Today for a kick I plugged the Decware MLB (My Little Buddy) headphone amp to the SB2, and my cans the Beyerdynamic DT831 to the MLB. Played were tracks from "Amore per Rossini" sung by Jennifer L'Amore and London Chorus.
My earlier impression of these headphone heard thru the MLB and Underwood modded Shanling SCDT200 CDP has been that, while very detailed (more so than the Sennheiser HD6500) and three dimensional, its brightness in the upper extension tends to make listening fatigue set in quickly, thus preventing me from a long session. Switching back and forth between tube and solid state outputs of the CDP didn't help much. I blamed either the cans, the tube amp, or the Redbook CD recording technology.
How wrong have I been! Listening to Ms. Lamore today via the only new component in the system - the SB2 - is a pleasing turnaround. Not only that tons of inner details now keep being revealed in an analog way (as opposite to sterile details that we associate with solid state & digital), depth and ambience of sound stage get clearer; her voice as well as choir's singers can be heard in different layers. It become easier to follow vocal parts accompanying the lead singer. Her voice has never sounded this real (as if she was standing in front of (or under) the microphones, with the chorus behind her, singing out loud). Her voice has never been this meaty, rich, throaty, and dynamic. It seems easier for me to tell when she makes a head gesture, let alone inhaling and exhaling during the song.
I find myself cranking it up without being fatigued, and that IMHO indicates a very low noise reproduction. Best of all, listening to the loudspeaker/ClariT amps/SB2 yields an almost similar result. There's a low level hum with the tube amp, there's no room acoustics to affect the cans (sealed type) listening. Otherwise, they both share the ANALOG and SPOOKY sounds.
My guess is, a ClariT, modified for driving the cans, will push the envelope further. By the same token, a pair of Definitions will likely do the same.
