SMSL VMV P2 Headphone Amp Review

[amirm]

In any case, I don't see how factoring price into the rating constitutes abuse.

How would you distinguish your vote between a poorly measuring device that is expensive and a great measuring device that is expensive?

Put another way, would you have the same reaction to both of the above devices?

 

[Rhamnetin]

How would you distinguish your vote between a poorly measuring device that is expensive and a great measuring device that is expensive?

Put another way, would you have the same reaction to both of the above devices?

I vote "poor" for everything that measures poorly here at any price point. But of course, one can't expect nuance from a simple voting system, the review itself provides that.

 

[nerdemoji]

This is a strange argument. I wouldn't buy it myself, but there isn't exactly a heap of competitive products that fill the same niche, and those two headphones certainly aren't going to sound identical - I can see why someone would. This amp is part of an absolute deluge of objectively transparent but otherwise fairly basic amps. I voted "not terrible" precisely because that's what I feel this product is. It's fine, it does not stand out in any way in an extremely crowded, commodified marketplace and I have no idea why anyone would buy it. If they re-price it to be more competitive, then it becomes a more appealing product. Not that complicated.

Oh no!!! The transparent amp doesn’t stand out against other products that are trying to achieve the same thing, the same sound: transparent playback.

The only reason someone would buy this is the look and power headroom. Do budget HP amps exist? Yes, of course. If you want to vote low because this doesn’t compete in terms of value with a product made specifically for value, fine.

Here is a random analogy I just came up with: There is a group of spoon enthusiasts that agree on a set of spoon requirements. Two sets of spoons both fulfill the requirements the same in their spooning ability and function perfectly unlike some spoons on the market. Now one of the spoon sets costs twice as much as the other. Out of the spoon sets, I would argue that somebody could enjoy the look of the more expensive spoon set and be willing to spend more given that they offer the same spoon utility experience. The better value offers objectively better value, but that doesn’t take away from the fact that the more expensive set fulfills its role better than most other sets in measurements.

 

[Chagall]

This is a strange argument. I wouldn't buy it myself, but there isn't exactly a heap of competitive products that fill the same niche, and those two headphones certainly aren't going to sound identical - I can see why someone would. This amp is part of an absolute deluge of objectively transparent but otherwise fairly basic amps. I voted "not terrible" precisely because that's what I feel this product is. It's fine, it does not stand out in any way in an extremely crowded, commodified marketplace and I have no idea why anyone would buy it. If they re-price it to be more competitive, then it becomes a more appealing product. Not that complicated.

My point with headphones was that the Stealth has competition with E3. No one said anything about sounding identical. Stealth is still a "great" headphone and deserves a recommendation even at that price. The only thing the E3 did was lower Stealth's value for money, but not its performance.

EDIT: To put it simply, if the DAC or amp measures superbly (like all the other transparent amps or DACs) but costs 15K because it is built like a tank and the case is made out of platinum, it should be rated as great IMO.

But glad you got it figured out.

 

[Holy Spirit]

Once upon a time Douglas Self has built power amplifier able to drive 8 Ohms load by paralleling/bridging 2x32 5532 opamps.

 

[shuppatsu]

How would you distinguish your vote between a poorly measuring device that is expensive and a great measuring device that is expensive?

Put another way, would you have the same reaction to both of the above devices?

Different qualitative reaction, but I’d be happy to put them in the same bucket for purposes of the poll. Price/performance is a real thing.

Many woo woo snake oil power cables offer objectively fantastic measurements. They offer 100% of the performance you need from a power cable. But they deserve their “poor” votes because a $10 cable does the exact same thing. Price/performance is a real thing.

The Chord DAVE measures superbly and boasts “Captain Nemo got some bad acid” looks to boot. The reason why it gets “poor” votes is because it’s $16K. Price/performance is a real thing.

I can see why you would not want to introduce price into your recommendations (other than in extreme cases) because then everyone would be second-guessing you and accusing you of bias because everybody’s price/performance curve is different. But there’s no reason for we the voting public to be bound by that restriction. We’re crowdsourcing an aggregate curve representing the ASR community as a whole.

 

[oleg87]

They offer 100% of the performance you need from a power cable. But they deserve their “poor” votes because a $10 cable does the exact same thing.

Bingo.

Transparency in a headphone amp is not a high bar to clear. With modern op-amps, it is trivially easy for anyone with a modicum of EE know-how to achieve (even if the result won't land on top of Amir's charts), and in a less perverse industry it would be the minimum expectation, not something to sing praises about. I'm not going to rate something that would not even sniff the shortlist of amps I would consider buying as "great", that is just a completely bizarre way to evaluate products. If you dig its look, then I guess this is the product for you.

 

[DLS79]

take a look at any of the transparent amps or dacs, and you will see a strong trend of heaping praise on the cheapest possible products.

For example JDS Atom Amp 2. 94.2% of the votes are "Great"

 

[shuppatsu]

Here is a random analogy I just came up with: There is a group of spoon enthusiasts that agree on a set of spoon requirements. Two sets of spoons both fulfill the requirements the same in their spooning ability and function perfectly unlike some spoons on the market. Now one of the spoon sets costs twice as much as the other. Out of the spoon sets, I would argue that somebody could enjoy the look of the more expensive spoon set and be willing to spend more given that they offer the same spoon utility experience. The better value offers objectively better value, but that doesn’t take away from the fact that the more expensive set fulfills its role better than most other sets in measurements.

