I always take reviews / impressions with a big grain of salt regardless if they come from casual posters or professional reviewers. We all hear differently, value different sonic traits, listen to different genres with different levels of involvement, and have different references as to what sound is the correct sound. And, like is said, “You can’t know how salty the soup is until you taste it”.
I’m driving the interface box with Ragnarok 1, fed by Yggdrasil 2, fed by AES out of my Emotiva ERC3 and CD’s connected all the way with Straightwire’s second least expensive cabling, Symphony II. And from some point in mid bass up it is the cleanest, most detailed, most accurate rendition of what I hear in the concert hall with the exception of sound staging. But it seems to pretty accurately give me mic placements which are always directly above and a little too close to the orchestra to my way of hearing it, and the mics substitute for the location of ones ears when listening to a recording. From some point in the mid bass down every bit of detail and frequency range down to 30 is easily heard, just not with the airy impact of say my 1266Phi, Utopia, HD800S or even 800, or as happens in the concert hall with the bottom range of bass drum, tuba, bassoon, and a few other instruments. But my other phones do blur the finest details. And when I engage a little Loki in the bottom range the bass is impressive if a little dry and still lacking in airy impact but definitely not brittle. That’s the trade-off at this point until I get the “R” and / or investigate other amps, but it’s one I can live with happily. Then I add in the comfort of no part of the phone touching my ears against the need to use these in a quiet ambient environment, and I’m still very happy.
I pulled out an old favorite CD of mine, Beethoven’s “Eroica” with Klemperer and the Philharmonia on EMI. This recording was made in 1959, I’ve listened to it hundreds of times over the past 5 decades (and this work at least a dozen times in the concert hall) and was amazed at the ultra-fine string textures of violas and cellos I heard coming thru the SR1a that my other phones do not delineate as well. More current recordings may have an overall edge on transparency but this was made 70 years ago and it still amazes me.
If I didn’t listen to music past Wagner I’d say these are as close to perfect as it gets. But I really like and focus on the post Wagnerian composers the most. Oh well, LOL! (I do listen to Jazz and classic Rock but not with the “dog on point” focus I give classical).
None of the gear I’ve ever owned or heard at length, including many systems I could never begin to afford, get everything right to my way of hearing it. But the SR1a seems to encompass everything I value sonically but that last 3% at the bottom. And I will continue to chase that last 3% because that’s the very definition of an audiophile, and that’s what we do.
