Valve Headphone amps

[Lumeycom]

Anyone else use one? Bought a bit of chinachina off a popular auction site recently and I am utterly stunned by the sound quality of it (Nobsound 6J9). Bought it on a whim as it looked kinda funky and I had aspirations of building it into a case but its so small and well made I'm not going to bother.

Bit of a revelation for me

 

[Rroff]

There are a few on here that do use them.

My personal opinion having spent awhile recently playing with building a lot of different amp designs is that the go to opamps that are used in most solid state setups like the OPA2132/4 and NE55xx series combined with often cheapest possible capacitors, etc. really don't do solid state justice and hence even a half decent tube amp will sound far more lifelike - with a little more expensive capacitors and better opamps I've got far more improved results than your average consumer audio or even a lot of higher end stuff that is far more competitive against a good tube amp.

EDIT: Not sure what headphones you use either but another aspect I find is that solidstate headphone amplifiers tend to focus on amperage in high power designs while tubeamps often by their nature work with a lot of voltage - and I've found headphones like the HD600 series are really transformed when they are driven with decent voltage swing, etc.

 

[rids57]

The Nobsound is actually a hybrid amp that uses the tubes as pre-amps to "warm" the sound signature a little and then uses an op-amp output stage for power.

Apparently the stock Chinese tubes are not the best quality so you can improve on what you already have by swapping them for something better, just make sure that they match the configuration. You can also fit different op-amps, though this will likely not make as big a difference.

 

[Lumeycom]

Yeh I'm aware they are hybrid but I'm still stunned by the difference a very modest outlay has made. I'm no audiophile, just a normal user

 

[rids57]

They are very good for the price and the sound quality is just as good as the SMSL solid state devices, which have a very good reputation.

 

[stoke1863]

I got a Little Dot MK2 but i think my tubes need replacing as im getting intermittent popping and static. Going to try some Mullards next

 

[Brizzles]

Schiit Vali here, lovely sound.

 

[Amidar]

I have a Bottlehead Crack with Speedball & a Woo Audio WA6SE.

 

[danza]

I have a Xiang Sheng 708B with about 80 quid of high quality capacitors, resistors and other bits lobbed inside. It's very good although it does only have the original valves in, so I should probably swap them out for something in-line with the rest of the amp at some point.

 

[pduk]

I have the Bottlehead Crack as well, with speedball. It makes my HD650s sound wonderful. I've been so impressed that I also built their Kaiju 300B speaker amp earlier this year and it is completely amazing. Though expensive!

 

[stoke1863]

I have the Bottlehead Crack as well, with speedball. It makes my HD650s sound wonderful. I've been so impressed that I also built their Kaiju 300B speaker amp earlier this year and it is completely amazing. Though expensive!

very nice! i was really tempted as it seems like a cool project to do, but knowing me id **** it up and waste the money

 

[2StepSteve]

I have a Bottlehead Crack with Speedball & a Woo Audio WA6SE.

Which do you prefer out of those two? Having a hard time deciding which one to go for. Though, it would have to be the WA6, the SE is a little more than I'd like to pay.

 

[Amidar]

Which headphones would you be using?

 

[2StepSteve]

Which headphones would you be using?

Sennheiser 598 currently, likely upgrading to 650.

Was orginally looking at the Schiit Lyr 2 or the Valhalla 2. But now I am quite unsure. I've read that the Bottlehead Crack out does the Valhalla 2. Really wish I could demo all of these.