Sure, the person who liked those expensive spoons just needs to have the audacity of her convictions to buy them in spite of the 3 “poor” votes out of 150 on Spoon Science Review. I say “her” because we all know that spoonophiles are overwhelmingly female.

 

[Rhamnetin]

EDIT: To put it simply, if the DAC or amp measures superbly (like all the other transparent amps or DACs) but costs 15K because it is built like a tank and the case is made out of platinum, it should be rated as great IMO.

But glad you got it figured out.

At least with your platinum case, there is an obvious huge material cost. What's responsible for this amp costing twice that of the Topping A70 Pro? Slightly more expensive casework probably, maybe the gazillion opamps cost more than the A70 Pro's amplification?

 

[nerdemoji]

Bingo.

Transparency in a headphone amp is not a high bar to clear. With modern op-amps, it is trivially easy for anyone with a modicum of EE know-how to achieve (even if the result won't land on top of Amir's charts), and in a less perverse industry it would be the minimum expectation, not something to sing praises about. I'm not going to rate something that would not even sniff the shortlist of amps I would consider buying as "great", that is just a completely bizarre way to evaluate products. If you dig its look, then I guess this is the product for you.

In short, we simply have different ways of voting.

You vote high for products you would consider buying if you needed them. Value and voting scales together always.

I vote high when a product performance (measurements) is consistent with form factor and a slight cost consideration. Most desktop DACs and HP amps are what I would consider solved technology and almost all get a “Great” from me. I only look at price in extreme cases, when a product has suboptimal measurements for a highway robbery price. For DAC/Amp Dongles I am looking for power. Anything with less power than the Apple Dongle is essentially useless. Speakers and Headphones are more complicated because they will always sound different. Value in this category is extremely, extremely useless because I note that some people may like the sound of another product. Example: I would absolutely not score the KEF Blade low because it is low value in comparison to the LS60.

We all vote differently.

 

[dtaylo1066]

My vote to some degree takes value into account, but is mostly based on the measurements.

You could add some type of value component to the voting system, but I would not bother.

If a 50K DAC is transparent and SOTA then it is great.
If a $350 DAC is transparent and has top flight measurements, then it is great, too.

The value proposition between the two is quite distinct.

 

[MacClintock]

Seems like they want to expand their customer base, not only people who care about measurements, but also those who want good design, without sacrificing the performance, and are willing to spend more. Let's see if this works out.

 

[Prana Ferox]

I was very surprised to see the gain controls positioned in the back:
View attachment 344845
If you use multiple headphones with very different sensitivities, this will be an annoyance, having to reach back here to change settings. Fortunately for the set of headphones I use, the medium gain was sufficient.

FYI company claims that there are 99 opamps used in the P2! They must be paralleling a lot of them to get maximum output power.

I put the amp in high gain mode, fed it from my RME ADI-2 Pro DAC, and set the volume quite low. I nearly fell off my chair when I hit play! The sound was so loud that I had to rip the headphone off my head. The gain is quite high in high gain mode so even low volume settings is liable to create high loudness despite me testing with my insensitive Dan Clark Stealth headphone (XLR out was used for all the listening tests). I set the gain to medium and that was plenty loud to drive the Stealth into distortion.

If you're having gain problems I feel bad for you, son
I got 99 opamps but the switch ain't front HIT ME

 

[Robbo99999]

Excellent performance, but I'm pretty sure almost nobody needs it vs the cheaper Toppings & JDS Labs. Even those cheaper headphone amps have plenty of power for all headphones (can I say that), certainly very nearly all headphones anyway! So it's a very niche product that is gonna be pretty much a waste of money for almost everyone, but it does perform well.

 

[FINFET]

I'll stick with my A90 until it dies. The next headphone amp I'm willing to buy should support both electrostatic headphones and planar/dynamic ones. Not sure if affordable and well performing ones already exist.

 

[beagleman]

I vote, based on partially measurements, and then factor in if an average Hi-Fi "Fan" would consider it a good value.

To me, personally, and I would think a good percentage of audiophiles, SURE it measures great, but value wise, $1,000 bucks seems like a good bit, based on what you are "Getting", which is basically a 2 channel headphone amp.

 

[Leeken]

Find this one a strange contrapion,value for money is poor,measures excellent,has next to no features,not for me at all. Not really sure who their target customer is,we’re all mingebags,and would get a Rme/topping etc,too cheap and not the right brand for audiophiles,who’ll want multi tubed random noise generators.

 

[AdamG]

OK over two pages, maybe more, about voting. That’s certainly enough right? Yeah, let’s get back to the Review data and results. If you wish to further discuss Voting methodology please start a separate thread. This is a Product Review Thread and we need to keep our comments relevant to this.

Thank you for your support and cooperation.

 

[jkasch]

So, given no ground loop and not listening at ear bleeding levels, is this amp going to objectively sound any better than the $79 Schitt Magni Heretic I recently purchased?