By far the worst sounding amp I own. If you can afford this, you can afford the FiiO amps, starting with the E10K and above.
At first I couldn't figure out how this could be (what I will later describe), but it's as if (possibly actually the case) nwavguy cheated in however he designed the circuit to result in such a low distortion and generally such good/high specs/benchmarks. What I mean is, to achieve such low distortion (on paper), it's not just the integrity of the circuit that was maintained through careful design and component selection, but the actual source coming in is also affected where whatever effects of the circuit are attempted to be negated (having not analyzed the circuit myself, couldn't tell you whether it's playing with phase/polarity or what it could be). I derive this from the fact that the sound is like that of no other low, mid, or high-end amp I've ever experienced. It literally sucks the life out of the music coming in. as an audio engineer, I can tell you that when it's recorded (by any means), set no stage does it EVER sound like that. This is particularly more apparent with transparent, neutral, and otherwise sensitive headphones (like the Brainwavz HM5's for instance) and with full-range frequency content like Metal music.
In his fight against tube amps, "audiophile" views on whatever kinds of technologies, and perhaps whatever forms of overpriced snakeoil (which I side with him on even if not entirely the perspective from which he builds his conclusions), he managed to prove them right. I have heard plenty of horrible sounding solid state amps, creating this unpleasant odd-ordered distortion, particularly in the higher frequencies, forcing you to keep the music at clinically low levels as instead of getting fuller, it would just get more unpleasant as it got louder, but that's not entirely the claim people would often make. People would often say that solid state amps have a "cold" or "digital" sound to them - no liveliness to them. Well, whatever that means, the O2 amp would certainly fit such a description. I am quite honestly embarrassed for having fallen into the hype myself and used it as an example of greatness in debates in the past before even having heard it myself.
While I am highly analytical and into objective measurements of things (not just in audio), I don't think we're there in our tools to accurately reflect the psychoacoustic phenomenon and other aspects of human hearing to accurately label what or how a piece of equipment is relative to our real-world perception. I can definitely say that this amp is not neutral and it imprints a definitive signature on most any song which almost like adds distortion in the opposite direction - removing harmonics and other characteristics which places you in the context of what you're listening to. Nothing in nature or in the recording process otherwise gives sound this sort of signature.
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