Sounds like Placebo to me.

My girlfriend swapped the amps 10 times and 10 /10 I could tell which was the R800i. Nice try though, pinkcunt.

So you have the Expanse hooked up to the speaker taps? What are you using to hook it up? Something like the HE adapter from Hifiman? https://store.hifiman.com/index.php/he-adapter.html

Yeah, I'm using exactly that. Can also wire directly to the taps, just solder some speaker wire to a 4pin XLR.

the Expanse is the one planar I'm aware of that doesn't have a flat impedance, so you'd probably get some frequency response shift even assuming the amp's frequency response is flat into a resistive load, which isn't the safest assumption for tube amps.

Yeah, there's a bump around 200Hz and the bass does feel fuller but not so far it's distorted like when I run my Utopia (which has an even larger impedance hump). Also the tubes will add some harmonic resonance on their own across the rest of the spectrum.

You know he is talking about solid state to tubes right? The whole placebo thing is about most solid states being identical, its pretty accepted that tubes do change sound.

Yes, assume everything is placebo when you've never heard of them yourself 🙃

Expanse and Aeon X Open share common preferred amp pair ups IMHO. I like them out of KT88 triode-strapped SET amps with high output impedance (300 ohm headphone out of my ampsandsound Forge amp)

So he wasted 2k on tubes, when EQ could have done the trick?

lmao

Tubes may add distortion. Good tube amps can be as "clean" as good solid state amps tho.

High output impedance, which tube amps usually have, can change the sound of variable impedance headphones.

You know that... Right???

I will :)

Especially if they use fancy and absurd analogies to describe the sound :)

I'm truly sorry for you that those elementary level words used by OP to describe the sound are too difficult for you to understand.

>so much more air like the notes pop out of a black hole and yet the notes have more body too, more resonance, they're rich and fun instead of thin and analytical.

THIS MEANS LITERALLY NOTHING...

I too can describe sound in a fancy way that means fuck all :)

OP could have just as well described the sound as "Refreshingly esoteric, with a tinch of quantized energy, which bubbles to the surface of a quiet sea, amidst the fog of clarity, bursting into colorfoul spectrums and thus enltightening my ears"

Do you not see how OPs description is a meaningless mumbo jumbo of nonsense????

interesting, how would you rank your TOTL headphones you listed on your post friend?

Expanse > Utopia > Verite ~= Empyrean

Can't really say one is better than the other when comparing Verite and Empyrean, it's more a situation where they're different. Whereas Expanse is better in every regard than the others to my ears. One exception being I think the Utopia wins just in terms of pure "open-ness" in that they're more speaker-like. Yet the Expanse still feels like the notes stand out more even though there's more open-ness in the Utopia.

I would say the Utopia sounds like there's nothing but clear air between the notes, hence it feeling open. Whereas the Expanse goes even further and it's almost as if there's a vacuum between the notes, thus my "black hole" comment about the background. Hope that makes sense.

They're all fantastic, at this level I'm really nitpicking. There is something special about the Expanse though, I just find myself coming back to that one for hours upon hours and ultimately that's what matters. They're also the most comfortable (Empyrean close second)