This review page is supported in part by the sponsors whose ad banners are displayed below |
 |
 |
Source-wise. The older OS of the iMod's 5th-gen iPod—perhaps in conjunction with the larger memory capacity—makes for noticeably slower boot-up and cue-ups of playlist and random shuffle titles than my 6th-gen iPod Classic. To put it mildly, the iMod is far from a Thunderbolt quad-core screamer. Additionally every so often a track will play for about 3 seconds, auto pause, 'think' and then resume. These hang ups are rare however. A friend who has owned his 256GB SSD iMod for far longer never encounters them at all.
The sonic rewards were easily spotted already with my IEM Ortofons. The stock iPod was sharper, tinnier, thinner and flatter. The iMod was patently warmer, fleshier, rounder and fuller. This performance delta was great enough to settle the matter in minutes even between street kids without audiophile pretensions. The iMod delivered more colors and more potent bass. The spontaneous visual was of more water pressure - of more rapid flow, cleaner fresher water and higher gush factor. This differential became even more significant over the T5p. There it turned into the cliché of 'once you've heard that, you can't ever go back'. Sure could. Just wouldn't want to.
Driving back from the Zürich HighEnd Suisse show meant a 2-hour + drive along the Swiss autobahn. On a lark I popped the iMod into my Schorsche windshield holder and connected it to the external auxiliary input of the Subaru's stock car radio with the same generic multi-pin to stereo mini leash I'd previously* used for my stock iPod. The same differences applied. The iMod created a clearly richer grippier more sophisticated fleshed-out sound. I thus ordered a properly cap-coupled car cable from Ken to eliminate my current junk leash for carfi.
_____________________
* Past tense is due to Pure's i20 dock and the equivalent Onkyo ND-S1 I previously used. Neither of them make the iPod charger function defeatable. As I learnt, this eventually kills the battery. One continuously tops it off to accelerate battery memory effect where the charge it will hold decreases drastically. My fully charged 160GB Classic now is down to about 30 minutes before it's completely drained. Its usefulness as a portable device thus has completely expired. It still works splendidly on my two Pure docks of course but dock makers really owe it us to make their charger function defeatable as Cambridge Audio has already done for their digital-direct dock. Otherwise these docks turn into battery killers.
|
|
|
Transducers. I was very surprised to discover that I preferred aspects of the T5p over the T1. Because my Eximus DP1 headphone amp offers a 6dB@30Hz analog-domain bass-boost function with 80Hz knee, the T1's superior bass weight could be easily offset and superceded by switching this filter in for the T5p. I don't know whether the latter's significantly higher voltage sensitivity—9:00 on the dial vs. 12:00 for the T1—caused the livelier more energetic upper bands. Regardless I fancied their effects on vitality and soundstaging to be amazed that the sealed nature of these cans did not really compress the subjective headstage inward or make it feel sealed off and narrow.
Whilst clearly cast from the same mold not just cosmetically—again bonus points for the T5p's nicer ear cushions—and whilst thus betraying/honoring a recognizable beyerdynamic 'T' house sound, I found my newer mobile cans to be nimbler, snappier and more communicative. And this did not default into stock Sennheiser HD-800 voicing which I find too bright and top-heavy. I'm told that doing sealed headphones well is a challenge few makers are fully equal to. If that's true, my ownership of and familiarity with the T1, HD800, K-702, LCD-2 and three HifiMan as open-backed references suggest that the T5p breaks out of this mold in unexpected fashion. My personal upshot was simple. Having both T1 and T5p at my constant beck and call like a pasha who contemplates which beauty to visit in his harem—tough job but someone's got to do it—I found myself constantly drawn to the T5p. This held true even when the time of day did not demand I rely on its 'sound-proofed' function. Given my prior review of the T1 where you can read up on all the sonic details, there's no need to say more here.
|
 |
27" quad-core iMac, PureMusic 1.82, Pure i20 dock with classic iPod 160GB, Black Cat Veloce S/PDIF cable, April Audio Eximus DP1 DAC/headfi amp, beyerdynamic T1 on Klutz Design stand, T5p on iMac
|
Amplicity. To invoke duplicity I first compared Ken's RxMkII against his new Continental. Given the valve's presence in the latter I perhaps should have expected that the all semi-conductor design of the Rx would be a bit brighter, its transients edgier, its overall presentation more heavily lit and leaner. The Continental mellowed this mood a bit by turning down some of the overhead lights yet clearly not sufficiently to feel darker per se. The color scheme simply shifted from a cloudless summer day to autumn with its more richly burnished colors.
