Geek Out 1000

JackD201

WBF Founding Member
Apr 20, 2010
12,308
1,425
1,820
Manila, Philippines
Disclaimers!

1. I am a dealer of Light Harmonic
2. I am not a headphone guy. I use 'em very casually for watching movies or listening to movies only when I travel. I also only use them when trawling for music on youtube.
3. This is my very first portable headphone DAC/AMP combo. My only other headphone amp is the base model Stax which I use with my 404s, obviously, I've never tried this amp with any other set of cans except my older Stax Lambda.

On to the story. So I order 40 pieces of this little guys. I'm thinking, well it's made by the same guys that made my main DAC, the Da Vinci Dual. Obviously, I'm very happy with the Dual since I stopped looking lustily at other DACs since I got it. I've also stopped looking at CD Players since I got my EERA Autographe but that's another story.

My morning drill goes as follows. I wake up, brush my teeth then make a cup of coffee. I flip open my laptop and read my news online. Then comes breakfast then the three S's. Okay, too much information. After that I go on to answering e-mails then peek in WBF to see if there's any spam I am duty bound to clean up. The e-mail things can be tedious so I take regular breaks and surf. The surfing thing has gotten longer. Oh no. It's the friggin' Geek's fault. If ignorance is bliss, call me the king ignoramus. For years I've been watching youtube using the inboard output of my MBP. I never considered it awful, I just took it for what it was. Now however, the Geek is permanently connected to my MBP via the short slacker cable.

Last night, my wife was feeling under the weather so I didn't want to bug her by firing up the 47 Lab/KR/Endeavor bedroom system like I normally do every evening. Instead I set my laptop on my bedside table and latched on a drive to the other port. My cans are not fancy affairs. They are V-Moda Crossfade M-100s that my cousin gave me for DJing, which is usually how I use them. They are bass heavy cans. I am a bit of a confessed bass freak but these did benefit from some EQ because the Geeks REALLY have thumpin' bass. What struck me was the clarity and liquidity in the midband as well as the proper shimmer up top. I'm a class A operation guy for these very reasons and this hot little bugger does sound like the class A device that it is. It gets very hot, enough to alarm me. It's a good thing the guys at LH saw to it to give a very big flyer in the box that tells you that the heat is normal and is nothing to worry about.

To make a long story short, I ended up listening for about two and half hours. That is record for me and to think that the V-Modas are not exactly paragons of comfort for melon headed guys like me. So what now? I figured that since half of the Geeks are now spoken for (amazing how many parents are getting these as stocking stuffers for their kids) after my wife let slip that I had 'em on her Facebook page, I could in good conscience splurge a bit for the sake of "product research". LOL!!!!!! So I call up my buddy and order a set of Audeze big boys just to see……..

Moral of the story, if anybody tells you they are making a mint being an audio dealer, he's either lying or seriously not getting high on his own supply! I'm plenty high on the Geek, see where that got me!
 

garylkoh

WBF Technical Expert (Speakers & Audio Equipment)
Sep 6, 2010
5,599
225
1,190
Seattle, WA
www.genesisloudspeakers.com
I'm also a big fan of the Geek Out. As a Class A device, it improves as it heats up, but it can and does get too hot. So, I zip-tied it to an old Pentium computer chip heatsink. Added a little silver heat sink compound and now I think that it outperforms very much more expensive DACs - but I'm not using it as a headphone amp. I use it as a line-out DAC.
 

JackD201

WBF Founding Member
Apr 20, 2010
12,308
1,425
1,820
Manila, Philippines
Cool Gary! I'd appreciate a mini phono to rca cable recommendation :)
 

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