Have those of you who like the MK3 heard the original Rx?  I found the original to to have an unbearably cold and sterile tone.

No experience here with the original Rx.

The price is crazy though.  How much do you think it costs to make? 

And how are these balanced portables supposed to sound as good as a gigantic speaker amp with something like an HE6.  That's never made any sense to me.  Is it because they're battery powered? 

Well how can a tiny little portable sound like the huge BA or B22?  To put it simply, what are all those parts there for? 

Well how can a tiny little portable sound like the huge BA or B22?  To put it simply, what are all those parts there for?

I don't know, but the RX m3 does have a 'big' type of sound to it.  Sorry for the word choice but not sure how else to put it.  It's neutral, clear as hell, powerful, didn't notice anything about it that bothered me at all.  I think it's the first portable amp I've heard w/ no complaints.  Didn't like the RX m1 myself and swore off ALO products till now.  By comparison, the SR-71B is kind of a joke, my Leckerton and the O2 spanks it.  I wanted to hear slwiser's independent take which pretty much matches mine.


Ken Ball did talk to me about the price because I bitched about in his thread and said I don't normally like his products at all.  I think the cost was in hiring the engineers he needed to implement the features and balanced drive while retaining a purity of sound and great dynamic performance.   The impression I got was that he got tired of playing the portable amp sidegrade market and decided to just go all out and see if he could buy a design/designers to beat them all.  Basically he pulled a Val Kolton and designed something that he wanted for himself that he could sell to people that could afford it, like Val's VAMP project.  If you have the money from selling garden hose cables I can believe it.  How much and to what degree that is BS I don't know.  I'll say he was a surprisingly good sport about having me throw sand in his face on H-fi even though the mk3 impressions were favorable.  He might be a dick outside or misunderstood but he was a champ in an open forum and didn't ask any mods to remove my impressions.  He manned up and replied transparently and without objection.  I have to respect that.

Ken is both appreciated and reviled in equal measure, so I don't blame him for coming off poorly sometimes.  I met him in Tokyo and he kindly lent us one of his only three demo amps. I was impressed by the prototype in Tokyo last year and no less this time. Jude's 71B/CLAS rig was definitely less lively.  Non-comprehensive impressions are that the RX-3B is a bit better than my Triad Audio L3 and both are a step above the headphone amp in the DX100. It's worth considering that one has to account for cabling buying one of the balanced amps, so the base price isn't the whole story.