Valencia

I’ve had Valencia for a few months now and it is everything I had heard it would be. Tons of power for the most demanding headphones, dead silent noise floor, and excellent build quality.

I’m currently using it for my hard to drive SJY Umi and Fostex T60RP 50th Anniversary primarily but it handles my collection of ZMF high impedance just fine. My backordered Modhouse Tungsten are the primary long term setup with Valencia.

I also use it to drive my bookshelf speakers which it has problem with and they sound great!

To put it simply: this one unit “upgraded” my whole collection. It works as an interface to pairings i have always wondered how would they sound, but was not able to do it. Tubes and power hungry planars are now withing reach and i am introduced to sides of my gear i wasn’t aware of before.

Flawless.

I love the form factor and the design of the Valencia.

I thought it was a really great amp overall. It was super transparent and seemed to pass on the tone and sound of whatever preamp was feeding it, but add huge amounts of power, enough to drive any headphone. It was interesting getting XLR adapters and driving it with the headphone out of my Stratus, it wound up with the tone of my Stratus!

My complaint and the deal breaker about it for me was that it seemed to have issues projecting sound. I’m not obsessed with soundstage at all, but comparing the Valencia to other amps, with the valencia I felt like I could hear exactly where the drivers were and the sound coming from that specific place. With other amps, the sound sort of took on images an locations of their own and the drivers dissappeared. I really didn’t’ like this effect, but I loved everything else about it.

That being said, I don’t have a tube based balanced actual preamp (only SE) and so never got to try it like that and i think that would be ideal.

I love the out of the box thinking on this amp and it makes me think great things are coming from Orchard Audio even if this was just short of being a total win for me.

– rhythmdevils

Oh my god where do I start! This is a very good product from first still in testing stage and now I’m going through all my headphones and iems testing and getting very excited at the same time. I’ve hooked up the Valencia to sms vmv D2 dac and I can say I’m very pleased with the sound. The amp is very quite and does not run hot which I love very much. I’m the wiim pro steamer which is doing a very good job. I bought this because I’m now having new headphones that require at lot more power example. Mod house argon mk3 which I like but was not impressed by it until I’ve used it on my Valencia which has blown me away. I love how the sennheiser 6xx and 800s sounds. This amp allows me to test and dap or dac even tubes amp as I’ve also got ta-32 sitting here and haven’t tested as of yet
All I can say that they have really knocked it out of the park on this amp. This is the third product I have purchased from this manufacturer and this is my favourite their streamer is also a good product as well. They have never let me down with their first class service. Thanks

Orchard Audio Valencia

Orchard Audio Valencia is a fantastic headphone amplifier for almost all use cases. It stays true to your chain while simply making the music come more to life. To my ears, it added better separation and layering while not effecting the sound signature of my chain. This combination made the music feel more life like; truly a holographic feeling, as well as being emotional. The only true negative I have is that you can hear a very sharp sound when the sample rate changes regardless if you implement a delay. This sharp sound was especially apparent for sensitive gear. For obvious reasons, the Valencia is not for IEMs, and I still do not recommended using them even with an impedance adapter like the iFi imatch.

Headphones & Equipment;
– Final Audio D7000 (headphone)
– Abyss Diana MR (headphone)
– Focal Clear MG Pro (headphone)
– Unique Melody MEST MK3 (IEM)
– SMSL VMV D2R (dac)
– SMSL VMV P2 (pre amp) (not needed)
– Ddhifi (interconnects / usb)
– iFi Audio (silencer)
– Roon (streaming from desktop)

I’ve been listening to this amp for the past few hours, and I think I’m ready to write my review. This is my first (and most likely last) amp over 500 dollars I’ve ever bought or heard and honestly, I seriously doubt I’d ever need anything else. The sound is crystal clear. It has more than enough headroom for anything you throw at it. For the first time, I could kinda tell the difference between the modes on my dac. It really shines a spotlight on not only your chain, but the recording quality of your music, you better not have a song you like that was recorded poorly! This amp is extremely revealing. I seriously recommend this if either you have extremely hard to drive headphones or you just don’t ever want to spend money on an amp again!

My primary use has been with a Schiit Freya S with HEKv2 which is a hard to drive planar headphone. For source I’ve connected to a Geshelli J2 DAC with upgraded op-amps and the Valencia can pass on all the subtle details with thumping base. I’m preferring the passive mode with pre-amp, but with a record player attached tubes can help muddy the sound in a good way that makes that dusty crackle sound right at home. If you want a high powered headphone amp then I can recommend this one, gives you some clean power in a nice industrial style box.

