I just wanted to open this topic to share my recent discovery.
I'm the happy owner of a pair of Super 3i that I purchased from a very nice member of this forum. Each day, I'm getting more and more impressed by these babies. They sound so nice. I especially appreciate how fast and articulate they are, the spacialization of the sound scene, how holographic they can present the audio picture. Nevertheless I sometimes feel like I'm missing some low frequencies. This is a trade off I'm absolutely willing to deal with, when I think of all the other qualities these speakers have. Might upgrade and purchase other Omega speakers like SAM or SAM HO one day, with so many people praising them.
But let's get back to my topic. I am in a process of building a small system for my living room. As my wife doesn't share the same passion than me, as I have two tiny tigers constantly roaming in my living room, who already have done some damage to my audio gear in the past, and as the placement of the speaker cannot be ideal, I decided to set up a small configuration at an affordable price. As I didn't want to sacrifice to much in sound quality, I read a lot of forums to decide with cheap amp and speakers (not Omega this time, remember placement issue!) to buy. After a lot of reading, I settled on the Fx Audio d802. This amp costs almost 100 euros, but gets a lot of very positive reviews in forum. Some well experienced guys literally got rid off amps and dac costing 100 times the price of the d802 after having used it extensively in their configuration. Some people even described how well this amp could drive some Klipschorn or Cornwell. Some other just disliked it and passed.
At 100 euros, I thought it was a bet I could try.
I received this amp 3 days ago and couldn't resist to try it on my Omegas, that didn't forgive anything to the various cables,amps and tubes, I tried on them. I like how revealing they are. At first sight I thought "Oh, this little toy will probably be a joke after 3 notes". And wow, I was really, really impressed by the result. I get more bass than with my small tube amp (on which I did serious tube rolling to find the best combination to get holography, timbres, etc), and the trebles seem to be less piercing than with the tube amp. I can hear more details, more than I ever did before, and I now have, on very good recordings, this "live" feeling of having the artist in my listening room. I'm really, really surprised. The soundstage might be a little bit narrower than with my tube amp, and with a slightly less warm presentation anyway.
In the end, I only wanted to buy something to "hear" music for my living room, and I have finally found a small beast that costs almost nothing, that weights almost nothing, with the size of a book, that beats or at least is equal to a lot of other amps I have tried in the past. Seriously? And this amp also replaces my dac (a mhdt Pagoda/ with Ericsson tube) as the full digital amplifier uses direct digital signal to generate analogic signal.
I just wanted to share my experience with you all. I know some will call me crazy, will think it definitely looks too ugly compared to a tube amp, will think it's umpteenth chinese crap (and it might be, as a lot of people complained about the reliability of the product with time), but I really encourage all the people that are seeking cheap gear to constitute secondary systems, or just want to have fun with comparing and evaluating devices, to have a look at it. For me, this amp, and maybe the fda technology, worked very well with my Omega. I Thought it was worth to give a testimonial of this synergy. Sorry if it isn't expensive enough.
If other people have similar experience, or investigate on fda + Omegas, please don't hesitate to give your impressions.
Benjamin
