ok, guys the portable amp was available from oct at head-fi to celeb their anniversary…there are only 600 in stock (134 sold by oct end) at 150USD(not a typo😒 )incl. worldwide shippin(no, not april fool either)…
however i need someone help out with certain issues
1)what will be the prefered payment method, considering i dont have a paypal…any form of payment is acceptable for meier; incl. by post:S
2)what are duties and customs?
3)how to get the custom clearence done?
o…hardly any review availble…so will post what i could find, for anyone interested
“The ranking…”
“1) MEIER CORDA HEADSIX
2) iBasso D1 with OPA2111 LR amp, AD8397 buffers, AD8656 in DAC
3) Headstage Lyrix Total Pro
4) RSA Tomahawk - was previously tied for sound with Lyrix
5) PenguinAmp Caffeine with bass boost - was almost tied with tomahawk for sound
6) iBasso D1 stock”
"First, what I heard: Using the Headstage USB DAC I was able to plug the Lyrix directly into USB, and the Headsix into the USB DAC cable, and then I could quickly switch the sound control panel between the two to compare (having to move the headphones to the next jack at the same time). I then did the same with the D1, swapping it for the Headsix on the External USB DAC, connecting to the front audio input. This way all three amplifiers were auditioned with the Headstage USB DAC.
Each amp still had it’s own flavor, but all all were so close it was hard to avoid having them all tied. The Lyrix really came into it’s own with those extra hours on it. NONE of the amps had anything I would call flaws.
Mids and Highs: They all had smooth mids and highs with no grain to them, and plenty of detail. The Headsix had a warmer midrange, with the Lyrix just behind it. The D1 was a little cooler. I didn’t feel the highs were rolled off on any of them
Bass: I did feel that the Lyrix could go deeper than the Headsix or D1, even with bass boost off. They all had tight punchy bass, but the Lyrix could really put it down if you hit the bass boost switch. Bass boost had NO distortion at all, adding just the right amount to the HD600’s to give them some authority (Robert claims 6db, while the Penguin Caffeine was claimed to boost 8db on low gain and 9db on high gain).
Volume/Gain: The Lyrix in High gain mode also had the most volume available with the HD600’s - after burn-in it seemed even louder, but i’ve not heard or read that being described before. The D1 has no adjustable gain, and seems to play about as loud as the Headsix which was also in High gain mode.
Hiss: I put on my Denon C700 IEM to test hiss (Livewires were out in the car, and SE530 are being experimented on). The Headsix was the quietest, The Lyrix was just behind it when in Low gain, but had a bit of hiss in high gain when the volume was turned up. The D1 was in between.
Listening to a couple of jazz tracks, “Traveler” and “The Walk”, by Guinea Pig off the “Kool Cats” album: This is a nice “studio” album with just the right amount of echo or ambience mastered into it, except for an occasional cymbal hanging too long, or such.
The Lyrix showed it can walk and chew gum at the same time. The soundstage was more forward, yet each instrument had it’s own space. The dueling Saxaphone and Trombone each have their own place on the soundstage, with Sax on the left and Trombone on the right, and the rest of the band around and inbetween them. They weren’t totally one sided, like some old Beatles songs, but maybe one 45 degrees off to the right, the other 45 degrees off to the left. The crossfeed switch did center these a little bit more, but I preferred it without crossfeed as some of the ambience is lost when it is active.
The modded iBasso D1 was very similar to the Lryix, and certainly not as distant as the stock D1, but still with a little thin-ness (not good), and more airyness (good) and less weight (not good) than the Lyrix. Reassuringly, this was similar to how I had remembered it, but the changes in the Lyrix with burn-in allowed it to pass up the modded D1 just a little.
The Headsix seemed to blend the two instruments a little more to the center (without a crossfeed circuit to do that), having a slightly smaller soundstage with the Sax and Trombone being much closer than to the listener than the rest of the band - so the soundstage was less wide but was deeper than the other two. The ambience or air around the instruments was so very slightly less than the other two, but the “breathyness” of the Saxophone was slightly more intimate than with the other two.
I also listened to a couple of jazz tracks, from the “Jazz at the Pawnshop” album, paying attention to the woodwind, piano and drum solos, along with the clinking of silverware and talking between individuals in the background: The Headsix, Lyrix and D1 all seemed to do the piano with equal aplomb, with only a slight difference in seating distance from the piano, but the drum solos, vibraphone and saxaphone were different.
The Headsix seemed to put the listener inside the tomtom at times, and certainly it felt like the listener IS the drummer most of the time during a solo. When the solo is directed to the Woodwinds, Piano or String Bass then the drums move back to the stage, and the new solo instrument is handed to you to play instead.
