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I purchased this a couple years ago and returned to Amazon within 1 day of use. It has a very high noise floor which is a deal breaker immediately.

I had the Naim Mu-So Qb v2 a while ago. Found that sounds pretty strange and muddied. I know it's not the same product but they are from the same line (the newer all-in-one, digital products). It's likely they spent so much to the design and firmware and compromised on the circuit design for the...

Yea I ended up sending them back. I also sold my two LA90s since they are too close in performance to the AHB2. I ordered the extra AHB2 on Monday and it arrived yesterday (B&H Photo Video). Benchmark doesn't seem to have much in stock but B&H had some.

Forgot to mention that the monoblocks do get better after turning them on for 24 hours, though they are drawing approximately 100W doing so. The vocal distortion that I noticed was lessened. Pretty sure for folks who never heard the Topping/Benchmark SOTA amps, they probably will be satisfied.

Yea, I tried the Freya+ passive mode which sounds just like the HPA4 or the Pre90 without any gain. For the tube stage, I whipped out a quartet of GE 6SN7 "NOS" tubes tonight and tried it out again. That fixed the instant fatigue. I kinda like the JFET buffer but once I switched back to Topping...

So, I spent the weekend to setup and play with my new Schiit (pun intended). tldr; I don't like the Freya+ and Tyr combo, especially so with the tube stage. I'm likely going for the RMA path, but still giving it a try till tomorrow after "warming them up" for a day. More detail below. Sources...

I bought a pair of 7B3 3 or 4 years ago when it was on sale from a close-out since the dealer is getting off all their Bryston stuff. I ended up making profit when I sold them :) It looks robust, and I had the 7B-ST, a 4B-ST and 4B-SST before moving to the cubed amp at that time. I still prefer...

It's the classic J2, so ES9026PRO

So, it seems like it did improved somewhat from JNOG :)

The SST and SST2 are great. Totally forgot about Bryston :) The Cubed amps inched towards the warm side which is not my cup of tea.

IIRC, the Maggies aren't that sensitive to high-ish noise floor, some vintage amps may work. As mentioned before from the experience of my friend, you can try some brute-force amp like the arc-welder Krell and Mark Levinson. Adcom GFA-5xxx series would work too on a budget. Or ATI stuff (not the...

I actually agree with Angsty that you should give the AHB2 a try. It's an "ear" opener first time I tried it (back then I had a stack of Nagra Classic Preamp + PSU + Amp). If you have the means, try to keep it as a reference system while you buy/sell/upgrade with other amps or components. I keep...

Yea, those are ribbon tweeters. Maggies draw a lot of current IIRC. The AHB2 may not work as I found them sound very linear, excellent resolution but doesn't have as much "oomph" especially when volume turned up, or for large dynamic as in orchestra recordings. I didn't try running AHB2 as...

Will do if I have time... My stuff usually sit for a week or so before I would have time to unbox and really try it out. For reference I currently run a pair of Topping LA90 (mono mode) + Matrix Element X as preamp. Before that I was running Spectral DMC30SV + DMA300RS - which I just sold...

Out of curiosity I bought a pair, with Freya+ . Was thinking about getting an ML585 or an Aesthetix MIMAS for "downsizing" but... oh well I came across this thread and Tyr got me interested. Its choke design is not common for transistors amps, but quite common for tube amps IIRC. If my other amp...

The Topping DAC that I had at the time sounds a bit leaner (likely more accurate). The SCD-777ES has a slight raise in the mid-bass and the lower bass region, quite noticeable. A slightly more recessed high too. Some people like this kind of voice tuning.

The mechanism that the SA-10 uses is the "common" transport unit made for Sound United. Technically the transport is shared across Denon, Marantz and McIntosh. Hopefully it's reliable. If my observation is correct, the transport used in the SoulNote S-3 v2 is likely the same/modified. And...

I had this device when it was first launched. It's okay but I don't really like that it sounds too "analog" (likely due to the noise floor). Its DAC design upsample all incoming signal to DSD 512. Compared to my other CD-only players, it altered the sound of the CD somewhat, noticeable in A/B...

@doitttt , on the second photo, Amir showed how short the clock signal cable is (the blue one), which is also 50ohm and likely 50cm.

Not sure if this still applies but I had a dCS Purcell and Delius stack (ancient product) with an external word clock connected to both. I don’t hear much differences but the DAC (Delius) locks onto the signal quicker than without the word clock connected, especially when running at 24/192 (yea...