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JJayJJ
472
Aug 21, 2019
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The wait ends. The drop lands safe and sound thankfully!
EDIT: I should take the moment to thank Drop for proving my prior doubts about being unable to deliver on time - wrong. I wondered if they would be able to deliver this batch and the May batch so soon considering how many units they took for pre-order. Not only did they serve the April folks right like me (by delivering it sooner than the May that were ordered later), but they shipped it 2 weeks before the August 30th estimated ship date. And seemingly made the big May drop take the August 30th date takes it's place. Basically correcting the mishap in the February drop that was delayed to folks a bit. Good job guys, it's nice to be wrong about things like this.
(Edited)
JJayJJ
472
Aug 21, 2019
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adeadcrabSound is indistinguishable from the RME, no worse, but as an amp alone, probably cleaner if you have a cleaner DAC based on measurements. Nothing wierd regardless of gain setting/volume used. Really impressive to not notice any sorts of distortions (was swapping between the motherboard output, and the 789, it's noticeable).
Power button a tad meh, just a bit mushy (I don't care about things of this nature to be honest, as long as it holds up, then it's perfectly fine with me)
Three gain settings are nice and offer a nice range of power for IEMs, to power hungry cans (only got HD6XX's tested, so 300 ohm can be easily served with ear-bleeding amount of power). As for the IEM, on low gain it's enough to drive my Moondrop Kanas Pro's. Oh and the actuation feels great between the gain settings.
The volume pot isn't scratchy (thank goodness) very nice and smooth, and I kind of like it compared to my RME that has steps (makes sense for digital volume control).
Build quality is really nice and solid in my book, and most importantly, this thing stays really cool, and never heated. My RME gets a tad warm by comparison.
SE-Passthrough is nice, even with the amp off, it will feed a signal to my powered speakers. Though no volume control naturally as is understood. Can also serve as a passthrough to another Amp if you need to run two of them while being fed by the same DAC. Very handy.
Overall, worth the wait. And as long as I take care of it, and it doesn't malfunction or something odd of that nature, this is pretty much my end-game Amp for sure. I can easily rest easy knowing transparency throughout the entire signal chain is preserved. And any EQ I need can be done on the desktop I use, or if I'm using another source to the DAC, the RME has 5 band Paremetric EQ to satisfy my needs.
Really also impressed by the overall build quality (aside from the mushy power button that I hear has a specific design reason for being such a way due to power ignition and such), the feel of the unit is nice and doesn't draw finger prints. The DAC resting on top to cover those vent holes I think is better than letting dust fall directly down into the unit (I wish they had relocated the vents considering how it wasn't needed for them to be there considering how cool the unit runs).
That's pretty much it for first-day's impressions. Sounds basically like almost everyone else's I imagine.
SaskAudioGuy
438
Aug 21, 2019
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JJayJJThe pass through working with the unit off, is great. I want to pull sound from my sound card for now, but I didn't want to use a splitter to keep my powered set fed.
How is it for taking SE in and pushing balanced out?
Glad to hear the Alps pot isn't presenting any of that Alpsness we know and love(hate).
The only thing I'm waffling on is the new front with the big 'Derp' logo and the changing of the formatting of the text. The older style is just right in my opinion.
JJayJJ
472
Aug 21, 2019
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SaskAudioGuyLuckily for me, I haven't heard any ground loop issues at all in my audio in the longest time since cutting out a bunch of gear I had cluttering the place. Testing balanced vs SE - AND the SE RCA in from the DAC to Balanced 4-pin headphone out I presume you were talking about.. Aside from the ridiculously powerful output (I'm not kidding, its ridiculous, they really wanted all bases covered, even for near deaf people it seems lol). It feels identical to the SE headphone out in terms of preserving fidelity.
As for the whole logo ordeal on future orders. Meh what can you do, the company is rebranding, and wants a more professional/corporate take on getting their name out there. But it's not the end of the world, and I wouldn't care about it much personally (tbh I sort of like what they did with the latter part of the front logo after the "DROP" name, the thinner and horizontal "THX AAA 789" portion).