The same thing happened with the vibraphone, making you feel like you were right under the tubes being banged on.
The Lyrix and modded D1 don’t overpower you with the drums or vibraphone, but still seem to surround you with them - you can close your eyes and decide whether you want to pretend you are playing, or whether they are a couple of feet next to you as just a listener. Saxaphones are always being played next to you but not played by you yourself, unlike the Headsix.
With the Lyrix and D1: On one track the crowd talking in the background seems to be around you and more present, while with the Headsix the ambience is lost a little to the more forward instruments and solos. That does allow you to focus more on the music itself, but the aura of the venue is not quite as present as with the other two.
Diana Krall, “Girl in the Other Room”, Temptation and Departure Bay tracks: I felt we needed some female vocals here, and there was also some nice string bass and piano to sample as well.
They all demonstrated a clean attack with string bass and pianos, with as usual, the Headsix being a little more intimate and close up. While that is not as enjoyable listening to music that belongs in a larger venue like Jazz at the Pawnshop, here it brought me closer to being in a small lounge with a glass of cognac and a cigar, so to speak. Her breathy vocals are just a bit more present and “vibratory” with the Headsix, but the Lyrix and D1 both do a very good job as well. When there is no artificial echo, reverb or ambience added, the differences are not as great.
Dave Matthews Band, “Live at Red Rocks - 8/15/95”, Proud Monkey: I thought with the differences in presentation or depth of soundstage being the main distinguishing characteristic of these amps, then lets go for a REALLY BIG venue. The Headsix seemed to give a good balance to this particular recording, with the far spread crowd lending a large size to the venue, but not masking the vocals. The Lyrix was second best, with the vocals a little more distant and not rising above the crowd as well as the Headsix did, whle the D1 was very close behind it. The recording itself wasn’t good enough to feel like I was really there with any of the amps, unfortunately. I probably wont use this material for testing again.
Finally: What I heard using the iBasso D1 USB DAC: I used the iBasso D1 hooked up to the Macbook USB, and used it to drive the Headsix and Lyrix, as well as the D1’s own internal amplifier. All three amps sounded a little more open and airy, transparent if you will, when using the D1 DAC vs the Headstage DAC. The gap between the two DACs does not appear to be as wide as it was before, since the Headstage DACs have burned-in now. And, the gap did not get narrower because the D1 DAC sounds worse, but rather because Headstage DAC’s sound improved (internal and external).
Hmmmm. I listened, and listened, and listened, and somehow the amps respond to the D1 DAC differently now that it has the AD8656 in the DAC instead of the AD8616. Before, in my first post, the “sonic signature” of each amp was noticable whether I used the stock D1 USB DAC or the Headstage USB DAC. Certainly in this post so far, the amps behave differently, primarily in the area of soundstage.
Yet, it was much harder to tell the amps apart when driven this way. :blink:
As a lark, I plugged a Y-splitter into the D1’s DAC output (aux out) and ran the signal into both the Headsix and the Lyrix at the same time. I listened to one of the amps as I plugged the Y into the other, with almost no change in sound when the DAC was driving two amps. So far so good.
Now it was a simple matter of plugging the HD600’s into one amp, listening, then plugging it quickly into the other amp to listen. This helped to get a fast change between the two, without having to unplug a cable from one amp and plugging it into another at the same time as switching out the headphone jack. I did have to unplug the DAC output cable from the D1 BEFORE plugging the headphones, but no big deal.
(If I were to plug in all three units into USB hub at the same time, to switch I would have to (1) click on the Macbook sound control panel to switch between the D1, Lyrix internal DAC and Headsix with external DAC, and (2) still unplug headphones to switch to another amp. More steps = slower switch.)
So, with D1 DAC outputting to the Lyrix and Headsix at the same time, moving the headphones from one to the other SOUNDED THE SAME, with the Headsix being a little less forward, and the Lyrix being a little more forward, and meeting each other in the perfect middle.
After 10 minutes, I gave up trying to pick which one sounded better, and started listening to the D1 amp vs the other two - which sounded equally as good, if maybe a little more open. :stoic:
That is the Suprise Ending. I am soooo tempted to want to ship these to Skylab or HiFlight or Mraroyo to try repeating this test and see if my mind is playing tricks on me (or should I say “ears”), but I can’t bear to be without them.
