Moondrop is lucky this ended up launching first because the Void isn't as impressive sadly. But more on that another time!
I tried that one and well.... yeah. But I also feel it's fighting to be something it's not?
I get open backed headphones and for planars and statics when driven with a proper amp but for dynamics, no please stay closed back and get out of that realm. I get there are good ones that are the exception to this but for the most part it holds solid.
At 600 this seems like a good buy and as for the cable I don't know ANYONE who buys in that range, or even lower ranges, who uses the stock cables unless there is a damn good reason to (shure and their kevlar stuff and stellar shape holding over the ear, etymotic and their proprietary nonsense). Cables will break, it's just a matter of time. Now that time is going to differ of course between some 40 buck piece of crap let alone a 20 buck knock off and some 100+ monster that's sleeved and over built to hell and back but it's gunna happen. Also for those of us that use and then sell and then repeat apart from a few keepers it's a "try the stock cables and pad to see, then immediately replace". This not only gets you what you like, it also saves the resale value since it's the OG stuff with it. Love a good cable, nice to include it, but good enough is good enough as anybody looking in this price range is tossing a 100+ cable at it they already have.
This sort of relates to "needs a lot of power" issue. Most people in the market for planars know they need a good amp. At the 600 price point just like in the cable you're dealing with customers that are usually savy enough to have an amp and a dac stack already or at least a good combo unit. Even HifiMan or Sennheiser at lesser price points actually need this to truly stretch their legs. Glad you notified people of it as some people are daft about all this but amp+dac is mandatory for anything quasi good and "lol get fucked" for anything large and open backed. To point out the blindingly obvious example of this Sennheiser, not a seller of woo woo snake oil by elves, sells an amp for their 1800 buck headphones for 2500. It's just a known issue in this class of stuff. I get it's a ding, but people buying planars are generally not going to be cable or amp shy, they are going to have a collection. Hell ifi makes amps and dacs as stacked sets for specific headphones this has always been a problem.
Also fine with the more um, being polite, industrial construction. This happens a lot. Some like it and some hate it. I could care less.
Great review though and while I do agree your issues are issues to bring up they aren't issues that would cause me pause because I already have all the kit to go around this. I'm going to buy this, partly because of your review as it matched I had expected. The catch though is this sort of feels like the lightning in a bottle they caught with the blessing series where they almost nailed it the first time at the price, and then came back and cleaned up all the small issues and it made a world of difference. This also happened with the A8 to S8. Though those both had a price increase to go with it.
If I could ask a thing maybe reach out to ifi and questyle for permanent desktop setups so you can rotate through them all with a specific set of cans? I know that's odd but I've found some things work better on ifi, some chord, and some questyle. It's not always rational, but you know when you get that "wow" factor.