The bass grew more rotund and weighty where the Rx rendered it springier and leaner. Particularly viewed from the bottom up the Continental invoked visions of turbo boost. One feels how one is under the commanding presence of greater drive. At 2:30 on the dial Fang Bian's HifiMan HE-500 orthodynamics came fully alive. Nothing about their accelerated reflexes suggested that they were at all slowed down by the Continental's hybrid circuitry. Yet neither did rapidly plucked Turkish kanun turn into a splatter fest of attack zingers. Into this particular load the RxMkII actually had the mellower midband voicing to reiterate that the Raytheon 6111 is harvested only for color effects. It does not involve any reduction of speed or bandwidth.
The advantages which the Continental introduced reminded me very much of the iPod/iMod shift. Unlike traditionally voiced valve amps preceded by equally thick tube preamps to become too much of a good thing, these qualities did not suffer negative compound effects. The tube/FET combo plus iMod was beefy but very quick, robust yet finely teased out and without any appreciable noise issues. If I had to draw a cartoon of the Continental's core quality, I'd depict a very fit meat packer. Given that mobile headfi tends to sound quite stripped bare when compared to a quality full-range home system, this tendency becomes an ideal general-purpose antidote.
|
|
|
Now enter Todd's Slim staring down the RxMkII. Either was leashed to the iMod and T5p. This became a match of equals. Even so the TTVJ had the higher contrast ratio for slightly stronger image pop and related outline focus. Sometimes these qualities relate to superior S/N figures. Since both amps were dead quiet to my ears, this explanation might hold no water. Comparing transient shapes I thought the Slim's were pointy like arrow heads whilst the RxMkII's felt more like pencil-mounted erasers - a bit rounder and fatter though just as firm.
On bass plucks, drum cracks, rim shots and other plosives the Slim hit harder. If that made it the bare-knuckle fighter, the ALO amp wore gloves. Driven fare was thus wirier and more propulsive over the TTVJ. Naimies would invoke PRaT, I'd not go as far but admit to a dose thereof. In terms of subjective scale the Slim played it more compact/taut, the RxMkII more expansive/loose. On tonal balance I found them very equal. My prior review of the Rx gives all the background details.
|
 |
T5p with ALO Audio leash and hot-swappable tails, ALO Audio Continental, iMod, RxMkII, TTVJ Slim
|
In use I preferred the Slim's connectivity scheme of input at the bottom, output and volume on the top because that copies the iPod's layout. The Rx puts it all on the bottom. Particularly for the volume control that's quite inconvenient. While I wasn't overly fond of Todd's mondo-color LED, I did appreciate that once I'd familiarized myself with the progression of colors, it let me see the chosen setting before plugging in the 'phones. The Slim's foot print also is barely wider than the iPod but of the same thickness and length to make for a tighter tidier sandwich than the Rx. The Slim's mini-USB charger socket and basic USB DAC then add features Ken's amp lacks. On these matters the TTVJ thus edged out the ALO.
|
Silver Continental with silver Algorhythm Solo digital-direct iPod DAC |
|
Takeaway. With 2 of the 4 items reviewed here a priori personal acquisitions, you'll have to excuse the relative brevity of today's aural commentary. I don't make it a habit to pay money to go to work. With a bit of triangulation against existing reviews in our archives you will readily manage to flesh out the above impressions.
The most surprising of these four items should be the Continental amplifier for its clever and compact use of vacuum-tube benefits in a portable battery-powered headphone amp. Because the sub-miniature valve of military origins is used exclusively for voltage gain to leave the heavy lifting to field-effect transistors, there are no drive or noise issues. What the combination of parts accomplishes is a higher level of tone density and textural sophistication than one tends to encounter in this component class. With sufficient gain to drive the most popular full-size headphones the Continental should be regarded as a shrunken main rather than portable component to properly suggest its elevated performance caliber. |
|
Folks who wish to transform their iPod into a more serious music source without going as far as piggybacking it to a digital-direct dock of either stationary or mobile mode should seriously consider the 256GB SSD iMod if they can happily trade sonic, reliability and memory advantages against slower access speeds and reduced OS functionality. For dedicated headfiers keen on full-size headphones but under strict mandate to not leak any sound into their environment, beyerdynamic's T5p seems tailormade. Belonging into the T1/HD800 class of performers, its sealed architecture suffers none of the expected 'strangulation' effects and to many could in fact go beyond the open-backed T1 on key criteria. Todd Green's Slim headphone amp with basic USB DAC is fully competitive with the 2nd-generation ALO Audio Rx and could be preferable due to smaller size and better ergonomics.
In toto there wasn't a single slacker in this quartet of 32ohm Audio ambassadors. Those who would snub this entire category as life-style dreck for the young and sonically ignorant must really confront their attitude with a reality check. Any of today's components will address it head-on and show you just how far this genre has evolved over the past few years. What a well-informed shopper can put together today with a headfi system even when portable makes very serious inroads into bona fide big-rig trophy audio for pennies on the dollar. What so many of the old goats don't get is the major convenience of doing it anywhere anytime. If you're serious about music and catching the mood when it strikes, going mobile is the only way to account for much of it... |
|
 |
 |
|
 |
|
