Quote:
Originally Posted by greekgod
I've been fighting very hard to resist the urge to buy a pair of Utopias and you are not making it easy...lol. I suggest giving the Naim Dac-V1 a try. It is the smoothest sounding solid state headphone amp I have ever heard and according to one dealer "Focal used this Dac-V1 as a reference during development of their Elear and Utopia headphones". I have seen dealers advertise discounts as much as 35% off retail on the Naim.
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I recently heard the Utopia (and Clear, and Elear) out of the headphone jack of a Naim integrated amp (NAIT XS 2), and was pretty blown away (finally decided to order the Utopia). I've been into high-end headphones for a long time and never gave much thought to Naim, but they obviously have a pretty good voicing for Focal headphones. Perviously, I would've expected that level of sound to come from very substantial dedicated balanced headphone amp. That said, there was much more ground hum noise than there should've been. Not sure if that's typical, but it would get annoying after a while.
It will be interesting to see how these Utopias do out of my much more substantial HeadRoom Home Balanced amp -- it's on the warm side of neutral, but very detailed. I also have an old HeadAmp Gilmore Balanced Reference (i.e. a Kevin Gilmore dyna-mid), but that amp is a bit on the brighter side of neutral, which doesn't seem like a natural match for the Utopia.