sennsay
Been passionate about hi-fi since 17 years young and have been loving my headphones since 1990.
- Location
- Reesville, Queensland, Australia
- Interests
- Hi-fi in general, kit building, turntables, photography and hiking - particularly for the photographs.
LOVE my Head-fi gear!
- Headphone Inventory
- Sennheiser HD 540 Reference 1s (X 2), Denon AH-D1000 (with Merkl mods to capsules - damped - and Mogami cables), Sony MDR-1R, HifiMAN HE-400S - Focus A pads and Mogami cable, in fact all cans use Mogami #2893 cable.
- Headphone Amp Inventory
- Main Head-Fi system consists of Elekit valve pre-amp (with upgrades); hot-rodded Silicon Chip amp with upgrades; Schiit Audio Modi Multibit DAC, Audio-gd R2R-11 DAC/amp/pre,
Corda 2MOVE portable amp/DAC.
Also;
FrankenZero DAC/Pre with Earth HDAM in DAC/LT1364s in amp + NOS Alps pot, Silicon Chip Professional headphone amp (kit) known as KHA II with OPA Earth HDAM.
KHA II was based on the upgraded stock board known as KHA I.5 and fully rebuilt from scratch with a new board and top SQ parts, Russian PIOs and Black Gate caps alongside Nichicon FA and ES series caps, Dale resistors, OPA Earth with audio-gd power supply. In combination with Frankie, in a word, stunning!
Now have two of the little $25 valve hybrid headphone amps; one is near stock, with only better Phillips PS caps, Nichicon Muse output caps and AD825 opamps installed ... well, I say only - I'm not a fan of cheap caps. The other has the same upgraded Phillips and Nichicon Muse FA caps, with the addition of Black Gate NX series 0.1uF coupling caps and all metal film resistors, CAT 5 wiring other than Teflon covered pure silver ribbon output wiring to the headphone jack. The AD825 opamps are wonderful in this circuit and suit the Denon cans to a T. Power supply has paralleled 9V batteries.
- Source Inventory
- Apple 21" iMac, Questyle QP1R Digital Audio Player - most often used as a very clean source; Schiit Audio Modi Multibit DAC; Audio-gd R2R-11 DAC/amp; Onkyo DX-1500 CD player.
- Cable Inventory
- Interconnects are: SlinkyLinks pure silver ICs with SlinkyLinks speaker cables in the main system; White Zombie's La Cacanya (pure silver); another shorter length of silver ribbon cables with Bullet plugs,, van den Hul D501 cables for the turntable, Neotech KHS154-SPC Hyper Balanced, AudioQuest Mini 3 3.5mm to RCA cable and Evergreen 3.5mm to RCA (better).
Hand made (self) pure silver cables x2, one from 2mm x 0.25mm silver ribbons with Bullet plugs, the other from 0.25mm 5x9s pure silver, also with Bullet plugs. The ribbons sound fantastic, 9/10ths of the superb Slinkylinks.
Digital IC is a Kimber USB cable, far superior SQ to the stock ones I've heard, including the blue one that came with the A-gd DAC/amp.
- Power-Related Components
- 2 quality shielded power cables with Furutech plugs all round.
- Other Audio Equipment
- Eidetic GB-1b Mosfet Power amp (refurbished), home made power amp (50W); various restored amplifiers; main speakers are the fabulous top of the line Sansui SP-300 horn speakers from 1968; Gale Mini Monitor II's - refurbished with new quality poly caps, so far.
- Audio-Related Tweaks
- All electrolytic caps on KHA bypassed with Black Gate NX series .01uF caps. All 0.1uF polyester caps replaced with Black Gate NX series .01uF. Power supply caps bypassed with Russian paper in oil caps with awesome results. LONG run in time! Fuses removed and replaced with pure silver ribbon.
I will create a complete new housing for the KHA amps, maybe both models in a stacked housing so that I can easily switch between the two. The OPA Moon HDAM seems to particularly suit KHA 1.5 and OPA Earth to KHA II.
The Tanyen Zero DAC became FrankenZero with very fine and worthy results, though has been replaced with the A-gd R2R-11 and sometimes the MusicStreamer II+ DAC.
- Music Preferences
- Eclectic tastes, David Bowie, Eva Cassidy, Tool, lots of World music, Ali Farka Toure, Ry Cooder etc to the Pixies, Yes, Genesis, Dave Matthews Band, John Meyer, selections from the Chesky collection, Alison Krauss, some classical, particularly the Romantics and some more recent electronic music - Above and Beyond, Chicane being just two. Current fave is the new Willie Nelson/Wynton Marsalis "Two Men With The Blues", stunning and fun.
Listening to even more 'World' music these days and have discovered the likes of Terakaft, Tinawiren, Yasar Akpence and more for those swinging desert blues and Middle Eastern rhythmic moments.
- Gender
- Male
- Gear-Fi
- Really enjoy using a really decent quality fishing rod and the same goes for a good camera, I especially enjoy using an Olympus XZ-1 digital camera for general use and photographing my electronic projects, alongside an Olympus E-M1 mirrorless SLR and Pro series lenses- includes an adaptor for using a selection of Canon FD lenses.
- Occupation
- Nothing at the moment
Signature
Questyle QP1R DAP; Stello HP100 H/Phone amp/preamp; Schiit Audio Magni 3+; Modi Multibit; Highly Modded FrankenZERO DAC; HRT MusicStreamer II+ USB DAC; Fully restored and upgraded 1977 Perreaux SP100 Pre-amp/Class A headphone amp; KHA 1 hot-rodded HP amp; Corda 2Move portable DAC/amp; Sennheiser 600 ohm HD540 Reference 1 (pleather pads and Mogami cable), plus a stock pair of HD540 Ref1s; Sennheiser 300 ohm HD250 Linear 1; 600 ohm Sennheiser HD430; HifiMAN HE400S (Focus A pads and Mogami cable); Sony MDR-1R; Denon AH-D1000 (Merkel mods); Slinkylinks pure silver IC cables; Audioquest Big Sur 3.5mm to RCA; Audioquest Carbon optical cable.
Followers
