I want to chime in one more thing about this superb headphone amplifier since now I've gotten more than a week's worth of heavy daily use from it.



The volume knob on this thing is perfect omg I love it so much.



I never imagined the piece of mind that perfect channel matching and perfect 1dB steps over 80 steps is, all the while in analog! It even clicks into mute at the lowest level, which changes the LED from green to orange, and places the amplifier in thermal standby.



Compared to the rHead, the MCTH I have at work, which I'd like to underscore cost me the same amount of money, has probably the world's most horrendous volume knob. It's so scratchy when adjusting during an active signal, and it suffers from huge and widely reported channel imbalance before 7-8 o'clock. The MCTH also has a fixed gain of 8x (+18dB), which means, if I want to maximize my dynamic range and output into the amplifier a digital signal at 0 dBFS (100% windows volume), I'm at literally the 7-8 o'clock with the 300 ohm HD6XX. This often meant surprise drop-outs on the right channel, and when things did manage to sound more or less correct, I'm still plagued by neurosis that the amp is not treating my left and right cups equally. So, I'm forced to lower Windows volume to 70%, incur the penalty to dynamic range, and thereby keep the MCTH's volume knob around the safer 9 o'clock position, because frankly the MCTH does not let me trust it. It's as if the MCTH was designed for people who don't care about this hobby!



With the rHead, I'm just shy of 12 o'clock for my hardest to drive headphones and normally listen somewhere between 10 o'clock and 12 o'clock. This is perfect. This is all the power a headphone amplifier ought to have. And I'm so confident that both channels are getting that perfectly undistorted class A signal equally.



I'm extremely disappointed in Massdrop and Alex Cavalli. Yes, it sounds amazeballs with the HD6XX, but I'm literally peeved everyday from using it. The rHead is easily 2x the build quality and like 4x the sound quality and a safer pairing for most headphones, at the same price.



John Dawson, man, you know what you are doing.