I have a baseline set of “good value” Blue Jeans and Schiit cables, and then I’ve allotted “play money” to buy different equipment to see how they sound in comparison, i.e. I’m treating this like a hobby, where I’m experimenting with different things. I was perfectly happy with the sound I was originally getting, but I enjoy the tinkering.
When buying cables, I’ve tried to get the most out of my budget, so as mentioned above, I found a place that custom makes Furutech OCC cables for a lot less less money than buying them ready made. You can also get great bargains by buying used cables. My USB cable is a Black Cat Digit, and I would never have thought about buying it at full price, but I got it at USAudiomart for less then half price.
I’d love to know how your Mapletree Ear+ sounds. Their equipment looks great and they also know what they’re doing, so I would imagine their amps sound as good as they look. I bought a switch from Mapletree and they were such a joy to work with. They were so nice about getting the right wood panels to complement the rest of my gear.
Hear hear! I have a few things from BJC and Schiit, too. I also got into making my own headphone and speaker cables a couple years ago and had great success with it. Super fun!
The MAD EAR+ HD I have was part of a trade I did on Canuck Audiomart.
It has a bunch of upgraded wiring and was recapped with upgraded caps by Mapletree just before I got it. I love it. I tried a bunch of amps out before it. I now just have the EAR+ and my RME ADI-2 for headphone amps.
When I received it, I came with over a dozen tubes. I worked my way through and found what I liked and what I didn’t. From there, I tried a couple things I had researched. I really like the Brimar Yellow Label 6060 and the Valvo Gold Pin 12AT7. While the tubes change some qualities of the music and the staging, the character of the amp itself does not change much.
It is not overly “tube-y” sounding. It amplifies a quick, resolving, palpable sense of the material and renders a really great soundstage. Like really great. As a speakers guy, it brings something to the table that, while different from speakers, satisfies that staging itch I get when listening to headphones. I finally understand what people are talking about when they say the HD650s/600s scale with your upstream gear.
I reached out to Dr. Peppard to ask a few questions about the amp and had a similar experience as you reported. Even though this was a second hand amp, he was more than happy to speak with me and offered me all kinds of great information. I am interested in his tube preamp now!
I listen with HD600s, HD650Ms (sbaf kiss mod) and a pair of DIY Grado-esque headphones with lovely wood cups and the Elleven Acoustica R1 drivers - they’re detail beasts and have a midrange to die for.
I’ve not listened to headphones in a while and think I will bring the BF2 up this weekend and see how it pairs with the EAR+ HD.
It is just how I perceive it so far in comparison to the other speakers I tried or own(ed) this year. Maybe it is also something I read earlier and am biased about. The Adam’s, Hedd’s and Buchardt speakers all feel/felt faster. I am not saying the P3ESRs are slow, but I would also not classify them as fast. They actually feel very relaxed. The Rel T5i is on it’s way :)!
Would it be possible for you to ask that colleague what stood out for him in that comparison with the P3’s and if he also assessed them in a near-field setup?
It is maybe also just a matter of taste. I wil decide somewhere early next year, but have to buy them blind. One device that also grabbed my attention (because you mentioned an older Heed Dac model) is the Heed Abacus DAC. The few things I can find about it is exactly addressing the “issues” which I seem to experience. It might be that for HiFi use this is a better and more forgiving DAC than the Burson or BF2, which are maybe just to resolving for the already very resolving P3s. So maybe I should just keep the Burson for Headphones and order this Dac with the Heed Amp (Elixir or Obelisk, still to be decided). As you also responded to PaisleyUnderground think it might be the case that due to room response etc different Dacs apply to HiFi and Head-Fi.
These look really nice indeed. I need to investigate that route further. Thx :)!
I hope so. First let’s see what adding a sub, different amp and cables will do. Enough to think about and to try out (and spent ) the coming months.
Thanks for all the advice so far. This is getting far from BF2 topic, so maybe worth a different topic/discussion or platform.
So I got the Bifrost 2 today, listened for about 3 hours and …
While it is indeed excellent overall, I still find it kind of bright, really very much on the edge of what is tolerable for me and it’s somewhat fatiguing with longer listening session.
Also I’m not sure what is the hype about the Unison USB, maybe I have some crappy cable (found the best, thickest out of full box of cables at work), but it’s brighter than optical connection. And I just can’t listen to that at all.
