Hello, I just joined, primarily for the audiophile products. Looking at purchasing the NHT C3 speakers for our new living room. Space is about 15 feet wide by 33 long and they will fire long ways. Space is just for general listening, music room with all equipment is downstairs, so hoping they will fill it with sound nicely. Cheers.
Mar 18, 2024
I highly suggest people try to get in on the next drop.
Before these, I was using a pair of DT990 premiums and I almost feel like throwing them in the trash. I really liked them despite their shortcomings, but the 6XX/650 is so much easier to listen to. The 990s are known for their harsh highs, but after listening to both back to back over the last two weeks, I can't listen to the 990s anymore. I've already boxed them up. Will give them to my brother or just keep them around in my closet. There is that much of a difference, especially at higher volumes.
Tested using the following setups:
Audio Technica LP120 ---> Schiit Magni 2 Uber Xbox One Games ---> Optical Audioengine D1 ---> RCA Schiit Magni 2 uber Xbox One Audio CD Playback ---> Optical Audioengine D1 ---> RCA Schiit Magni 2 Uber PS4 Games ---> Optical Audioengine D1 ---> RCA Schiit Magni 2 Uber Xbox/PS4 Blu Ray Playback ---> Optical Audioengine D1 ---> RCA Schiit Magni 2 Uber PC Audio playback ---> USB Audioengine D1 Dac/AMP PC Audio Playback ---> USB Audioengine D1 DAC ---> RCA Schitt Magni Uber AMP
I'm really glad I was able to get in on this drop. Wasn't planning on it and I honestly had no idea there would this level of madness and interest. I hope everyone else that got them is enjoying them as much as I am.
And then again not for the closed-back ones, because my fellow workers would not appreciate the HD6XX's as much as I do, when using them at work :-)
Mostly Apple Music on iPhone 5S or on Motorola Nexus 6, both into Fiio E12 Mont Blanc, so I like the short cable! ;-)
I will post a small review in a while, comparing them to Sennheiser's Over the Ear Momentum's v1 and v2 (wired), Senn HD598's, Shure SRH840's, Audeze Sine's (normal wire; not the Cypher Cable), Philips Fidelio X1's and the Teufel Aureol Real's (just because they are lying around) (and maybe the IE80's, just for kicks)
One thing for now: I think the pads are softer then the HD650 pads, this from memory and comparing to products from years ago, so they seem more comfortable. That was the reason I sold them before. These are staying; padding is a bit more like the HD560 Ovation's.
Thanks for quoting me; showed me a typo too ;-) (These "a" staying :-( )
Asynchronous USB is the reason for the price jump but it wasnt an incremental upgrade it went from being limited to 96khz/24-bit to being full featured. The Xmos in the iDSD the usb interface chip is an oct-core processor and can handle insanely high sampling rates up to 384khz(I think xmos does more its the dual burr brown dacs that limit to 384khz) and full DSD512(I still havent run into one of these files they are so rare and unwieldy). The Mojo does it with an Atmel HD "USB Decoder" and a custom circuit FPGA chip(just a sea of gates that has to be custom programmed to create a custom circuit) but it transcodes DSD to pcm and I just think the iDSD beats it on DSD content but 99% of peoples libraries is PCM(mp3,ac3,aac,wav,flac,ogg, anything pc file related all comes out through the usb as pcm). I dont know the chip in the oppoha-2se and the audio-gd usb chip(on their lower end stuff I listed above(which is very high end) but on their 1000 dollar master series I think they use Xmos and another even pricier solution I forgot the name of at the moment its on their site) is a via vt-1731(little data about this chip via is anal about ip theft) but it works. So it used to be in the past you would have a 192khz burr brown limited by a usb audio class 1 chip that only transferred 96khz/24 bit like the monoprice 11567 so the dac would be limited to 96khz/24bit and have an ok dac and amp because asynchronous usb chips like those above did not exist until 2012 and forward or you had to use another transfer means other than usb. So even tho they are relatively new and now getting cheaper still when all the popular devices that are around now came out 1 to 2 years ago these solutions were relatively expensive and required often custom coded drivers that eat into the profit margins(because windows doesnt provide it in windows audio yet, mac does) but now there are bundled solutions and its getting cheaper but still is a big pita and requires a jump in price of probably 100 dollars or more in the final product, and because like I said it was a full featured full speed solution now your 100 dollar dac is in 200 dollar dac territory capability wise but has the potential to use now even faster and more precise dacs and so of course if your going to create this full featured swiss army knife solution(that can play any audio format) you might as well put a god dac in it. So thats what they did; and a god dac requires god tuning to get its full potential(only the best can do this right and get near the maximum SNR provided by the god dac) so thats your 100 dollar profit for god tuning and the other 100 is for the nice dac and high quality components. Thats why you have this 100 dollar to 400 dollar price jump(really a schitt stack is 200+ not 100 cause the dac and amp are seperates so really 400 is only twice that of 200) but you are getting so much more than if the market had incrementally given you this and that and that(over years or decades aka the pace it was going at before 2012;2012 was like jumping from SD to 8k in one year from 96khz to DSD512(still no one listens to DSD512 but hey you can)) when they realized they had to make much more powerful usb audio class 2 chips, for computer manufacturers this was nothing, and so it was just a matter of years for them to design and fab the silicon and now it exists. So be happy to pay the 400 dollars and realize you are not being gouged or taken advantage of you are getting incredible value for your money and that these dacs blow every soundcard that has ever existed out of the water and while they could have given this functionality in a pci or pcie formfactor they never did(computer audio companies, creative, asus xonar because they had full pci bandwidth and were not limited by usb and the fact usb audio class 2 chips did not yet exist and the dacs they used were old and cheap and the audio processing chips were simple and uninspired because Digital Infallibility Computer Weenies are not audiophiles and they suck and buy cheap crap from pc audio companies and say its great or from their church MONOPRICE(go anywhere online and insult monoprice even hardcore audiophile chatrooms and see how fast you get banned IT IS THEIR CHURCH AND THEY ARE IN A LOW-FI CULT) and say everything else is a diminishing returns waste of money) and really you dont want an in-chasis soundcard cause all the fans and electronics make the ground background inside the pc very noisy unless you take pains to control it but then you are looking at passive cooling solutions or separate power suppllies or a pc which doesnt cool very well(and is no good for high processing or gaming). Plus computer audio companies suck, and produce cheap crap with retarded features, and audio companies have been doing audio longer know all the tricks and techniques and produce truly superior audio products. The new USB Audio Class 2 dacs are essentially small computers(have to be to request data from the pc asynchronously and process such high bandwidth) with god dacs(with god tuning aka implementation) attached this is why they cost so much. The reason these usb audio class 2 god amps are pricey is not because they are overcharging you cause they think they are special. Its because the device is a collection of newly minted boutique chip products, and thats how much these new boutique products cost to assemble so they are not overcharging at all thats just the nature of the free market and specialization and a bunch of low levels of abstractions amalgamated into a new boutique part product that it itself becomes the ultimate swiss army knife of all file formats and thus in terms of digital becomes the ultimate high level abstraction.... the player of everything digital.... or digital sound.
They Photoshopped all the text off the Oppo HA-2SE board shots. http://everythingaudionetwork.blogspot.com/2016/09/personal-audio-preview-oppo-upgrades.html