Vali 2+ vs RU6 for iems Review

RU-6 sucked. Only decent dongle DAC I’ve heard is Luxury&Precision W2.

 

I've had both the L&P and a cheap meizu usb-c dongle, and for the money the second got surprisingly close to it. Was quite surprising.

 

Yeah, the gains were not significant enough over my iPhone out to justify the inconvenience of the dongle.

 

I think what’s happened with the RU-6 on this forum is sad and worrisome. When it first came out it was loved and praised by A LOT of experienced members here. A lot of people talked about loving it’s R2R tubey magic or whatever. Then @purr1n says it sucks and posts bad measurements and suddenly everyone stops talking about it completely and a lot of people sell theirs.

I really respect @purr1n ’s hearing and experience you all know that if you’ve been on this forum for more than 2 seconds, but it doesn’t change how I hear something and neither do measurements. I still like the RU-6 (with ortho iem’s) just as much as I did before and I think it’s sad that so many feel they can’t like it anymore.

SBAFers can’t like things that @purr1n doesn’t like? Or that measure poorly? Boo

 

Lots of people didn’t think it sounded like poop who have gone silent as death since @purr1n ’s review and measurements.

 

I still like mine, provided if you are using a neutralish DD IEM. Didn't like it with BA IEMs.

I am going to be using mine in a moment with my standard IEM pairing, Moondrop Kato. Works great for my needs and great for casual listening when I am about to be screamed at via work....lol..

 

I liked it! I ultimately found the form factor inconvenient which is why I sold it. However, the measurements pretty much spoke for themselves and that basically killed the RU6’s value as a reference. Play for pleasure, sure. But using it for any serious evaluation feels dubious now that we know how poorly it measures.

I’m one of the least measurement conscious/concerned members here and even I could see how bad those measurements were. This wasn’t a case of ASR-like adherence to ridiculous standards that aren’t audible. Those measurements were really, really bad. Regardless, I enjoyed the sound and even said so in the thread after Marv called it out.

Hiby is also releasing an R2R dongle. It’s also a chonky boy like the RU6 but it might measure better and be a better choice for a forum reference.

 

Never gotten ears on the RU6 but I am kinda curious to see how they'd work for me.

Anyway, tangent:

There was a time I was feeling really down last year and came across this video which hit a bit too close to home. The whole CRT feel and telephone voice brought me right back to childhood, not to mention it's a cover of a song that kinda just goes for the jugular, so I immediately started bawling my eyes out and started looping it.



The singer has a pretty good voice so I started following their discography. More recently I saw that they collaborated with a company that actually makes phone-mics. They recently had a limited run for the artist's "Signature" series: https://trashtalkaudio.com/collections/artist-signatures/products/juliana-chahayed-signature-rp-1

For most on the forum, all I guess I need to say is that they did themselves no favours giving this model a transparent plastic cuz you can see right into the guts of the thing and realise that USD 199 is perhaps... a bit costly for what you get. But it looks like they're en route to selling out and likely turning a bit of a neat profit, scale of operations notwithstanding.

Yeah no I've got an sE V7 for singing. You'd have to pay me $199 to even begin to consider getting this, hah.

Not sure there's a moral to this story or anything, but people will like what they like, and while I do feel like a line has to be drawn SOMEWHERE out of deference to SBAF's ethos, people here aren't forbidden from enjoying products that known members don't care for and sharing their experiences therewith.

 

I liked the RU6 a lot when I got it, and still after purr1n’s comments. Especially in NOS mode with external upsampling, I’ll repeat again that this made and still makes a big difference to my ears.

I must admit that this sounds rather fishy, but it’s true: I didn’t like it as much anymore after I had my ears cleaned. There’s something strange around the upper mids and/or their overtones that I can’t really put my finger on and … well, it doesn’t ruin the experience for me, but it makes me prefer other gear I have. I still like listening to music out of the RU6, but to me, there are better options.

I’ll probably sell it soon in order to pay for other stuff. But I’ll do the same, for similar reasons, with my HD650, too.

 

I was going to agree until those last 7 words. Heretic!