Well, the early returns are in and the “new toy bias factor” for this amp is officially off the charts. With both the Solaris single ended and the HD800S balanced, everything from Miles Davis to Rush to Pink Floyd to Michael Jackson to Tool is being delivered with what I would describe as seemingly effortless excellence. I won’t speak of any “lifting of veils” or how this amp has “sonically transported my soul to heights never before experienced”. I will merely say that, thus far anyway, its consistency seems to be it’s strongest attribute. Everything sounded very good and was thoroughly enjoyable. Now to be fair, my listening this evening has only included what I know to be well engineered recordings of at least redbook
quality resolution.
For those wondering about the heat output of the 887, my initial listening session lasted about two hours and the top of the amp never exceeded the ambient room temperature.
If the Ifi IEMatch is just an attenuator then it might help, but if its doing anything else I'd skip it.
I don’t know if
@amirm has ever tested the iFi IEMatch, but in my experience, it’s a fairly transparent device. Tonight’s session seemed to back that up. Even with the low 10 ohm impedance of the Solaris, using the IEMatch with the 887 in low gain mode, I was easily in the 12:00 to 2:00 range on the volume knob.
