you are in serious trouble then because I speak "Rickanese" and as far as I can tell there are no translation manuals available for general consumption.Sorry dude
Dialects are a bitch and I can drive 100 miles in any direction and once there think I am in a foreign land for all the understanding of the local language I would have and it gets worse if I go 500 miles south.
To the amp (better "mood"
)
The Rudistor is an old design that has been on the site for years with this being from what I can tell a cosmetic upgrade to grab attention.I understand the
why of it in an area where far too many gush over the way a thing
looks as if that has some impact on performance but I have to say I personally dislike this trend.
Example of flash over performance ?
right from the amps page :
Contruction at hi-end standard with CNC worked 10mm frontpanelso now it is a thick front panel that makes the amp ? Well I guess I can shitcan all ideas of circuit refinement and go straight to the machine shop for some "high end" panels to get the sound I am looking for ;D
I wonder how much that panel adds to the cost or better put,what would the amp cost without it ?
My next "beef" would be the footprint.My idea of a headphone amp is usaully as being in a supportive role.That is the addition of a high quality headphone monitoring output to a pre-existing system be it my playback system or my recording system.
Because it is "added to" it must have the ability to meld,to be unobtrusive,to do the job and get the hell out of the way otherwise when not needed so my requirements are :
A-Simple do the job controls-volume,on/off,mute
B-Should sit alongside whatever input device it is connected too without taking up too much space.This means all wider than higher or deeper amps are off the list because they are space hogs.Hogs that by being such a strange size are not even stackable with anything else unless they sit on top but then you have a cord hanging down over whatever the other device is.Not acceptable.
I like deeper than wide and with a semi cube shaped front panel but that will not do for the
"look at me amps" that want to be the center of attention thus usually meaning their own shelf space and that is wasteful for an "add-on" tool.
For those systems that are headphone-centric,where
THE SYSTEM is a headphone based one then anything is fine including those multi-$K amps that need an entire shelf of their own but they too screw up by not knowing what they want to be.If a headphone amp
IS to be my
main system it damn sure better give me the control I need without having to add ANOTHER shelf space grabbing device to "finish" the amp.Those controls are volume,balance,mute,mono or full steroe mode switching,input selection,gain switch,multiple outputs.
If a thing
presumes to be the center then it better deliver the goods
AS the center.
Point three :
Would be interesting to see a head to head review up against the Heed which has similiar topology to find out if the amp under discussion is a pretender,better or just equal and overpriced because of the "high end" front panel (yeah that pisses me off.Can you tell ?
).
As with most amps we again have far too much gain for Grado use (I use the MS-1 and RS-1 exclusively) except for strictly portable player use (yet this is a home amp) and possible too little gain for hard to drive cans more comfortable usually with a full X10 gain (+20dB) but I understand the why of it and how wronheaded it is even though done by all headphone amp manufacturers.
Could be a perfectly nice amp front panel aside though I think a Head/Rudistor head-to-head would nice,not that I would ever buy one-can't get past that chassis footprint even though it makes for a very tidy pcb layout and good ps/audio stage separation