So I’m back to old Bifrost Multibit and this is just… sweet, enjoyable, not a touch of harshness. Yea it doesn’t have as good bass as the new Bifrost and the resolution is bit worse also, but it’s smoother non fatiguing, more pleasurable.
How long have you been running the BF2? I know that there is a burn in period - both for the gear and for your ears. When I first got my BF2 I disliked it as was going to send it back. As I grew more accustomed to it, I really began to appreciate its talents. I agree that it can get a little peaky with some material, but I find it very listenable now. Most of what I had issues with, I was able to correct with system tuning here.
I’m on speakers mostly but am going to do a headphone listen this weekend as many people have really touted the smoothness of the BF2 and headphones. I do know that it had been sensitive to upstream equipment for me: I don’t really dig the usb implementation in my home system - might be poor source or cables on my end, SPDIF is really good and pretty inexpensive to get right - though again cables mattered.
I found that it mellowed out a bunch after being on for a week or two. That could have also been my ears. The presentation is very different from my RME ADI-2, which took getting used to.
It’s not new unit, it’s about 10 months old, so it should be pretty well burned-in.
Yea, I certainly notice that it has a lot of strong points, but to my ears after that one listening session, it sounded too aggressive and peaky overall compared to old Bifrost which I love very much. Had it basically since release.
Now I’m starting second session, listening to Heavy - The House That Dirt Built and switching back and forth from perfectly warmed up Bifrost 2 to cold Bifrost 1. The Bifrost 2 is just hard to listen to, it’s too sharp and it’s very noticeable.
Either I’m super sensitive or there is something wrong with my setup I guess.
Yea, SPDIF sounds much smoother for some reason.
I will certainly keep it for some time and give it a proper try, but I’m little sad about the experience. I guess I’m probably someone who would enjoy the “overly smooth” Ares II or something like that.
Just checking out that Heavy recording in the studio this afternoon. It’s a pretty crispy recording. I’m listening with an RME and Genelecs in here. It’s fun but it’s hurting me. I am just spinning up some Black Keys to contrast - it’s in a similar family with similar instrumentation and production but the recording is much smoother. Maybe give that shot as a point of contrast.
I had the original Ares and loved it, despite the haters. I did, though, find that it was bit hashy around the edges if you’re listening closely. The V2 might be better, but I thought V1 was a fine DAC on speakers.
But I notice the same issue on other recordings too. For example Dreams.
I believe this song is pretty well recorded, but there are the cymbals, quite strong hit here and there in the track and when I set volume moderately high, the way I usually listen for pleasure, on B1 and the song sounds amazing, no peaks at all, and then just switch to B2 with same volume, the cymbals are suddenly painful, it’s the situation when you hear it once and then you are scared when you know it’s coming because it’s too bright. And overall the song is more “sharpened” for a lack of my audio vocabulary, like when you take a picture and apply sharpening filter, yea it’s more sharp but it’s not natural, it doesn’t add the real detail.
Not sure if this is the case with Bifrost 2, but that’s kind of vibe I’m getting out of it.
Sorry you’re having this experience. I was just saying to @JTS that I haven’t experienced any brightness on my BF2 but it could just be the differences in our equipment chain.
I did try that Heavy album on Amazon HD just now and it is a very “aggressive” recording, very bright, compressed and recorded at too high a level. I looked it up on the DR Loudness War website and the comment made me laugh: “20 years ago an engineer would have been fired and his career would have been over if he’d produced a CD with this much clipping and distortion”.
But the music is really good, so this makes it a good set of test tracks - I’ve been using Oasis songs for my testing of “how does badly recorded music sound on my system?”.
I tried the album out using a Lyr 3, Asgard 3 and Soloist 3 amps, using a Stellia and Verite Open, all using the BF2. The Stellia tends to tell it how it is, but dials down the brightness slightly, and this was still at my limit (maybe over my limit) for brightness. The listening experience with the Verite was a little more comfortable.
Anyway, this was a longwinded way of saying that yes, I can hear brightness on this recording on my BF2 as well. If your BF1 smooths over that brightness, that’s pretty impressive.
I think it’s mix of factors that lead to my feelings about this. I do listen at relatively high volume, I just blast it till the midrange sounds clear and has enough energy. So where someone might talk about nice detail, I talk about being bright and painful probably due to volume. And then I’m so used to listening to WA2 with amazing tubes, in past multiple years I was basically listening only to this combo with HD650/660S/800S and now I got Clears Pro for about half a year.
