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Articles and Reviews
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Musical
Fidelity X-Can v3 Headphone Amp
How could anyone spend that kind of money for…headphones? My speaker listening biases were on full and I thought of these serious headphiles as being even more nutbar than I was. I
wasn’t interested. All I wanted was a nice little amp to drive my
Sennheiser HD580s headphones and be done with it. I bought that
nice little amp in late 2004 when I bought one of the last of the Headsave Classic amps from a Canadian
amp builder in
Then something in me twigged and I decided that I really needed to upgrade my digital source by purchasing a Benchmark DAC-1. The DAC-1 is considered to be a good DAC for the money and also offers a headphone amp, as well as a pre-amp capability; however, I would consider these two features as add-ons rather than as high quality features equal to the DAC section. Couple the desire for the DAC-1 with a friend talking about reference quality amps and I guess a bit of Jones syndrome caught up with me, as I couldn’t have someone I know listening to a better setup than me J I jumped the shark, went over the cliff, head first into the abyss; whatever you want to call it, I went bonkers with wanting to buy a really high-end headphone amp of my own. Trouble is I really didn’t want to spend the kind of money needed for a reference grade headamp. Two brands come to mind as being the best of the best, Headroom and Meier, and both offer no holds barred amps at a similar price level, which is about US $1600 that translates to about CAN $2000 after exchange, S&H, and taxes are applied. Two-grand is a whole lot of coin just to enjoy some headphone listening. Never mind that it’s the same amount I paid for the recent Benchmark DAC-1 and Sennheiser HD650 headphone purchases, but those I could justify in needing to bring my CD player up to 21st Century standards and my old HD580 cans are looking their age after a decade of use.
After the experience with the DAC-1 used as a pre-amp in my system, I’ve come to like tubes and no longer have a “bias” against them J Now, in a 180 degree turnaround, I’m even accepting the idea that one day I might own a full-fledged tube amp. Primarily, I have an integrated amp in mind for simplicity, but I would also consider a modest power amp, since I already have a tube/hybrid pre-amp. The big criterion would be simplicity and convenience of operation and use, e.g. I don’t want to be on my knees and elbows biasing output tubes all the time and I want a design that doesn’t run the tubes full out, so that they might actually last three to five years before replacement. I don’t want an amp using exotic tubes; I want it to utilize the common EL-34, or KT88/6550 tubes. And, lastly, I don’t want the amp to use so many of these output tubes that I’m blowing the same amount of money as an entry-level solid state Rotel or NAD integrated amp every time I re-tube the amp. I think VTL offers some promising designs, but if anyone else has a suggestion, I’m all “golden” ears J I digress. A tube amp is for the future whereas I need to speak of the here and now. With a penchant for the tube sound I went looking for a cost-effective, yet still quality tube headphone amp. (You can call me TubeBoy now and I’ll soon be renaming this site TubeHobby – egad, what’s next? Me getting back into vinyl and then buying a Mac computer? Oh the horror, oh the humanity J) There are definitely some deals out there on the increasing number of Chinese-made products. The key name brand is Antique Sound Lab (ASL) that offers a wide variety of tube pre-amps and amps, as well as some well-received head amps. Quite cost effective for what they offer and very intriguing. Could I bring myself to take a chance on a product made in my ancestral homeland and find some sonic bliss? No As well regarded as ASL products are there have been cyclical reliability issues with their products and I’d rather not have to worry about shoddy workmanship and build quality from the Chinese factory no matter how good the basic design itself is.
Instead, I bought the Musical Fidelity X-Can v3 head amp from Hi-Fi Centre in Vancouver. Less fuss, less muss and good audiophile pedigree for an amp that won’t be considered reference quality either, but if it can give me some of that palpable presence and truth of timbre action that tubes are known for, I’m all ears. Actually, palpable presence would seem oxymoronic given that we’re talking about headphone listening and not speakers-based system that can at times provide an illusion of musicians in your sound room.
