There are some here who don't like the HA-200...

But I have owned the monoblocks and I really liked them. My impressions match very closely with John's. I think I even wrote a review on hf somewhere.

Thanks, Armaegis!

Hi Money.  Honestly,  the Rag never impressed me when I heard it at shows,  and now that I have it here I'm still not blown away.  At the moment I don't have another amp to compare other than the built-in amps in the DAC212 and Pulse,  neither of which are stellar (although the Pulse amp section is better than DAC212 - the latter can be a tad dry).  The Rag strikes me as lacking the final bit of refinement that a top end amp should have,  strikes me as a tad rough.  There's no denying it's versatility though.  If I needed a speaker amp too them it might be a different story.

Hopefully my incoming Wells Audio Enigma  will arrive in time for a comparison with the Rag.

  Having retired this year, I know what it feels like to start to accept what you actually have got now and appreciate it's good qualities rather than hanker after every new thing that's come out. It is actually quite reassuring  and beneficial to get your ears trained into your head phone properly and not keep wanting something else all of the time. It also saves an awful lot of money.

Sorry, but I owned the Oppo HA-1, and I could not stand my HD800 with it for even 30 seconds on pretty much any track except for the mainstream pop songs.

It is one screachy sounding DAC/Amp, but I'm pretty sure the DAC was at fault.

I'm not sure what scratchy sounds like. It could very much be a poor mastering of your music. I find the amp/dac to be incredibly good value with a shitload of features that very few competitors include. I love the remote, the app, and bluetooth/pre-amp output is perfect for streaming music to my stereo.

The HD 800 sounds very clean and powerful through the amp/dac which was sourced from my USB port. Oppo HA-1 can deliver a lot of bass to the HD 800s when called on, and can deliver very crisp and clear highs. I have both vinyl rips and SACDs of the same albums. You can tell apart the vinyl with its dynamics and detail retrieval despite some surface noise. The SACD versions sound cleaned up for sure, but absolutely at the expense of detail. You can't have your cake an eat it too. As for CDs, they are typically a little louder sounding but still very good. Voices are quite realistically rendered.

Objectively the Oppo HA-1 has some killer specs. SNR is through the roof, THD and IMD is lower than the Schiit offerings. Also stereo crosstalk is 120dB in balanced output. Good luck finding specs that good on a unit that costs < $2k, comes with a very competitive DAC, and all the features. I doubt you can get any improvements without forking over three times as much money for standalone units. Even then, how hard do you have to listen to spot the differences? Your headphone mucks with the tone far more than any amp will.

There are some here who don't like the HA-200...

But I have owned the monoblocks and I really liked them. My impressions match very closely with John's. I think I even wrote a review on hf somewhere.

Something else I forgot to mention, my now 9 year old car, despite replacing the front bumper, a front passenger door, and rear bumper from parking lot incidents (none of which were my fault), has nary a scrape or ding on it. That guy thought his 15 year old car with literally 50-60 dings and scrapes was normal. It took a lot of control not to roll my eyes when he said that.

BTW I've continued this thread on the new site. I won't be updating this one anymore.

V2 isn't a warm tube amp. Either you like the HD800 as it is or you mod the HD800 with the V2.

There's quite a jump once you move up to the big boy tube amps.

Try mods on the HD800 if its too thin and diffused sounding. Some people are using HD600s and HD650s instead of HD800.

This. And don't give up after the first modification you try. It took me a while [man understatement of the fucking year] to get to a setup with the HD800 that I was happy with.

Just to parrot TheGame, The Valhalla 2 is a fantastic amp for the HD800.

I forgot if any kind of modded cheap cans are allowed but electrical tape modded L-Cush bowls on Grado SR60es are amazing. I would rather listen to them over q701s for example.

Try mods on the HD800 if its too thin and diffused sounding. Some people are using HD600s and HD650s instead of HD800.