RANKING OF THE AMPS WITH HEADSTAGE USB DAC:
RANKING OF THE AMPS WITH iBASSO D1 USB DAC:
"NON-SOUND QUALITY CONSIDERATIONS:
Battery Life: Everyone forgets about this one. The best of them all is the Tomahawk. I have put about 200 hours of listening into it since the end of August, and haven’t changed the batteries yet! The Meier Headsix is giving me almost 50 hours from a 250Mah 9v battery, and never less than 24 hours when playing loud during burn-in (a 150Mah lasted less than 12 hours though). The Headstage Lyrix ran out of juice at the end of the review tonight, after about 10 hours with the same size 250Mah 9v. The iBasso D1 gave me about 18-24 hours stock, but I haven’t tried to run it down with the new opamps. If I switch the buffers to LMH6643, put the LTC6241HV in LR, and the LT6234 in the DAC I can increase battery life by 3x and have a “tube like sound”.
Build and Quality: The Headsix is really cool, smooth brushed aluminum, solid feeling, and everything speaks top-grade. The iBasso is also very solid feeling. However, the T8 screws (I hope they are T8) in the front panel are easy to strip, and I’ll need to source two new ones soon, unless I stop opening it up to change opamps. They should have had a trap door to cover the optical input, instead of a plug that can be easily lost, and the leather wrapper is kinda of a question mark. The Lyrix is a cheaper lighter ABS plastic Hammond case, but the switches and knobs feel solid. ALL THREE have sound balance discrepancies at the lower 10% or so of the volume knob, starting with sound in the right channel before the left channel catches up. This is easily remedied by switching to low gain so the volume knob can be turned farther when listening quietly, but not so for the iBasso D1 which has no such gain switch.
FEATURES:
The Lyrix comes in a black Hammond plastic case. It has a bass boost switch, crossfeed, and hi/low gain on the front, along with 16v DC power input on the front left for using with an optional wall-wart (highly recommend $14 option). The USB input and analog input are on the front left, and the headphone out is between the input and volume knob. The volume knob is the power switch, and there is no turn-on thump. The red LED signals power on, the Green LED is solid when a charged battery is present, and blinks when the battery is charging, is too low or too high. If it doesn’t switch from blinking to solid on, that may indicate a battery problem. Inside the batery compartment is a switch to turn off the charging circuit, so you can use AC power without blowing up an Alkaline battery. The battery compartment is loaded on the underside, so if you velcro’d it to your ipod you have to seperate the two to change it (a side loaded or rear loaded battery compartment would be nice). It came with a usb to usb mini cable, and some velcro “dots” to attach the amp to your source. The volume knob is being upgraded to a smaller rubber ringed model, to let fingers fit around it when connected to a source and stacked under an ipod. a 3.5mm - 3.5mm interconnect is a reasonable $3.95 option, available as short as 4".
The Headsix comes in a nice solid-feeling brushed aluminum case, which is about (guessing) 1/2" smaller in two of the three dimensions (height and width). It has the power switched on by the volume knob as well, with no power-on thump. The smaller dimensions make it harder to adjust volume when attached to an ipod with audio cables plugged in, similarly difficult with my RSA Tomahawk. There is an internal hi/low gain switch inside, accessed by using the included mini-philips screwdriver to remove two screws on the front panel and slide the cover off. The battery is loaded from the rear, so you don’t have to unstack it from your MP3 player to change it, however, the top and bottom are rounded and without using velcro dots it is difficult to stack you MP3 player with it. It can take a 6-12 volt DC regulated input, and I am sorry but I don’t know if it has a charging circuit or not. I do recall they said not to use a 6v DC power supply when it is loaded with a 9v battery, or the battery will still drain as it runs off the source with the highest power. It came with a small screwdriver and a 3.5mm - 3.5mm interconnect cable, and 4 stick-on rubber feet that I didn’t use (velcro feet added instead).
The iBasso D1 has been detailed in other threads, including this very good thread here FS: Redwine Audio maxed out Clari-T..dual mono. - I will add now that it has a power-on thump when toggling the power button on the front on. It’s not loud enough to hurt anything, like equipment or ears, but it is irritating. Since the power switch is not associated with the volume knob, be carefull when using IEM’s that the volume isn’t all the way up when switching from using full-size cans the last time you used it. In the front panel is the power switch to the left, with a light-house bright blue LED power indicator. The headphone out is on the left, and the line-in/aux line-out is on the right, between the headphone jack and the volume knob. There is an intelligent switcher inside that detects if a digital signal input is connected to the back, or if an analog signal input is connected to the front. When digital input is active (Coax, Optical or USB) the jack next to the headphone jack becomes analog line out from the DAC and the headphone is deactivated. I wish it would allow both outputs when using a digital input - then I could enjoy one headphone jack, while the DAC out drives another amp for someone else. On the back (right side when facing the back) there is a 12v AC regulated power input, with an LED that glows red when it is charging, and green when done charging. Next to that there is a mini-USB input, with a blue LED that comes on when the USB port is connected. Plugging it into my Macbook automatically switches the Macbook from internal speakers or headphone to the USB Audio CODEC in the sound control panel, for sound out via the D1. To the left of the USB input jack is the optical input, using a toslink type connector for home audio/video equipment, not a mini-optical 3.5mm. It has a removable plug for the jack, instead of the typical trap door that home audio has, so this has already been lost. I keep it plugged with a toslink-mini plug to keep dust out when not being used. On the left of the rear is the Coax digital input. This is a nice feature, since my Akai 7" portable DVD player only has Coax out, not optical. The case is a nice extruded aluminum enclosure, with a nice leather wrap to keep it from being scratched by equipment stacked on or under it, and visa versa.
