A friend and I were comparing a few pieces of gear this weekend, including the Dodd headphone amp, which Gary kindly let me borrow last week. I'd been knocked out by the performance from the first tune, but I haven't spent a lot of time listening to competing amps, so I had no real way of telling how good the Dodd was compared with the competition.
My buddy, on the other hand, has listened to a bunch of stuff, from a tweaked Earmax he uses with Sennheiser 600s to a Cary 300SEI to various ASL offerings and most of the Headroom line.
He was impressed. It wasn't quite equal to the Cary, he said, but it "sounded better than just about anything I've heard for less than $2,000."
He was also amazed at how good a modest pair of Grado 60s sounded with the Dodd. They'd always sounded too dark and not detailed enough, he said. But these matched enormously well with the Dodd -- maybe because Gary has a pair of Grados in his listening room ...
To my ears, the Dodd offers amazing detail. I often use Brubeck's "Time Out" as a first listen on new gear, mostly because everyone has heard it and largely because I've heard it about a million times. The Dodd, through the $69 Grados, presents deep, powerful bass (and the creaking, woody sound of Gene Wright's double bass is right there in the room), the percussive energy of Brubeck's piano, a very melodic alto sax (and a nice, damp reed) and the most stunning rendition of Joe Morello's drum kit I've heard. Each slap of the snare sounds like a gunshot. The kick drum booms like thunder. The echoes and other ambient information reinforces exactly the photos of that session, with Morello tucked toward a corner of the studio. Very impressive.
Now all I need to do is figure out how to come up with the cash for this little impulse buy with Christmas breathing down my neck ...
Mike