About the Oasis
I can just blast this as loud as I can take and it’s fine, no nasty brightness or peaks on B1.
Also I have Feliks Elise on the way, which might be even warmer than WA2 so I’m curious if maybe the B2 will pair better with that amp for me.
I have the 2011 version of Rumours, not sure how different it is from 2004 (which I probably own too if I want to go back to my CD storage shelves, LOL). I’m normally very sensitive to bright cymbals, to the point that I’ll permanently EQ them down in Audacity if they’re really bad.
I’ve never had an issue with Rumours before, listening to FLAC via Foobar. But I just started the free trial for Audirvana, so tried Dreams on there and the cymbals are a lot more apparent. I don’t know which is correct, Foobar (with its toned down cymbals) or Audirvana. I’m guessing the latter.
I have the 2011 version of Rumours, not sure how different it is from 2004 (which I probably own too if I want to go back to my CD storage shelves, LOL).
LOL, I read this a few minutes ago and thought " I probably have at least 5 different versions of this album." Then I put down my phone and went into my closet and what was the first thing I saw?
Here is a bit of a crazy datapoint. This evening, I was spinning some stuff through Spotify on my apple tv for convenience. This is LAN>apple tv>Spotify>HDMI>Sony Bravia tv>Optical>BF2>Stereo
It sounded good - too good - and I caught the “just one more” itch. It was smooth, dynamic, not a hint of biteyness. Spotify, imperfect chain, optical. WTF?!?
Two thoughts.
My spdif chain (currently S/PDIF from an Allo DigiOne with Nirvana PSU) can be better. I think my P2AES arrives this week. I have high hopes.
for those experiencing some glare with the BF2, try optical as a comparison. It had/has no business sounding as good as it did for me this evening! I am curious how you might find it to be. If you find it smooth and engaging, as I did, it really points to a sensitivity to upstream gear in the BF2.
Did you receive an answer back from your colleague already?
Thanks for sharing. Sometimes audio just connects and you don’t have a clue why. It might also be the case that the USB implementation of the BF2 is not so good with lesser sources (basically too good) as is suggested by Schiit. Many companies these days focus on measurements of distortion, rather than focus on how something sounds, especially with different sources. Unfortunately USB is my only option in my desktop setup. I might connect a streamer somewhere the next months to compare how that sounds over optical or coax vs Mac Mini over USB. For now I will explore the USB route with my Burson Dac, because it is just most convenient to have only one input device.
The Rel T5i is still on its way ;). I do however have replaced the standard RCA cables I had (RU Connected) between my Burson and Vista Spark with the Oyaide Neo D+ Class A cables (102SSC conductor). This made a huge difference already. The bass dramatically changed and is both fuller and punchier and the highs are more transparant, but at the same the sharpness and edginess I talked about drastically reduced. I now understand when people say that the P3ESR’s have enough bass. The overall presentation also is cleaner, has more depth, background is blacker, separation improved.
I can now easily put the volume at 70-80dB at 2-3feet distance without getting listening fatigue. So really drastic improvement and proofs that you were right about that the Harbeths really are sensitive and very picky with the cables. Somehow this 102SSC conductor works really well. This also strengthened my believe that my problems are in the analogue chain.
My 102SCC speakers cables (Oyaide Explorer V2) will be delivered tomorrow, so very curious what that will breng to the table.
I did hear back from my colleague. He simply said “the Obelisk is a better amp by far”. He then proceeded to tell me about how good the new NAD class D amps are. I won’t get much more out of him, I’m afraid - so this is perhaps not that useful. I have a little D3020 I use in a second system and it IS surprisingly good for what it is.
Good news about the system changes you’re making. Sounds like you’re getting it all dialed in. I was surprised by the difference that cables made here. Not sure if this is a sensitivity of the Harbeths or of the upstream gear. Certainly the Harbeths resolve that difference, though, in a way that you can hear it.
) the coming months.
out of full box of cables at work), but it’s brighter than optical connection. And I just can’t listen to that at all.
because it’s too bright. And overall the song is more “sharpened” for a lack of my audio vocabulary, like when you take a picture and apply sharpening filter, yea it’s more sharp but it’s not natural, it doesn’t add the real detail.
