IBasso PB1 Toucan Unboxing
The buzz on the Ibasso PB1 amplifier has been growing quite steadily on the local headphone community. Ibasso has been making good amps for a while now, but my friend told me that the PB1 is quite on another level [...more]
Matrix M-Stage Class A Biasing
I was totally happy with the Matrix M-Stage's performance, and it has officially taken the spot of my new favorite entry level amp. Moreover, I've been listening to the M-Stage with the Hifiman HE5LE, and though the Hifiman EF5 is [...more]
Matrix M-Stage
It's amazing to hear the kind of sound you can get from a $290 amplifier. Coolfungadget sells the M-Stage amp for $289.95, and he was kind enough to send me a unit for review. This is the newer 2010 version [...more]
Hifiman EF5 Review
Supposedly, the EF5 is THE amp for pairing with the HE5/LE. The EF1, which is the predecessor to the EF5, has been known to deliver solid results with low impedance headphones like the Grados. When Hifiman released the HE5 headphone, [...more]
Burson HA-160 Review (vs AMB’s Beta22)
I don't particularly have anything against Op-amp based amplifiers, but all discrete is cool both for bragging rights and for sonic reasons. Burson Audio is a big fan of fully-discrete, and the HA-160 is an all discrete headphone amplifier equipped [...more]
Pico Slim: First Impression
I almost gave up on the Pico Slim due to the seemingly never ending delays. Then, one day, the Pico Slim appeared. The box is surprisingly large, and the Pico Slim is surprisingly small. It's a beautiful looking amp, as [...more]
Audiotrak ImAmp
There has been an abundance of relatively small sized desktop headphone amplifiers, mainly from China, but the ImAmp caught my eye due to the Audiotrak name behind it. Audiotrak is becoming quite a common name in this industry, with their [...more]
Burson HA-160 Unboxing
Roughly two months ago I auditioned the Burson HA-160 amplifier from Audio Basic and was very impressed with the sound. It has such an Impact and PRaT that I seem to not get from the Beta22. It is dynamic, lively, [...more]
Fiio E7 Portable DAC
After several low budget amplifiers (E1, E3, E5), Fiio now enters the market with a more serious E7 Portable DAC/Amp.It's hard to find another product to compare the E7 with. It's sort of a hybrid between a portable amplifier and [...more]
The Beta22 Amplifier
Introduction to the Beta22To start with, the Beta22 amplifier is a design by AMB Laboratories. It is a fully discrete, high current, class A headphone amplifier that's considered by many to be the best of the best in solid state [...more]
Stax SRM-1/Mk2 Bias Modification
This article originally was published by Psychaudio at the Audiophile-id forum. The original article was written in Indonesian and so I have obtained Psychaudio's permission to translate it into english.It all started when a local forum member obtained a SRM-1/Mk2 [...more]
Preview: Soul Drive Unbalanced to Balanced Converter
A few months ago, I talked to Psychaudio who is a local amplifier designer, about building a device that will take an unbalanced signal, and create a balanced signal to feed to balanced amplifiers. This will make it easier for [...more]
First Impression: Lehmann Black Cube Linear
During the Sennheiser HD800 launch event in Singapore, the Lehmann Black Cube Linear amplifier was chosen to be the "official" amplifier for auditioning sessions. It was a little hard to judge its performance, given that the headphone (the HD800), the [...more]
First Impression: CEC HD53N
The CEC HD53N is a very slick looking amplifier approximately as thick as the average hardcover book. It takes both balanced and single ended headphones, as well as small efficient speakers through the speaker posts at the back panel. Power [...more]
Nuforce uDAC (and comparisons)
The Nuforce uDAC is probably one of the most successful entry level DAC that the audio world has ever seen. Stores consistently run out of stock on the uDAC, and as fast as Nuforce can make them, the market buys [...more]
Styleaudio Carat UD-1 (Audinst HUD-MX1 and Ibasso D10 Comparison)
The Carat UD-1 is an entry level USB DAC from Styleaudio. A quick search revealed that Open Audio in Korea has it listed for 64,000 Won, which translates to roughly U$58. Depending on where you live, shipping and taxes may [...more]
Preview: Stax SR-404LE, Headamp KGSS
Good things come to those who wait. The SR-404 Limited Edition headphones seem to be the second most desirable Stax model after the flagship Omega 2. Since the Omega 2 sells for over $2,000, while the SR-404LE sells for [...more]
Audinst HUD-MX1
Here is a great entry level DAC from a relatively young Korean company called Audnst. DAC techonology has been improving so much, and now we can have a great sounding DAC for a very affordable price.Sound wise, the HUD-MX1 is [...more]
Doobooloo’s Portable Balanced Amp
Doobooloo designed and built his balanced portable amp way back in 2008. The thread is dated November 1st, 2008, much earlier than Ray Samuel's Protector. Some may argue that it's not a 100% percent portable, as it still requires power [...more]
RSA Protector and Sennheiser HD25-1
When I discovered how great the HD25-1 was when driven balanced, I quickly realized that even though the improvements were great, still it was not really practical to have a balanced HD25-1 set up. (At that time I was driving [...more]
Lavry DA11 Review
You can say that engineers are men of science though our brethren over there in the hard science camp tend to look down upon us. We engineers use scientific knowledge to make things easier in everyday life. Scientists discover while [...more]
RSA Protector: Source Issues
The Protector is roughly at the 50 hours mark. I've been quite happy with it now. Any grain and harshness that I noticed when it was brand new of the box seem to have disappeared. Of course we'll continue burning [...more]
RSA Protector: It’s Here!