I had the Valencia Prototype Amp for a couple of days and I gotta say. . . great job Leo cause holy crap this amp fits so well in my audio system. I don’t know how he did it, but this amp feels really similar to his speaker power amp, the Starkrimson Ultra 2. 0. By that, what I mean is that, just like the Starkrimson Ultra 2. 0, this Valencia amp is really really clean sounding and everything I put on it just sounds so clear and detailed from bass to treble. On top of being so clean and clear sounding, the Valencia really brings the best of bass out of my headphones. It could be because of the power rating since the Valencia is a beast at 15. 12W into 32 Ω. But the thing is, the Topping A70 Pro got power too and can drive my DCA Stealth nicely. But the A70 Pro sounds more polite compared to the Valencia when I use my DCA Stealth. The DCA Stealth is never really a visceral bass experience headphone, but the subbass on the DCA Stealth is phenomenal. The subbass can get bigger sounding on better gear. When I used the A70 Pro as a preamp to the Valencia, the Valencia sounds bigger sounding vs the A70 Pro as just a headphone amp. But when I try my Supratek Cabernet DHT Preamp connected to the Valencia, it’s a bigger sound than when the A70 Pro was used as a preamp. I think part of the reason is that the Supratek Cabernet DHT Preamp got a pretty high gain as a preamp and I can get louder on the Supratek than the A7 Pro, not that I need that. . .

Valencia deserves to be played on good gear. You can run it with the affordable Topping A70 as a preamp and it’s still really good to listen. But, man. . . to me it really scales up on my personal favorite gears.

For the DAC, I only have 1 DAC which is the Mojo Audio Mystique Evo B4B 21 (I have a HiBy R8ii DAP, but haven’t had the guts to connect that to Valencia yet). Its a big boy R2R DAC and what I really like about it is that it adds a hint of bloom in my audio chain.

Having a really good preamp feels really key on what the hell you are trying to plug into the Valencia amp. The Topping A70 pro is the minimum on what I want on a preamp for Valencia. It has a low gain and high gain, which is crucial if you want to drive sensitive gears like iem on the Valencia amp. Another thing I feel is minimum for a preamp, at least to me, is a remote controller. It’s because I became more of a speaker guy last year, and I don’t really have a dedicated desk to really put the Valencia and the preamp near each. Especially if my main preamp is something as big as the Supratek Cabernet DHT Preamp. Having a tube preamp paired with any of Leo power amp is just a treat. It’s because all his amps I tried just really are transparent and you just have a much easier time hearing the changes that were being made in your audio chain (I only own 2, which is the Starkrimson Ultra 2. 0 and now Valencia). A tube preamp is the ultimate tone control and the Supratek Cabernet DHT preamp lets me play with my 45/2A3 tubes and 6SN7 tubes to my heart’s desires. Just like the Starkrimson Ultra 2. 0, the Valencia just provides me a reliable clean beefy power to my headphones and all I have to worry about is what kind of tonality I’m in the mood for today. On top of being a really good tone control for my system, the Supratek Cabernet DHT preamp have a gain knob which is different from the volume knob. I can control how much gain I want instead of what most preamp have which is just a low gain and high gain button. I usually go around 50% gain knob and control the volume knob like normal on my iems like the 7th acoustic Supernova and the Jomo Audio Nautilus. Then for my non-sensitive gears like the DCA Stealth, Mysphere 3. 2, and Sennheiser HD580 Jubilee, I play the Supratek like normal on 100% gain and use the volume knob almost normal. I never have to go past 50% on the volume knob when I use the DCA Stealth which is really impressive because the DCA Stealth is a pretty hard headphone to drive. So yeah, feed the Valencia a really good preamp and it could pretty much drive anything. One caveat is that I do hear a very quiet noise when I drove the Nautilus iem with the Valencia with the Supratek preamp. I haven’t played with the gain knob more to see if I can get it completely noise free. But when I tried the A70 Pro as a preamp to the Valencia at low gain, it was pretty much noise free, easy. But the one caveat for the A70 Pro is that you can still hear music being played even when you turn the Topping A70 Pro all the way down on the volume knob. When I turned the volume knob all the way down on the Supratek Preamp, its silent. I guess maybe muting the A70 Preamp is better than turning the volume knob all the way down, but that feels more unsafe if I don’t remember to turn the volume down with the wrong gear. . . I am used to a preamp to a power amp chain so I always put the volume knob all the way down and just slowly turn the volume up as the music is being played. An all solid state chain will probably be the easiest route if you are looking for a noise-free experience and you got some serious sensitive iem you want to drive on Valencia, but its really hard to pass up on tone control with tubes as a preamp.

With my favorite gear in my audio chain, the Valencia amp feels right at home and just gives me a very familiar feeling just like when I listen to my speaker setup which also has an Orchard Audio power amp in the chain. And that feeling is audio bliss, happy listening everyone!

I was able to spend a couple hours with this amp at Capital Audio Fest and again a headphone meet near Philadelphia. This is something special. Never have I heard an amp that could drive Tungsten effortlessly! Not once in my listening did the Valencia have a hint of struggling to power the ModHouse Tungstens to their peak performance, never have I heard them with such amazing dynamics! I also tried IEMs on this monster. With an iFi iEmatch on the output, it was tamed perfectly well enough to drive my Unique Melody Mest MKII with extreme clarity. Having IEMs in also gave me an opportunity to listen for any noise. Nothing, not even the slightest bit of noise, Valencia is dead silent. So you may be asking, what DOES the Valencia sound like? Nothing! It has no flavor of its own. Like other Orchard Audio products, its like a wire with gain. The flavor of your sound comes from the other components in the chain. With a good preamp and dac, this is the last headphone amp you’ll ever need. What a pleasure!!