Lake People G111 - Impressions and Measurements

Just got my G111 today and I am blown away by this. Not sure what some people mean by being flat or treble rolloff/coloring. It could be up to personal taste. For example, one could declare that RME AD-2 DAC/AMP is flat and boring if one so feels. But then I am coming from Topping L30 and Schiit Asgard 3 which are entry level amps. G111 would be an upgrade over both. Maybe if you compared G111 with higher end gears could it possibly sound inferior. But it sounds so good in its own right that I feel like I don't need to upgrade it anytime soon.

 

@matts19 Thinking that you have to upgrade when you're able to really enjoy listening to music with current gear is part of the doodoo in this space

Just wanna say that I am rather curious how the G111 compares to the Asgard 3 and L30 in a qualitative sense-- based on impressions the G109A I got to borrow for a few months isn't so greatly divorced from this one so any impressions you'd care to share would be much appreciated!

EDIT: Also yeah a lot of this really is just preferences. With some practise it becomes rather easy to be able to tell whether or not you'll personally care for a piece of kit by reading someone else whose tastes you know's opinions of them, but that's not a perfect art and there's always room for wibblement and finickiness. That goes double when impressions aren't adequately focused on the "why"s of things or what other gear they have for comparison.

 

So I spent a full day using G111 with 6XX, 600 and Sundara. I do kind of understand what some mean by artificial treble smoothing. The high treble sounds slightly metallic, kind of like the Planar magnetic headphones but not to that extent. Net-net, I very much appreciate it - I much prefer it over sparkly and glaring treble.

Compared with L30, G111 is slightly darker/warmer and the overall tonality is very smooth, smoother than L30 which is said to be smooth for a bright amp. But on some tracks, L30 reveals some treble glare or shouty vocals that are not noticeable in A3 and even less so in G111. This might be why some might say G111 is too smooth for their liking. It is smooth but dynamic. Bass is somewhat soft but pretty sufficient. It's not like it is absent or rolled off. But to get more thump I increased the gain setting to max (and turned down the software volume). With this came better power and thump in the low end. Even at low volume I can feel enough bass power. This amp is already sufficiently powerful at default gain and the highest gain take it even further.

Compared with Asgard 3, G111 is much less warm. If anything, A3 is one that really colors sound across all frequency spectrum, from low end to treble. I do not mind this. A3 also has a lot of power especially for lower impedance cans. The bass sound is thick and "impressive", more so than G111 which is sufficient and comparable to L30 in terms of bass impact and thickness - not too thin, not too thick. Asgard treble is also very easy on ears like G111 but the timbre is very different between them, one being less colored and the other being outright warm and thick.

In summary, L30 is cool and clear, A3 is thick/dark/warm, and G111 stands between them (very slightly warm side from neutral).

I did not really talk about the mids - to me all amplifiers seem to get mids right more or less, it is hard to mess up the mids. Other than the timbre differences, mids from all 3 amplifiers sound just fine to me with nothing to nitpick really.