Burson Audio Conductor 3X Performance | Headphone Amp, DAC, and Preamp

I am almost a week into ownership of the 3XP and I have to say I'm loving it so far. After a lot of help from the staff at Bloom I chose the 3XP to pair with Audezee LCD-X headphones. It replaces a Pro-ject Head Box S2 Digital. The difference in the sound expansiveness and clarity has been astonishing.

I had issues with the first unit I owned: the unit stopped playing audio after about 20 hours of use and could not get it to work. Bloom was awesome in replacing my unit for a 2nd one. I had an issue with the adapter of that one but was replaced. I ended up getting the model up from this as I got the susvaras. As an unit, it was great. Crisp balanced sound and lots of power to spare for all of my other headphones. It even powered the susvaras, but didnt leave me much room. I would highly recommend buy this but get the warranty just in case because of all the issues I had.

Picked this out as my upgrade from a small dac and small tube amp combo stack and i could not be happier. The initial setup had some driver conflicts but found after uninstalling all, installing burson, then installing realtek i was able to clear up the buffer glitches when using toslink. It has been rock solid and even use the bluetooth input from my iphone more than i expected. The headphone+mic input is fantastic for those of us who have game headsets or add-on mics as well. It has plenty of power to push even my least efficient drivers in 'low gain' setting up to a comfortable listening volume. Paired with my ZMF cans it really shines for clarity. I have not tried the opamp rolling yet, have not heard a need. Its size has a great desktop profile and the heatsink case keeps it cool enough for whole work days worth of listening. All the buttons and connectors and volume dial feel very solid. The file bit rate icon on the lcd flickers which is probably a fault but now i'm just nitpicking because its absolutely fantastic otherwise. Well done Burson.

Although I purchased the C3XP to serve in my secondary system, I was surprised and delighted to find that this outperformed my fully-balanced headphone DAC/amp in my primary system. That prompted me to also buy the Conductor 3X Reference to take over that spot in the primary system.

With the C3XP, the sound was much more vibrant than the outgoing amp. What I found most surprising was in some cases I could hear instruments on stage with the C3XP that I couldn’t hear at all with the old amp. The C3XP provided a bigger soundstage, far superior imaging, resolution, and detail retrieval. It also gave me a greater sense of being at the live performance. It was like I received an upgrade for my imagination. I could see the performers, their movements and expressions, all in a visual high resolution, versus just having a sense of where the instruments were on stage. It was a complete improvement in every sense of the listening experience.

Everything from a wide range of genres and various formats (16/44, decoded MQA, 24/192, and DSD256) sounds wonderful and neutral. The C3XP provides a very low noise floor across the board. It also capitalizes on higher resolutions by offering more vocal clarity, deeper and wider soundstage, and incredible detail retrieval, imaging, and layering between the instruments.

Even with this device connected directly to the iMac in my secondary system vs being in the more optimized signal path in the home system, it still maintains all these fantastic qualities to a very high degree. This is a wonderful DAC/amp and is a joy to use. The beautiful build is a great bonus, and the remote is surprisingly convenient even in a desktop setup.

Furthermore the purchase process, communication, and lightning fast shipping from Bloom Audio is nothing short of exceptional. This has been a wonderful purchase in every aspect.