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HiFiMAN HE-300 + Music Hall ph25.2.
I’ve known of the ph25.2 for a long time. Preparing reviews of Music Hall turntables and D/A converters—especially the dac25.2 and dac25.3—I'd also read about their headphone amp. Despite that I didn’t fully appreciate its existence. That’s no paradox. It’s probably fairly common that we’ve heard of something yet didn’t consciously acknowledge it properly. In this case the simple reason was a dead-on spotlight on the dac25.3 converter sporting multiple digital inputs and a headphone amplifier. Selling in Poland for 2.390PLN, it seemed a far superior choice than the 2.000PLN for the ph25.2 headphone-only amplifier.



Yet after taking a closer look at the latter, my reasoning seemed flawed. The ph25.2 proved to be an exceptionally well made unit. By comparison the headphone section of the dac25.3 felt somewhat thrown in, a small addition to the DAC. Let’s see what we have in the ph25.2 instead: two Swiss Neutrik headphone outputs; a durable miniature 6N16B tube in the SRPP input section soldered directly to the PCB; CD and Aux inputs selectable via toggle switch on the front panel; preamp out; audiophile-grade CMC RCA connectors; low-noise hefty R-core transformer powering four independent power supplies; two buffered headphone outputs sporting TPA6120 chips (one per channel) that can work simultaneously; precision Alps Type 27 Japanese potentiometer with 0.5dB accuracy located next to input connectors with an extended shaft; a rigid 12.5mm aluminum front panel.


So many goodies for so little! Yet it all laid fallow because the dac25.3 stole the show. Until one day someone from Eter Audio distribution collecting a component post review opined that “maybe I’d listen to something else”, that “I hadn’t gotten it yet” and that “they (at Eter) were in shock”. So why not, all the more so now that I had the HE-300 headphones which seemed the right partner for that amplifier? As it turned out they were no mere partners but a nearly perfect couple. Eventually I only listened to the HE-300 paired with the HM-801 portable player or the ph25.2, driving the latter with either the HM-801 or my reference CD player.


The sound of that system was not as fat or set as low as with the HM-801 and Leben. On one hand I missed some of the meat and pressure. On the other hand only now did I enjoy such a lovely soundstage with so well-presented instrumental bodies and spatial relationships between them. With headphones it’s of course difficult to talk about any soundstage as such especially with conventional recordings (not binaural; incidentally it’s worth paying attention to one of the Chesky brothers’ latest initiatives) but each recording has its own world that with headphones becomes our world too. The HE-300s perfectly transports us into another space and reality by perfectly isolating us from the outside world without causing the strange effects usually accompanying sealed headphones.


The Music Hall added something more to this recipe, namely a very deep perspective. This amplifier paired with these headphones creates something spectacularly different and better than most other systems. It turned out that most recordings contain vast amounts of spatial information not only about what’s in front but also about the whole area around us. This system can and does show that. Indeed I was in shock—to repeat what the Eter Audio folks had said to me— listening to the Czesław Niemen album Success released in the Niemen od początku series. That’s the last approved by the artist to be the definitive version. Niemen prepared the material in his own home studio with at that time emerging 20-bit digital tech (quite a big deal then). I never really noticed that, apparently to detach the mono sound from the center in front of us (and with headphones which he often used from the center of the head), he slightly manipulated the recordings by adding counter-phase information.


Fortunately here that’s no crude job as was quite common in the 70s. Here it really gave a good spatial effect. The sound still was mono of course but now placed decidedly in front outside the head just as though it were a binaural production. Such discoveries and flavours would await me time and again now. But even purely the sound of the reviewed system was truly lovely – potent, palpable and pure. The only minor drawback was insufficient midrange saturation and lack of lower bass which this system couldn’t render. However if we’re able to get beyond that we’ll enter into a completely different space where there will be only music and us. The gear as such will evaporate. And isn’t this game all about that?