Buying a demo model on clearance sale also helped and demo it may be, but it had apparently been on display for a while without ever having been turned on, so it was pretty much new out of the box. Hi-Fi Centre is also very generous with an upgrade path available to its customers. If I decide that the X-Can is no longer doing it for me and I want to upgrade to say a Naim Headline (Hi-Fi Centre’s best headamp) the store will provide me with a full value credit for the X-Can. I lose nothing in any potential upgrade as long as I continue to be a Hi-Fi Centre customer. Very cool for a guy like me who tends to buy new instead of used (I also tend to buy and hold rather than sell out as soon as the interest wanes – call me the Warren Buffet of cheapskate audiophilia J
About
the X-Can v3 The front fascia is silver brushed with just a smooth volume control dial, a single ¼-inch headphone socket, and tiny blue LED power on light. The sides of the black aluminum case are ribbed, which I assumed is for acting like a heat sink, but the amp doesn’t get more than barely lukewarm to the touch. The rear of the X-Can has a set of RCA inputs and a set of RCA outputs incase you had to use up a Tape Output jack from your amp or pre-amp and still needed to output to a tape deck. In my setup, I would normally feed the source output to X-Can via my pre-amp’s Tape Out jacks, but you could also put the X-can in between the source and the pre-amp or integrated amp since the signal would run untouched by the X-Can’s volume control. It’s good flexibility, but I would have liked another set of RCA inputs and a dual set of ¼-inch headphone jacks to make reviewing and comparing easier to do.
The salesperson claimed that the tubes are rated for 100,000 hours of operation, which would amount to over 4000 days of continuous operation, or over 11 years of life. However, I believe the salesperson is possibly mistaken and was likely thinking of the tubes in the Trivista SACD player that do have a rated lifespan of 100,000 hours of operation. I'll have to put the question about the tube life to Musical Fidelity when I register the X-Can. Since there is no power switch or button (plug in the four-pin power cord from the 500 mA wall wart to turn it on) Musical Fidelity obviously expects the amp to be left on all the time and thus tube life must be very long indeed. The X-Can’s wall wart power supply can be upgraded by the much beefier X-PSU power supply. The X-PSU comes in the same attractive aluminum case as the X-Can and will set you back CAN $500. If you take a liking to Musical Fidelity’s small X series products, you can use the X-PSU to power up all four of the small X series products (there’s actually five small X series products including the X-PSU). These include the X-Can, the X-DAC, the X-LPS phono stage, and the X-10 tube buffer stage.
A pretty killer little digital-based system could be built up with the X-DAC, the X-10 tube buffer, and the X-Can, all powered by the X-PSU. The X-10 may difficult to find though as it is a limited run product that also uses the same circuit as the Trivista SACD player, but with even better mil-spec (military specification) tubes. I was thinking that if I didn’t already have my Sonic Frontiers pre-amp and if I was using the Benchmark DAC-1 straight into the Classe power amp, that the X-10 could be just the ticket to give some much needed life back to the DAC-1’s sterile output when used as a pre-amp. In theory that is, because I have no idea if the X-10 would actually work as desired in between the DAC-1 and the power amp while still providing volume control via the DAC-1. Tube
Rolling and Upgrades
There’s a certain amount of trust you have to have in the designer and his choice of chips or tubes. One of the main reasons Antony Michaelson uses the tubes that he does in the X-Can is for long-term reliability and Musical Fidelity’s 2-percent tube failure rate would borne that rationale out. So, no, I won’t be rolling any tubes in my X-Can just for the hell of it and nothing that I’ve heard through the X-Can would warrant such a desire, whereas previous versions of the X-Can “may” have warranted the tube-rolling mania, because of complaints of the v2 being bright sounding. But as with anything, system matching is important and if you pair bright sounding headphones with an amp that has a forward balance, you will receive…a bright sound. Preliminary
X-Can Sound
I did some more preliminary listening after a 24-hour burn-in period. The sound was large and smooth, but from that first song listened to, Steve Earle’s Guitar Town, I noticed a grainy texture in the highs that wasn’t there with the DAC-1 or Classic amps. I figured the X-Can needed more burn-in time, but then again, I didn’t notice the graininess on any other track listened to that first night. I haven’t listened to Guitar Town since I was a teenager, which was the last time I had any Steve Earle in my music collection, as a 45 single. Back then I was using some 1970s gear that was already old by the time a cousin of mine gave it to me, and Lordie, what an utter lack of transparency and detail. I always thought Steve Earle was singing, “Everybody told me you can’t go far on $37 and a cheap guitar,” but it is actually, “Everybody told me you can’t go far on $37 and a Jap guitar.” As I had expected, the X-Can gave a better sense of space and in comparing to the Headsave Classic amp; while the Classic acquitted itself well with the HD650, there was a sense that I was listening to something miniaturized and a bit two-dimensional. Compared to the Benchmark, the DAC-1 gave a better sense of size and depth than the Classic and in this early going; I would say that the DAC-1 and X-Can were fairly equal qualitatively, but different sounding. It should be quite a match-up once the X-Can has logged some more hours on it. Compared
to the Benchmark DAC-1 I had compared the DAC-1 as a headphone amp to a Xin Super Macro 3 in the past and I thought the two were very similar in output. But I’m also aware that the Xin amp needs a very long break-in period to sound its best and that the particular SM3 I had heard was only about halfway through that period of about 200 hours. If I were to compare the two again, the Xin could very well offer more than a very subtle difference to the DAC-1. All this is just to indicate that the DAC-1’s headphone amp is not bad at all and as such, is the X-Can purchase warranted? Yes it is.
