I am jumping in here as the owner of a Cavalli Liquid Carbon from the first release back five years or so ago. I have underutilized my LC, I confess, partly because I don't have an entire audio system built around it that does it justice. What I would like to do atm is play music through my laptop (Dell XPS) and use the Liquid Carbon when I choose higher impedance headphones like my also underutilized Sennheiser HD600's. I tried this earlier today playing Tidal computer app output through an Audioengine D3 DAC/amp. I connected the laptop/DAC to the Cavalli using a 3.5mm to RCA connector cable. The Senns have a balanced cable to plug into the four pin XLR output from the Cavalli.
I have to say that the results were underwhelming. They were ok for quiet classical music, but when I went to vintage rock the sound seemed thin and distant. I suspect that what I am feeding the Cavalli is inappropriate somehow, what I have is badly matched equipment. When I use an XPS/Audioengine/Philips Fidelio X2 system the sound actually seems a bit better than what I was getting through the "better" system involving the Cavalli and the Senns.
Ok, I guess I am trying to get by here on the cheap and maybe that is not possible. I ask: what would I need in terms of upstream components to get the most out of the Cavalli. Do I need a better DAC? How much better? I suppose if worse comes to worst I can sell the Cavelli, but I would like to try to coax some performance out of it before giving up.
Doug Greenberg, Berkeley, CA
Hi, I have copied/pasted my post of a few months ago above, and am back with more! I got the feedback, both from my own ears and from other people, that the Sennheiser HD600s just don't play well with the Liquid Carbon, this even with a balanced cable, etc. So I put the Liquid Carbon away again for a while. In the meantime, I bought an iFi micro idsd black label DAC/amp. With this little device, the Sennheiser hd600s sound terrific! Much more bass, much fuller sound.
This seems like an indictment of the Liquid Carbon, and I confess I have had dark thoughts that the whole project was a hype or even a scam
. But ok, I will put those thoughts aside and try again to make the best of the fact that my LC sits in its box in a spare room doing nothing atm.
I could invest in a better DAC than the dragonfly red I used previously, or I could hook the ifi black label to the Cavalli via its output jacks. But this leads me to a couple of questions:
1) what headphones actually "sing" using the Liquid Carbon as the amp? The Hd600s certainly do not. I guess what I am asking is what headphones might sound better using the LC than the ifi black label?
2) is it a big sacrifice to use non-balanced inputs on the LC? I actually am reluctant to recable headphones with XLR termination just for the sake of using them on the LC. If the non-balanced circuitry of the LC is crap, maybe I should just sell my LC for whatever I can get for it.
I am not deliberately being antagonistic to the Liquid Carbon world here. I would like to get some good use out of the amp, really.