At last. The eagerly awaited RSA Protector is here. Ray's post on Head-Fi announcing the development of the RSA Protector was dated 12 December 2009, so it's only been three months until we received our amplifier. I applaud Ray for [...more]
SPL’s Phonitor and Auditor
It was in 2008 that we started hearing about the SPL Phonitor, a high end headphone amplifier developed by professional recording equipment company SPL in Germany. SPL coined a nice name for the stereo imaging issue that plagued virtually all [...more]
ESI Audiotrak Dr. DAC 24/192 Upsampling DAC
The rising trend of computers as transports makes all-in-one standalone external audio devices a very lucrative market. The Dr. DAC Prime amplifier and DAC combo unit is a new offering from ESI with 192 kHz upsampling and 24/96 native USB [...more]
Sophia Princess Upgrade for the WooAudio6
Though the WooAudio6 is a very good amp for the price, people are constantly looking for ways to upgrade its performance. One way to upgrade the WooAudio6 is by replacing the stock rectifier to the Sophia Princess Rectifier, which [...more]
Stax SRD-7
The SRD-7 energizer works differently than a regular Stax amplifier. It requires to be piggy-backed to a standard speaker amplifier, where it takes the current from the speaker amplifier and convert it to the necessary high voltage power for driving [...more]
Bravo Hybrid Tube Amplifier
I love it when small amplifiers sounds good and big! From the look of it, the Bravo amplifier looks more like a desktop accessory than a proper amplifier. It is nicely packaged, and the dimension is tiny for a desktop [...more]
RSA Shadow, TTVJ Slim, or ALO Rx?
We have been talking about the three newly released amplifiers, but I have never really done a direct comparison between them. All three amplifiers no longer use conventional potentiometers, but rather a digital volume control or a stepped attenuator. This [...more]
TTVJ & TTVJ
When I received the TTVJ Slim, I was curious on how it would compare to the TTVJ Millet Hybrid Portable. Conveniently enough, Todd had also shipped me the TTVJ Millet Hybrid so I can do a comparison to the new [...more]
HeadAmp Gilmore Lite
Say hello to one of the most well known entry level amplifiers in the industry. Most people will be shocked to find how small the Gilmore Lite really is. The shocker is when you realize that an amplifier this small [...more]
ALO Rx High Gain
The ALO Rx turns out to have a gain switch hidden behind the front face plate. All you have to do is get a suitable hex key and open the front faceplate. Then the gain switch can be found under [...more]
RSA Tiny Amps: The Shadow or The Mustang
After coming out with the RSA Shadow, people started asking question if it's worth selling their P51 Mustangs to get the newer Shadow amp. We did a short comparison to find out.If we look at both the Shadow and the [...more]
GoVibe Sharps
With the Sharps amplifier, GoVibe has successfully created a portable amp that manages to go head to head with the venerable Ray Samuels SR-71a. People wanting to get a powerful portable amplifier can rejoice now, as the Sharps manages to [...more]
WooAudio6 Tube Amplifier
A good friend of mine loaned his WooAudio6 to me during his time away for a business trip. The WooAudio6 is the entry level model of WooAudio's transformer coupled tube amplifiers. It sells for $585 in stock configuration, but this [...more]
ALO Rx Headphone Amplifier
The ALO Rx comes equipped with a lot of tech packed into a slim box roughly the size of an Ipod Classic. ALO not only jumped on the digital/attenuator volume control wave, but they also added many other goodies to [...more]
TTVJ Slim: First Impression
TTVJ named the new portable amp the "TTVJ Portable Headphone Amplifier". Since TTVJ already have a hybrid tube portable amplifier, I thought that calling the new amp as a "TTVJ Portable Headphone Amplifier" might get people confused. Some have been [...more]
RSA Shadow After 7×24 Hours
In the first part of the review, I wrote that the RSA Shadow really sounded great out of the box. However, the designer, Ray Samuels, wrote on the manual that 100 hours of burn in is required of the Shadow. [...more]
Mr. Graham Slee on The Voyager
I've been talking to Graham Slee regarding the design of the Voyager that I reviewed, and through our conversation, he explained some information regarding his amplifiers. First is the auto-gain feature that would equalize the volume on headphones with different [...more]
RSA Shadow: Out of the Box
The RSA Shadow is one of the most highly anticipated amplifier to be released to the headphone community. It all started back in May, with a little write up on Ray Samuels front page that reads:Last year I received a [...more]
HeadAmp Pico
The Pico is a portable USB DAC/Amp that was released by HeadAmp at the end of 2008. It has a very small footprint making it the tiniest portable combo DAC/Amp among its competitors at the time of its release. Additionally, [...more]
Graham Slee Voyager
If an amplifier is supposed to amplify the signal feed to it while preserving its sound as pure as possible, Mr. Graham Slee for sure don't hold that belief. The Graham Slee Voyager amplifier is one warm sounding amplifier with [...more]
RSA SR-71a
Ray Samuels managed to create one hell of a portable amp in the SR-71a.Plugged in to the extremely revealing, legendary Apuresound recabled Etymotic ER4P, and you immediately hear a clean, uncolored amp with a killer resolution that no other portables [...more]
Moon Voice Nano CMOY
Now here is a shocking little CMOY with an unbelievably high power output (for a CMOY, and portable). We're not talking about driving AKG K501s or Sennheiser HD650s here. I'm talking driving an AKG K340 with a CMOY. [...more]