In the beginning, without burn-in, I stated that the DAC-1 and X-Can were more or less equals, but as the X-Can burned in more, the scale tilted towards the X-Can. Dimensionality. Some audio gear provide a sense of greater size; those that use tubes far more than those that use solid-state chips. While tubes are stereotyped as not having great low frequency control, or speed, there is a “phat” like quality to giving vocals and instruments more body, and of course, space around those vocals and instruments. The lush and warmer overtones welcome you in to sit down for an extended session of listening and while the details are all presented to you, it’s done more politely on a golden platter instead of being tossed in your face like certain solid-state amp and headphone combinations will do. Modern tube designs can still rock you when you want to; however, I do acknowledge that it’s going to be a different kind of rocking than the balls to the walls speed and slam of solid-state amps. This is what I got a sense of in the X-Can. On its own I felt the X-Can provided plenty of detail, slam, and speed no matter what I tossed at it, but with a more generous sense of space and size. It was only in direct comparison to the DAC-1 that I could hear that the X-Can was indeed lacking some individual aspects of the presentation that would denote it’s middling price level for a tube headphone amp. With well-recorded source material, I got a sense of depth in bombastic orchestral pieces, such as the Telarc recordings of Erich Kunzel conducting the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra (Chiller and Time Warp). Imaging was solid, as I could clearly imagine the orchestra laid out in my head with the traditional placement of strings on the left and brass to rear right and percussion all the way back in the hall. The depth is a subtle effect, but it was something that I could make out better with the X-Can than with the DAC-1. Details were not lost either as listening at a good volume level clearly revealed that there are background noises from the orchestra on the Time Warp CD. I think if the 10th violinist stuck on the far left rear of the group had passed wind, I would have heard it through the X-Can/HD650/Zu Mobius combination. Listening to in-your-face rock such as Prodigy and Blur, the X-Can certainly threw it in your face, or rather your ears, but, I do have to admit that the DAC-1 provided deeper and tighter bass extension. The highs are a bit more open and extended, but with groups like Prodigy and Blur liking fuzzed out guitars, all that means is that guitar solos screech like white noise, which is not very pleasant. The X-Can was more forgiving of those distortion generators in the highs, but overall, I didn’t feel that the X-Can was holding back much of anything. The gestalt (good God, I’m writing like Harry Pearson) of the X-Can’s presentation was more to my liking and while the X-Can’s errors are of very minor omission, it gives back to the listener a quality of sound not present in the solid-state amps I have in-house. Through the X-Can everything from hard rock, to pop, to Celtic influenced Loreena McKennit, to symphonies, had greater presence. Reverting back to the DAC-1 may have gotten me bit more bass extension and definition, but it became flat sounding due to the lost of the presence and quality. About my only negative with the X-Can is that as the volume goes up, the high frequencies tend to harden up and makes for a less enjoyable listening experience. But then, one really shouldn’t be listening through headphones at such volume levels if you want to preserve your long-term hearing. Conclusion The stereotypical differences between solid-state and tubes revealed themselves to a certain extent between the DAC-1 and X-Can, and each offered their set of strengths and weaknesses. The X-Can doesn’t go as deep and offer quite as much definition, but it also does not sound as flat, or two-dimensional either and that meant more to me than ultimate bass slam. Some might consider the X-Can to be rolled off in the highs, but with so many of todays commercial recordings sounding like they were done in a garage, this is not a bad thing at all, and do keep in mind that rolled off is subjective. I liked what the X-Can did with the highs, but people who like ultimate detail may not. Is the X-Can overly lush and warm like tube gear of old? Don’t know because I’ve never listened to tube gear of old, but I wouldn’t suspect that it is because it is not a romantic, hazy kind of golden sound. What the X-Can does provide is just enough bloom and space; the soundstage becomes bigger with instruments seeming to come from beyond the scope of the headphones.
