Jason’s Burson Conductor 3X Reference with Meze Empyrean

Published on

Sales Burson
September 3, 2021

Post Info

Feedbacks - Conductor 3R | 3XR
Burson Conductor 3X Reference, Meze Empyrean

Your Burson sales and support has been excellent. I had some Before-purchase questions that were answered within 24hrs. On my Conductor 3XR, I’ve had a couple minor concerns After-purchase and your support has been good there as well. My only complaint is the included USB-c cable is way too short. I had to go get another cable to run from my PC under the desk to the dac/amp up on the desk. 2-3ft is a little too short. Currently, I have an optical cable en route to see if my rare intermittent issue of (all sound coming out of just 1 side, all left or all right) is an intermittent issue with the USB output of my PC or USB input on your Conductor 3XR. It hasn’t happened again in the last week or so, but I’ll see if this still occurs on optical cable. This is never something that happens while using the unit. The 2-3 times I’ve experienced this, it did this right away when turning on the unit. Turn it on, go to play something, realize the sound is lower volume, not as high of quality, and all to the left or all right. Like I said, I have a good quality/highly rated optical cable on the way to see if this stops happening. The unit runs warm/hot, but it’s supposed to (Class A). I’m in Arizona and it’s summer, so that heats up the room even more. I can live with that. The product is built well, runs great 98% of the time and makes my Meze Empyreans sound as good as they ever can.

The System

Listening with

Meze Empyrean · Headphones: open-back, isodynamic hybrid array (planar), circumaural · discontinued

Impedance: 31.6 Ω
Sensitivity: 100 dB SPL (1 mW / 1 kHz) ≈ 115.0 dB/V (calc.)
Frequency response: 4 Hz – 110 kHz
Plugs / cables supplied: 4-pin mini-XLR cable; 3 m OFC XLR cable
Other: max SPL >130 dB; THD <0.1%; ~430 g; Rinaro driver

Matching notes: At 31.6 Ω and 100 dB/mW, the Meze Empyrean is a low-impedance load, and an efficient one: about 0.56 V (10 mW, 18 mA) for 110 dB SPL (calc.). Burson does not publish a 31.6 Ω rating for the Conductor 3X Reference. Its 16 Ω and 32 Ω ratings (7.5 W XLR / 3.75 W SE; 5 W XLR / 2.5 W SE) fall either side of it. The Conductor 3X Reference’s 0.5 Ω headphone output impedance is 1/63 of the load. ^{[1] [2] [3] [4]}

Burson

Burson Conductor 3X Reference · DAC / headphone amplifier / preamp · discontinued

Output power (XLR / SE): 16 Ω 7.5 W / 3.75 W · 32 Ω 5 W / 2.5 W · 100 Ω 1.75 W / 0.88 W · 150 Ω 1.16 W / 0.58 W · 300 Ω 0.58 W / 0.3 W
Output impedance: 0.5 Ω (headphone); 1 Ω (pre out); 25 Ω (DAC out)
Output voltage: RCA 2 V (DAC out)
Gain: High / Low; dB not published
Inputs: 2x XLR; USB (XMOS; PCM to 768 kHz/32-bit, native DSD512); Toslink; coaxial; Bluetooth 5.0 aptX HD; microphone
Input impedance: 40 kΩ
Input sensitivity: line level
Outputs: XLR pre out; line-level DAC out; 6.35 mm + 4-pin XLR headphone
DAC / chipset: 2x ESS ES9038Q2M
Other: Model R180X (3XR); THD <0.0015%; FR ±1 dB 0-58 kHz

^{[2] [3] [4]}

Specs from manufacturer data unless a source below says otherwise. “calc.” values are worked out from those figures (V = √(P × R); 110 dB SPL used as a loud reference level). Gear listed without specs is not in our spec library yet.