So does that mean you’re keeping Dave for headphone use and your Hugo 1 for the 552?
I may be asking too much of a pair of closed back headphones, expecting top flight performance from them with Dave as well as getting them to work with a portable player.
Possibly…
With a well balanced and transparent / revealing set of headphones, the DAVE is outstanding, and even if not well balanced you can eq to suit.
I really would try a a set of headphones using magnetic planar technology, they really are something else tending to have luscious mids for beautiful voices with fast bass with great slam… where you can feel the pressure on your skull… gives a fabulous feeling of involvement and authority.
If you like strident or etched treble, even perhaps to boost a more modest source with added sparkle, then they are perhaps not the best, often having a more smooth and natural presentation albeit with fantastic resolution. Listen to many live tracks and you are there at the venue.
But to get this sort of response, there is no free lunch, as all planars I think are opened back.
Chris, you’re seeking the same as my intent, mine just not yet active!
I had the intention of purely relying on the Elegia as my main headphone but as I was having to use them more and more with my wife also working from home, I felt I was wasting what my system was capable of.
Since getting the Empyrean, the sound quality between speakers and HP is more even, probably in favour of the HP now. Which is great, as it would seem it will represent a good 60-70% of my listening now.
The Empys seem to be getting better and better and the Meze silver cable also made a big difference to them.
The quality of the bass without sacrificing the quality, clarity of mids/highs is what’s impressed me the most. When you get a track with a fast deep bass rhythm it makes you feel like you’re back at the club standing beside the speaker. It feels like it goes through you… but somehow never muddies the mids. I never expected that.
Yes I noticed this… I think they have a significant run in period… possibly hundreds of hours for the planar film to fully open up.
Which is odd as Meze seem to suggest they don’t have a burn in time but I could swear that while they were great from the start, the bass felt a bit more muffled to what it is now. It feels like they have more space, air between the instruments now.
I had mine running for about 12 hours a day for the first 10 days so they’ll be approaching 140 hours I guess now.
I was using my 846s yesterday. Still a fantastic set of phones and I expect they rather like being driven by DAVE. Reading some of the comments, I do wonder if DAVE via USB was not optimal and would have been better via S/PDIF. Anyway water under the bridge now. Good luck with your search Chris.
James
Exactly - the bass was slower and bled into the lower mids when brand new - definitely doesn’t do that now. That changed probably over 60 hours or so… And early on used to revert a little bit when playing the headphones from cold … but when they heated up from the ear body temperature then it tightened.
Now many hours later this ‘warm up’ period is not not apparent - and the deep bass is fast and resolved with lovely body from the start.
I also find moving the position over the ear canal makes an interesting difference as well as well as ensuring a good seal. I guess this is all comes to play as they so amazingly revealing and transparent and in the grand scheme things these are very subtle changes - but seem to strangely become more pronounced when the sound resembles reality.
@Simon-in-Suffolk with your setup is there anything you miss over the full system? Could you happily live with the headphone rig as your main listening setup?
Before 2018, 95% headphones, after 2018, 99% loudspeakers on the main system. All to do with where I lived.
Social listening - and listening whilst moving about
S
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