CONCLUSION:
Any of these amps will make the listener very happy, with either DAC. Even the loser is a winner. The features of the amplifiers will end up being an important part in the decision making of which is better for you.
For me, the iBasso is more of a “transportable” and stays by my bedside now. It was fun at first to go mobile with an optical out iRiver and stuff everything in a camera bag, but the routine grew old. When I am at home, listening with my Mac or PCDP, the iBasso with rolled opamps is the one I go for. If it wasn’t for the wonderful DAC (with optical) that wrings the most out of the amp, it would have been passed on to another because of size and weight.
For mobile with my Macbook, I’m grabbing the Lyrix. Any USB to mini-USB cable will work with it, and they are a dime a dozen if I lose one. I have a nice zip-link wind up cable that takes up no space at all. If I plan to listen to music with my Etymotic ER6i, the Lyrix with bass boost is just the ticket, and the easy access low gain on the front panel allows finer volume adjustment. It’s size matches up well to my iPod Touch, and when I take that portable, I hook up the Lyrix to that.
But, for mobile, like putting my iPod and amp in a coat pocket, I have been reaching for the Headsix, being as small as a Tomahawk in TWO of the THREE dimensions (and the third is only 3/4" longer) but sounding a little better than the TH. I swapped my 8gb 3G nano video over to the Headsix, with ALO jumbo cryo silver x LOD, and moved my old 8gb 2G nano back to the Tomahawk.
Etcetera: I keep the 80gb and 30gb iPod videos velcro’d to my PenguinAmp Caffeine and Royal, and stored in a fanny pack that goes around with me in my car, so I don’t have to always swap out amps. I am keeping the 30gb for using in a video dock and boombox after I get the 80gb iModded by Red Wine Audio. I’ll probably give my PenguinAmp Royal to my brother-in-law who already has my Beyer DT231 that he fell in love with while listening via the PenguinAmp. I can’t part with the other PenguinAmp though - I need my Caffeine.
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no help:((…smeone give some tips
Hey do any of these amps come with a AC power supply ?
i use a ordinary unregulated ac dc adapter for my pint amp…thats to charge…if u need to run them while listening a regulated one helps
same might be used in this case…just noticed that i hadnt posted the link…and my net is slow…so ll check that later
Ok thanks. Do you think this amp will be able to handle a Senn HD 650 ? If yes, I am also interested in getting this amp. If you need a paypal account, I have a CC, so I can get a Paypal account, get it shipped to me and then reship it to you.
^^ placed ur order?
I sent a mail, but havent had the time to call them up ! Ill try maybe on Saturday. BTW did you have to pay duties on any of the headphones ?
BTW paypal doesnt require credit cards now. You can transfer direct from a bank account of any indian bank.
nope.. dint have any duties.. just put in a word wid uncle wilson nd he’ll take care of things..
stuff gets shipped bullet proof packaging :P.. really good.
@chaos… i think wat ur referring to is that u can remove money into indian banks.. dont think u can add from indian banks… eitherways.. will checkup 
yup.. jus checked… u can withdraw to an indian account. nd this has been around for a few months now. no option yet to add funds from an indian bank
Err apologies. That was a forex account of an indian bank :P.
Any pics available for these amps dude…??? the orignal stuff tht you are talking about brother..
Googling would have yielded u the answer
sorry for the delay…here is the link
The HEADSIX, a Head-Fi support sales-action - Head-Fi: Covering Headphones, Earphones and Portable Audio
seems power supply requirements are as follows : 12V, 6W, 1000mA, stabilized, linear
think we ll have to dig up that ourselves…the pic on the link shows as 6 to 12v regulated
and yes, it drives the hd650…dunno abt the synergy though
all purchases are stalled for now:(…i ll have to start gearing up for the income tax now…meanwhile i call up icici and ask for the nth time to resent my cc:x…