But I can't be a judge for others and how serious of an OCD issue they take over such a thing. If I were buying some setup costing thousands of dollars, and a company made one portion of their devices branded a different way than the other - it would be a problem. But not for a device like this to be honest at this price range, and definately not considering the performance in reality it offers.
But I get the whole notion of how people turn gear acquisition into the hobby itself sometimes.
SaskAudioGuy
438
Aug 23, 2019
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JJayJJThe OCD would tear me apart to be completely honest. I also think that it would be really nice of Drop if they gave customers the option of the old face plate with updated rear logo or the new style. I don't think I'll actually have a Drop DAC, but it's a possibility. It's not just clash happy because of the logo, it also looks like a different font. I would definitely understand someone who couldn't have this with their old issue gear for that.
Thank you for answering what I was primarily driving at. Which is taking an SE signal and how it does at making it Balanced. Hopefully it does as well on balanced to SE.
I slept through the end of the Drop. Whoops...
Tapeworm
11
Aug 24, 2019
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JJayJJ"Sound is indistinguishable from the RME"
Thanks for saving me four hundred bones.
JJayJJ
472
Aug 24, 2019
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TapewormNo problem Tapeworm.
I got it mainly as a second device to go with another DAC. Technically speaking the THX measures better than the RME with respect to the amp section, but the problem with knowing how good the amp section of the RME is - is that it's impossible to know because you can't run the RME without having the signal go through it's DAC.
So if you got a DAC that's cleaner than the RME, technically the THX would be able to play at higher fidelity than the RME. The only thing is, at RME levels already, you're getting audible fidelity as is, so anything better is just academic and specsheets showing off, nothing wrong with that though.
If you have an RME for example and all you care about is sound quality and literally nothing else. There's no real need to get the THX. If you want to run a balanced setup, then the THX will get you there. Also if you have any insane 600 ohm headphones for example, the amount of power the THX has in balanced is just ridiculous, it would melt drivers I imagine if ran at full power.
But again, the two devices serve different purposes. The THX, a purely analoge amplifier with unbridled power and virutally no distortion for the human ear. The RME an insanely feature packed all-in-one German-Made DAC+AMP.
You get either, and you never need to worry about the quality of your sound being altered. (Though obviously the THX will be recieving signal from a DAC first, so the DAC will nearly always be the bottleneck, unless you're buying high end stuff like Matrix Audio DAC which can match the cleanliness of the THX/surpass it by a hair with measurement equipment).
Tapeworm
11
Aug 25, 2019
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JJayJJI'm pretty pleased with the RME, just saw a lot of smoke on SBAF about the amp section not sounding good. Nobody had any issue with it until purr1n said it was garbage. I'm glad I don't have a bunch of five figure amps to compare it to, this is the highest priced unit I've used and it sounds nice. The features are very good too.
Thanks for the remarks. I'll save my money.
JJayJJ
472
Aug 25, 2019
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TapewormPeople on that forum are one standard deviation from a clinical insanity diagnosis. Talking about:
"Too sterile"
"Performance metrics can be faked"
Avoid those folks like the plague. They're the dangerous sort of folks in terms of dis-information. They know enough technical terms to the degree where they can pervert it with some odd bastardized hybrid of their nonsense belief's mixed in with scientific terminology.
At least in other places around the internet, people talking about "man this cable makes a difference!" with no real way to back it up.
SABF actually poison the well enough for newcomers, to the degree some folks there were saying the Jotunheim was better than the 789. Biggest bunch of nonsense I've ever seen..
SaskAudioGuy
438
Aug 26, 2019
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JJayJJOne reason for me why I ended up buying this thing is, that I seriously doubt in the next decade will amps become that much better. DACs on the other hand are still shifting and changing, different audio formats, drivers, etc.
I can use this with many different inputs and from the board shots, it's fixable.
Software comes and goes but great hardware is something you run for decades.
Tapeworm
11
Aug 27, 2019
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JJayJJMix of good and bad at SBAF I'd say. Some valid opinions, some suckups, some misguided opinions. I'm not super into gear, I just enjoy music and good sound. If the THX sounds about the same or is indistinguishable from the RME, I'm good.
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