I was in my local dealers having a chat to the owner when the subject of headphone amps came up.
He asked me whether I'd heard of Neve and I told him I knew of Neve mixing desks. He went on to tell me that Rupert Neve has designed a headphone amp, which, by all accounts is a stunner and is only £469 and which he intends to stock. I'll be borrowing one for a listen when he has some in.
More details can be found here:
http://rupertneve.com/products/rnhp-head...amplifier/
I did some research on Rupert Neve, watched a few interviews with him and thought the RNHP sounded like a good proposition and bought one. I haven't a clue whether it's supposed to be run in, benefits from a warm up before use etc., although I have made an enquiry directly to Neve. Even after prolonged use the casing is stone cold. It runs on a cheap 24V wall wart and I can't help wondering whether it would benefit a decent linear supply to improve sound quality.
Not that it sounds like it needs tweaks. I'm driving it from the pre-outs on my Conpanion, so that I have remote control of it. You need to crank the Neve quite high, about 3 o'clock and let the Dev preamp do the rest.
It sounds wonderful: inky black silences, not a trace of noise. Deep powerful and well controlled bass. Crystalline highs with long reverberation tails. Bags of air and space.
Since there are no pictures of the internals online, I won't even bother to take the lid off, let alone photograph them, although interest does pique me, because I can't find any description of how it works online, and it's always nice to know what's going on under the hood!
One thing is for sure: I've never heard my HD800s sound this good. The 800s are a relatively high impedance load at 300 Ohms, yet when I plug my 25 Ohm Denons in, with all controls as they are the volume is the same. Does this give us any clues as to what makes it tick?
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