I sometimes wonder about those Antique Sound Lab amps that I passed over, but I greatly appreciate that the X-Can has good pedigree behind it from a company that’s been around for so long and likely to be around for many more years. If there were ever any issues, I can easily do a five-minute walk from my workplace to get it serviced by Hi-Fi Centre, not I expect anything to go wrong with the X-Can at all. As much as I like the X-Can as a solid and relatively cost effective choice to taste the nectar of tube sound, I really do wonder what it would sound like with the companion X-PSU power supply…J November 6, 2005 - The X-PSU is a worthwhile upgrade to the X-Can headphone amp. I was advised prior to purchasing the X-Can that the X-PSU may not provide as meaningful an upgrade in sound as the price would suggest. Buying the X-PSU nearly doubles the cost of the X-Can and places it in the kilo buck range, which is starting to get pricey and starting to bite the rear chassis of the big boys from Headroom, Meier, Ray Samuels and others. Replacing the wall wart of the X-Can opens up the high frequency clarity, solidifies the bass and overall heft of the music. I wouldn't put as it an obvious night and day kind of difference, but still clearly heard and ultimately worthy of purchase. For those running just the X-Can, the price might still be hard to justify though, whereas I at least have another X series component that the X-PSU juices too. However, for those that have two, three, or even four X series components, the X-PSU then becomes a very cost effective solution to provide those components with superior power. Recommended. Link
to Musical
Fidelity Musical Notes Erich
Kunzel and the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra – Chiller (Telarc) Mr. Barlow is a New Zealand import. Back in the 1970s, British Columbia had a shortage of teachers, so teachers from New Zealand and probably Australia were recruited to move to the province and reside in the small towns that needed them the most. My hometown of Kamloops, about 200 miles northeast of my current city of Vancouver, was one of those towns and I can recall a handful of Kiwi teachers through my public school years in the 1970s and 1980s. Mr. Barlow was the only one I had as regular teacher in elementary school, but he remains my favorite from those 8 years spent from kindergarten to grade 7 at Arthur Stevenson Elementary School. Not only was he teaching my regular grade 6 class, but he was the de facto music teacher for the school too because he could play piano and guitar. Outside of school, he and his wife were active in teaching and leading children’s choirs in Kamloops (his wife was also a teacher and she taught me Social Studies in grade 9). So strong were his ties to music that his classroom was not a real classroom, but was actually the school’s multi-purpose room that was as well, the de facto music room. The school’s piano was located in Mr. Barlow’s classroom along with a few old guitars that he loaned out to students wanting to learn to play. He even convinced the school to invest in a hi-fi, a real one with separate components instead of the all-in-one machines that sat on top of rolling trolleys. In my grade 6 year, a few times a week, the boys and girls were separated and Mr. Barlow would take each group for the music appreciation sessions while the other grade 6 teacher would do the physical education component. Mr. Barlow’s sessions taught us the history of music and the various genres and he would bring in his own records to play back for us. One of those records we listened to caught my attention for the haunting melody, and haunting is the right word because I could recall that it had to do with some evil and malevolent subject matter. During that time we were also listening to other music such as from the Sorcerer’s Apprentice that all related to the Halloween inspired time. For years that melody played in my mind and I desired to know and have that piece of music, but of course how does one find such a specific piece of music? I suppose one could walk into a music store that caters to the classical crowd and hum a few bars, but you’re just as likely to get a weird stare back at you. Then one day I received an invitation to attend a Theta Digital demo at the Sound Room (I bought the SFL-1 pre-amp from them, hence the invite as a customer), so I attend the nice wine and cheese session and sit back to listen. One of the demo CDs the Theta rep used was the Chiller CD from the Telarc label featuring Erich Kunzel conducting the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra playing some pieces from assorted horror and sci-fi movies and TV shows. The first demo track played was Camille St. Saen’s Danse Macabre and as the piece went on my ears pricked up when at long last, I heard the haunting melody for real again. I asked about the CD and very shortly thereafter, I purchased my own copy. Mr. Barlow’s influence in music and as a genuinely kind and gentle man had far more influence than just a single line of melody that