Shadrach
Addicted to Fun and Learning
- Joined
- Feb 24, 2019
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- #41
I'm not at all worked up.. It's a great thing about the Internet, you can just close your browser and it all goes away.Your question seems sincere enough, and I hope you're figured the answer by now. But say you had a bunch of spare money burning a hole in your pocket and you wanted something nice for your desk at the office. The money doesn't matter, so do you buy something in a crappy plastic box that looks and feels just as cheap as it costs, or do you buy an absolutely beautiful piece of audio jewelry (inside and out) like the HPA-1?
Many would choose the latter. I still wouldn't. But I wouldn't want the Atom, either. I would want something with a PGA2311 or better volume control operated by a rotary encoder (with a hefty, solid knob, preferably detented), the performance of the Atom, plus a balanced output, probably with a DAC built in, and an input switcher, all in a far nicer custom-milled enclosure. That could be delivered for less than Pass is charging, and blow it out of the water. Benchmark has something close to that, but the price is unnecessarily high (licensing fees?) and they don't include the DAC, and it's still sort of ugly. The RME comes closer, but I'm going to guess the casework would add another $500, and analog line in with input switching a bit more.
Different strokes for different folks. Don't get too worked up trying to figure out why some buy a Subaru and some an Audi, when they both have all wheel drive and get to the store...
Are you refering to the Benchmark HGC? If so, it's a very decent bit of equipment. It measures well and sounded good to my ears. The problem with it for me is, it does a lot of things that I just wouldn't make use of any more and of course you are paying for that extra functionality. Basically I just want a headphone amp that will drive my headphones and reproduce as closely as possible the signal it gets fed.
My current headphone amp which I built does drive both pairs of headphones I have with ease, but with regard to fidelity; well it's a tube amp and a bit of an effects box.