LH Labs Geek Out GO2A, V2, V2+, Infinity and SE Impressions and Reviews

Crap. Well, whenever my SE arrives I'll be in the same boat and will see what I can do to buggleshoot it.

 

Another guy in the comments said the same thing. So you have to do it each time now.

@Manny Torres Any updates on getting your driver software approved by Microsoft?

 

I'm looking at picking up a used V2+ Infinity and was wondering if there were different hardware revision considerations that I should look out for. I've searched this thread for "revision" and only come across firmware updates.

 

The different case revisions are a big one, the old 3d printed version (black) vs the newer case with the metal front and back plates (grey front and back, black sides). New case version generally means newer firmware as well (at least from what I have gathered).

 

@BrettMatthews Thanks. So this would be the newer case with gray metal front/rear plates?

 

Yes that is the newer version

 

Haha damn, I know exactly what listing that is. I was about to buy that but held off because I found an Andromeda for a good deal, so now I have no budget for it. Guess I'll stick with the regular version for a while.

Really, really good deal for an infinity.

 

Lol its the one i sold....before getting another one. Had i known it was going to be sold at that price, i would have held off.

 

I'm going to pick up an Andromeda next week and someone mentioned somewhere that there were 2 GOV2+ on HF, so I had a look. There's also a non-Infinity version for sale. I was thinking the 450mA gain setting would be nice to have, but would that not be necessary with the Andros even with a few ohms in series to tweak the bass FR (or other IEMs in general)? Don't think I'll notice the special caps and don't care about the extra filter setting. How "improved" is the SE stage?

 

I think the standard vanilla version is really good on its own. The SE to me was perfectly decent, better than an iPhone for sure, but the balanced output is just more resolving and spacious. Not saying the SE is awful. It's still very powerful dynamics wise (even with IEMs) and has a great sense of space, but the balanced output just does it better and more. Not quite sure how that would translate into an infinity, but it'll probably be the same; good to great performance in SE, best and maxed out performance from Balanced. Don't know how well Andromeda would respond to running balanced though. I'm going to see how well they sound just using the SE output before I decide to get a 3.5 TRRS balanced cable for them.

But as far as a 450mW gain setting, I don't think it would be necessary unless you want to drive something slightly inefficient like a on ear or other portable headphone. But the extra SSM filter seems useful, and the THD is improved too.

 

Thanks. I won't worry about missing that middle gain setting then. @Bill-P said somwhere that he finds it a bit annoying to have to perform an extra click to get into High Gain mode after powering up.

Could you please elaborate? How audible are these improvements?

 

The SE was far worse than the BAL before, but with the new murata caps, new 1.5 firmware along with other optimizations in the infinity versions, it sounds better. SE and Balanced are a lot closer, but I still recommend going balanced. Also Bill-p mentioned that there is an audible difference between the GO2A and GO2A Infinity, even if they both get the THD treatment. For the V2+...only the Infinity gets the THD improvement, so it is worth getting.

I actually find the 450mW middle gain useful esp when using iems as the 100 feels flat, and 1000 feels too in your face, albiet fuller. I also find the soundstage to be a bit more airy and less congested. Someone else said they prefer the 450 because it is the most linear response without having more midbass...or something along the lines(Its probably somewhere in this thread). 450 is also the best setting as it outputs 2V(Line out level).

 

I heard @HitmanFluffy 's GO whatever with the battery. Soft and slightly warmish down low with the HD 650 (or was it HD 600?) and slightly smoothed/rolled up top due to the filtered Sabre chip but still retaining a bit of the high frequency glare and offness. You can sense the detail just being gone but It's nowhere near as filtered/smoothed over as an AGD Sabre or a Pono though while not being as offensively glarey and off timbre as many full-size professional and audiophile ESS Sabre DACs. The amp would be better than many full-size solid state desktop amps if it just had more power to drive good headphones. For the DAC implementation, this is pretty much about as good as you can do design wise for an ESS Sabre chip but at the end of the day, it's still a Sabre.

 

For anyone wanting to run a pair of studio monitors through the balanced output on the Geek Out, I decided to go ahead and purchase a 2X 3pin XLR to 3.5mm TRRS adapter from Lunashops. http://www.lunashops.com/goods.php?id=5311 (Beautiful, quality adapter btw, I mean this carbon fibre literally saved 2016)

Thinking that was that I simply connected the adapter to xlr cables and plugged it into the balanced output...then disaster struck. A very distorted sound low in volume was followed by massive pops that forced me to shut the horror off a few seconds later. Opening it up, the negative wires on both ends were soldered to the ground pin (Pin 1) and then joined with the negative pin (3). Therefore, (AND PLEASE CORRECT ME IF I'M WRONG) when you purchase this adapter, make sure to desolder or clip off the connection to the ground pin (Pin 1), leaving the only connection to the negative pin (3) as shown:

With that done, WOW this setup sounds better. Compared to the unbalanced output, (which I ran at half volume on the integrated amp due to noise) the interference and noise is brought significantly down, which allows me to crank the monitor volume to where it sounds best, 100%. Texture and microdynamics in the sound are apparent and imaging is clearly heard. The soft and woolly bass now has greatly improved slam and deeper extension. Take note that all this is on high gain at 15% volume. Have I found a totally viable monitor setup?

 

For balanced wiring you should have the ground connected to pin 1, +ve to pin 2 and -ve to pin3.

In TRRS wiring you don't get ground but l+ r+ l- r- (in TRRS) order for the LHLab, so you should have nothing wired to pin 1, the + and - wired respectively to 2 and 3.

If the cable is shielded then you can connect it to pin 1, otherwise you should have 2 pins connected per XLR connection. I assume Lunashops wired it to a different balanced scheme (you should never connect signal to ground this way)

 

You could source a ground this way: That's my plan - I have (I believe a @fraggler custom) TRRS-->2xXLR coming as well that I'll mod this way, specifically for active monitors.

 

Is the GO2A available? I can't find it for sale on their site.

 

http://marketplace-lhlabs.com/lh-labs-go2a/