stuck in my head for over a dozen years. In his class was my first real exposure to classical, jazz, musicals, what have you. He also let us bring in some of our own records to play back on his hi-fi and thus was my first exposure to Pink Floyd, AC-DC, etc. (I was a sheltered kid in an immigrant family, my parents had no time for music after working 14 hour days in their convenience store and later on, restaurant). Mr. Barlow was never a composer so far as I know, so there is no Mr. Barlow’s Opus, but just as the fictional Dreyfuss character touched a lot young lives over his decades in teaching, so too did Mr. Barlow. Oh yes, about the Telarc CD, it’s as good and bombastic as the other CDs featuring the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra. It’s clean and dynamic and the performances are incredibly polished, nearly perfect in my opinion and I could scarcely imagine another orchestra producing superior performances. The material may be tres consumer and pop culture and pooh-poohed by the poohbahs of high culture, but it floats my boat. Highly recommended for hearing how good your gear is and while you’re out buying it, be sure to get the Time Warp CD, which is an audiophile classic. |
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Correspondence & About this website Copyright © 1998-2008 Edwin Leong |
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When
a coworker first told me about the headphone listening culture that
had sprung up in the years when I was lost in the wilderness of
audiophilia, I was quite surprised and bemused at the notion that
people would spend thousands of dollars on headphones and amplifiers
to drive them.
Even
for a nutcase like me, it was just a bit too rich for me to contemplate
after my most 
Musical
Fidelity is UK based, has been in business for two-decades, and
is now a stalwart of the high-end brands, which met another criterion
of mine that the gear comes from a stable company that won’t disappear
a few years from now (alas my Sonic Frontiers pre-amp is now an
orphan after parent company Paradigm, killed the brand). The X-Can
retails for CAN $600, but modest discounts can be had from this
list price.
The
X-Can v3 is now in its third and best iteration, and while it is
designed in the UK, it is manufactured in Taiwan. The previous versions
had a distinctive round chassis whereas the v3 is now a rectangular
box about 3/5 the size of a shoe box. It seems large for a headphone
amp, but then some headamps are even larger and are like full-sized
components with separate power supply boxes. The X-Can is lightweight
though despite its size.
All
versions of the X-Can use tubes for the output stage. The v3 uses
two 6922 triode tubes and the output is stated to be “typically
1 watt” in Class A bias. The X-Can circuit is based on Musical Fidelity’s
highly regarded Trivista design. (I pilfered the info from 
Another
salesperson I talked to advised me that while the X-PSU would make
a difference to the X-Can’s performance, it would not be huge and
the difference may not be commensurate with the price for the X-PSU.
Wow, a salesperson actually being honest and not hyping up an accessory
for a bigger sale. However, the option is available for those interested
in pushing the base $600 X-Can to that of a CAN $1000 headamp. 
While
it’s interesting to read about tubes being rolled, I’m not that
much of a tweaker to start exchanging tubes just for the sake of
changing tubes. I’ll use the stock tubes until they need to be changed,
which will be many years from now. Solid-state amp users also engage
in a similar tweak by switching out the op-amps used in their headphone
amps for different chips that supposedly work well with their headphone
choice, or personal tastes. Some amps are designed for quick and
easy op-amp rolling, but again, I have no interest in tweaking things
to the nth degree of refinement with my Headsave Classic.
After
plugging it in I only listened to confirm that it was working although
I did enjoy returning to the early 1980s by spinning up Cum on Feel
the Noise by Quiet Riot, a bastion of the 1980s heavy metal rock
movement along with Motley Crue, Helix, Scorpions, Iron Maiden,
Judas Priest, Wasp, et al. All of which were part of my music collection
back in the good old days of acne, acid wash jeans, and weak attempts
at trying to grow a mullet hairstyle. Now you know why I blanch
at the thought of listening to current flavor of the year Norah
Jones or Diana Krall, although I do like the music of her husband’s
early years (Elvis Costello). Don’t worry, it’s not all cheesy 1980s
rock music in casa Leong, but maybe I keep listening to the old
stuff because I don’t get any of the new stuff coming out now.
The
sound as a whole is greater the sum of its parts (gestalt) with
the X-Can whereas with the DAC-1, depending how it’s used, it has
all the individual components, but at times, they do not gel into
a coherent presentation of the music. Somehow, tubes have a certain
magic that they can impart that the typical solid-state device does
not offer. 