Anders

I said it's conformist, forgot to mention the gatekeepers and their mantras.

Fuck off! Aeeh, ok thanks, see you!

Yes, you seem to be seriously interested. Head-Case is an unusually conform group with its own heroes, enemies and some common beliefs. Outsiders with a different opinion are regularily treated aggressively and often with contempt. They move away soon and conformity is maintained. Anyway, it is positive that uncensored information is possible on this site with critical discussion of designs and products. In a time of recession and hifi in decline, many vendors stick to headphones as a possible arena for profit or simply for survival. This market is exploding and much of it is sustandard, maybe especially in the "high end". This can only be sustained by constant hyping and Head-Case is not on this hype train.

I don't think conformity is less on Head-Case than Head-Fi.

I understand that Tyll like any commercial reviewer must be considerate.

He wrote contemporary music and that is much more than pop and rock for me. There are contemporary jazz and contemporary classical music with low and heavy bass content and sharp transients as well as alternative rock. This music is very demanding and unsatisfactory equipment trashes easily the sound of a complex contemporary music (if you know how it should sound and don't think it is a plethora of ugly dissonance). Taking Tylls review as a clear reservation for LL1 demand that you read it between the lines very much and interpret minor reservations as major. There is no amp that is perfect so then it becomes impossible to write a honest review as it is very difficult to know when a minor reservation is meant as minor or major. It is clear that BHSE got more positive mention in Tylls review than LL1 but LL1 was described as a good amp and not as something you should avoid. He wrote above that he thinks it sounds pretty good.

With this elaborate description I am inclinded to believe you. Could that mean that Inner Fidelity also is a part in the hyping business? Or at least grossly understating weaknesses of the gear they review. The recent adoption of Guttenberg should support that view. Audiojunkie, it is not true that most contemporary music has no output under 80 Hz. Then we listen to extremely different kinds of music. Try it on speakers with a lower limit of 40 Hz and you can easily hear the bass compression. Classical rock works much better on such speakers.

Besides the safety issues the subjective evaluations of this amp are confusingly different. According to MacedonianHero bass is sucked out below 80 Hz and I get a very similar impression from spritzers review. On the other hand the review on Inner Fidelity is positive although some minor problems are mentioned. "I'll recommend the big, warm sound of the Liquid Lightning to fans of contemporary music of all types. Hard driving bass lines will be delivered with ample thump, complex crunching guitars will come shining through with a little extra sparkle, but without harsh or confusing distortion...even at fairly loud levels." (Tyll Hersens review of LL1 at Inner Fidelity). Confusing at least. That reinforces my current policy to only buy things I can borrow for a home audition, in practice it will be very few headphone items.

No, Jude said nothing about meeting capitalist scumfoxes in smokey rooms. It was a few years ago and it is sad that Head-Fi has deteriorated even more after that.

You are right in that, they do what they want without explanation. I only refered to what I observed in the HF thread. Unsubstantiated information was deleted. A person who notice that could very well interpret it as support for moderators' view that there are persons who only want to discredit the vendor. If substantiated information is deleted it will decredit HF. For those who follow a thread I think that such things will cast some doubt over the credibility of HF. If you really want to spread the information on HF, it would be possible to put it on another site than Head Case and link it. Also that could disappear but there are people who see it. I think there is some automatic warning system for Head Case. I mentioned the site once on HF by name and after only 15 minutes I got a mail from Jude that it was deleted and warned not to mention that site any more. Everyting else was ok he told.

A post just stating that the soldering job is bad is unconvincing. As a reader I don't know the writer and I don't know what knowledge that it is based on. Perhaps no knowledge at all and just intended to be insulting or starting a flame war? You can't expect that readers of HF also follow the threads at HC. It is not surprising that such posts are deleted. They only serve to support the belief that the truth is supressed at HF. However, I believe that valid criticism is censored at HF in a mislead ambition to serve the headphone community, the business and a naive optimism. Maybe there are other reasons too, personal or economic, I don't know. What evidence would support the statement? Any that adds something to the statement. How do the author know this, what is the experience behind, reasons for the conclusion, pictures etc. How this is related to HF policies is more than I know. I am definitively no representative of HF and have no inside information so I can't help much here. But it would be possible to post some information, descriptions or pictures that support a statement. Of course, that can be deleted also by a moderator, but then also HF is showing its true face and can't easily explain away it as removal of spam and insults.

I remember one post about soldering at HF and noticed that it was removed, not sure if it was yours. That post was not informative, it just was a statement about bad soldering without any evidence. It is understandable after reading this thread but was just mystifying in the HF context. What was the statement about soldering base on? The writer didn't seem to own the amp, where had he seen it? Or had hadn't he seen it at all and just "knew" that it must be bad because it was Cavalli? It is easy to remove such a post becuase it can be supposed to be only bad-mouthing. It would be much more difficult to remove it if clear evidence is presented and if it is removed, the censoring will be obvious. spritzer, thanks for the informative presentation.

Bass impact and kicking bass with a 727 amp - it seems the C32 is easier to drive than O2.

Happy end, this amp finally found its best home!

Good luck! I like the 404 except the upper midrange peak. A reduction is very welcome and maybe a halving would make them much more listenable, retaining the character but with less listening fatigue.