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Burson Audio discrete headamp.


Hopstretch

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Maybe Beefy knows something about these Aussie blokes?

Mention of it popped up on a local forum I frequent, but I don't know of any local listening impressions or anything like that.

But from my perspective, the page is just loaded with audiophool bullshit. For starters, anybody who thinks OPAMPs are inherently evil has never heard an MMM or amps of similar calibre. Not to mention some of it is just plain wrong......

'True to our design methods, the HA-100 is built with a differential input stage. Neutralising our Burson Opamp technology it has no decoupling capacitor on its signal path.'

Since when do DEcoupling caps go in the signal path?

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Yeah, and the BS about the HD650 being "one of the most difficult to drive headphones on the planet"? Since when has high sensitivity (103db/mW), moderately high impedance been hard to drive for a dedicated amp? HP1000, R10, K1000, K340 - all much much harder to drive than the Senns.

Really? Or is that a function of the fact that they are really expensive and people that have them more often than not have mammoth amps? They got quite loud very happily out of my GS-X on low gain, and I believe (this is a foggy memory) I had to turn it up when I switched to the 650s to get a volume match.

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There is a Chinese (I think) company which it is said actually makes the Bursons, or the design is copied from them (Audio-gd). They have 3 flavors of the things. A review of them is over in the DIY area of the other site:

Audio-gd discrete op-amps reviewed: OPA-Earth, OPA-Moon, OPA-Sun v.2 - Head-Fi: Covering Headphones, Earphones and Portable Audio

I personally haven't used them; the only discrete stuff kinda like this that I use is for I/V stages with NO feedback. Opamps by convention must have feedback to work (usually tons of feedback). Plus they use BS meter pegging language in their descriptions, making me much less likely too even consider them.

One guy in the DIY section (back before the HF crash) had put some in a CD player and seemed to like them OK. But it didn't seem like a night and day difference. Do a search on Burson there.

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Volume != equal to drive.

You have to factor in how it controls the sound. Most amps can give you adequate volume or even nose bleed volumes, but not all can take a hold of the bass and keep it tight with slam, keep the high frequencies from sounding shrill, etc..

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Maybe Beefy knows something about these Aussie blokes?

Their new Headamp popped up on HF this morning. It looks quite interesting as a potential match with HD800s.

It's powered by their own discrete opamps, which they apparently also sell separately. Has anyone had any experience with rolling these?

wpd7433ba7.png

There is a Chinese (I think) company which it is said actually makes the Bursons, or the design is copied from them (Audio-gd).

That discrete opamp is definitely either Audio-gd's or copied exactly. I used them before, and they look EXACTLY the same as that in the pictures, except that the colour of the PCB board on mine was brown.

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Really? Or is that a function of the fact that they are really expensive and people that have them more often than not have mammoth amps? They got quite loud very happily out of my GS-X on low gain, and I believe (this is a foggy memory) I had to turn it up when I switched to the 650s to get a volume match.

Well, the GS-X is one hell of an amp at driving damn near anything, and like laxx said the position of the volume knob doesn't always tell you how hard the amp is working (no problem in the GS-X's case). The R10 and HP2 both really thrashed the toaster SDS w/ 6SN7 output tubes - readily apparent distortion in the bass, increasing rapidly as you push the volume. For some reason the (also low impedance) L3000 fared better, maybe helped by its high sensitivity. It can be tough for an OTL tube amp to handle low impedance well. The Zana Deux of course does well, also the Supra/SDS with 6BL7/6BX7 output tubes.

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Search for "HDAM" or "Audio-gd HDAM" to see the threads on the other site. The people who have tried them, including myself, have had good results. The Burson HDAM is the Audio-gd Earth. The only downside to them is, they are a hell of a lot bigger than an opamp, so you need to rig up an extension lead to connect them in some cases.

There's a lot of mention of them in the Zero DAC thread on the other site (which you can't search for as "zero" is too common a term).

There's also a thread where someone tested them against a bunch of opamps, which is interesting.

I've put them in the Zero, a LD MKV and in a box being developed by Audio-gd we asked for to replace the Zero after it started blowing up people's headphones and the like. In all cases, the upgrade from OPA627s, LT1364, LM4562 and whatever it was in the MKV that I've forgotten, was significant.

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Mention of it popped up on a local forum I frequent, but I don't know of any local listening impressions or anything like that.

But from my perspective, the page is just loaded with audiophool bullshit. For starters, anybody who thinks OPAMPs are inherently evil has never heard an MMM or amps of similar calibre. Not to mention some of it is just plain wrong......

'True to our design methods, the HA-100 is built with a differential input stage. Neutralising our Burson Opamp technology it has no decoupling capacitor on its signal path.'

Since when do DEcoupling caps go in the signal path?

I love the "true to our design methods...differential input stage" LOL. Of course it's a differential input stage, it's an op-amp!

Making something discrete doesn't automatically make it better. It takes substantial effort to do better than a good IC, and just dumping something in because it's discrete is asinine.

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The statement is a truism that I thought relevant to the tone the thread was taking: a tendency to dismiss an idea without giving it a fair chance when it does not fit in with preconceived notions. I expect to see that sort of approach on the other site but not here.

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