and I’ll post some impressions on those and see if our thoughts match up (I use a different DAC tho so it probably won’t).
Anyway, thanks for sharing your thoughts! It was great.
Great read thanks for sharing. To my ears, although I didn’t have a lot of time yet with either of these, the Soloist sounds brighter (listening with a RME ADI-2 DAC, balanced in and out to a LCD-5).
I also get a noise floor on the high gain on the soloist compared to the dead silent mini.
I’d say that after a couple of hours with each, at the moment I prefer the mini by a large margin. Might be price bias as well.
