Hey Guys, I’ve read about this a little bit, but just want someone to confirm or correct me on the setup and had a few questions as well.
Just got a little dot mkII love it, and been having fun trying tubes. I would like to add it into my chain as a pre-amp which i believe is possible with the littledot. Currently have just been using it as a stand alone amp
My current chain is
PC > El DAC 2 > El Amp > 2.1 speakers/headphone out
I believe the correct way to implement this is
PC > El DAC 2 >LittleDot > El amp 2 > 2.1 speakers/headphone out
please correct me if that is not right
on to the questions
Does using the little dot as a pre-amp change the sound from using it as the primary amp? I believe it does not as it’s coloring the signal, and that stays the same whether it happens in the middle of the chain or the end
If i turn the Little Dot off does it work as a pass through effectively giving me my old chain setup with out the tube influence? I think it does
Do i need to set the little dot to a specific impedance setting? I believe there are 4 configs for this not sure if that matters for a pre-amp or only applies to the 1/4 inch
How should i be controlling volume? depending on if I’m using speakers there’s a potential of up to 5 points of volume control. The app, the PC, The El Amp, the little dot, and the speakers. On my current chain i use my pc volume and the el amp, while having the speakers set to max volume. Is there a recommended way to configure this so I don’t blow out my speakers/headphones when I’m switching and generally avoid distortion?
appreciate any direction you can give this noob, just wanted to verify before i jump in and mess something up
Well, when you pass your signal through the little dot it will go through the tubes so you will be adding a bit of tube sound to your el amp. Headphones will still react differently plugged directly into the little dot vs the el amp, as one is an otl tube and the other is a solid state with a slightly altered signal coming in.
I’m not sure on this one, I can’t confirm
I don’t think there are impedance switches? I think those are for the tubes and you would change them depending on what tubes you have in there
With the signal chain described above, I would set the little dot to has high as it can go without distorting, and control volume with the el amp.
If you wanted something that might be a bit less jank, you could get a rca switcher and do things that way but it would depend on how you want things set up
Ok, Thanks M0N. I’ll experiment when i get home was mostly concerned about damaging something by hooking it up wrong but i should be able to figure the rest out now. I considered a switcher but I’d like to minimize the amount of equipment growing on my desk if possible lol.
I’ll second @M0N on getting an RCA switcher in there. I get that you want to minimize desk clutter, but you’re also eliminating the option of a pure solid-state signal path under the setup you just described. Not all headphones respond well to the tube sound, so it’s nice to be able to switch between the 3 options you’re setup could give you - 1) true solid state, 2) true tube (using the LDII as an amp), 3) hybrid tube (with LDII as pre and EL as amp).
is there a switcher you or @M0N recommend? i previously had a jds switcher before I upgraded to the El amp i used to swap between the old amp and my speakers. With that I understand i could have the dac as 1 input and the 2 amps as the outs. Not sure how i could configure the 3rd option, or if i would need a different switcher for that
Yeah, I was just thinking I got a little ahead of myself on the 3 options. I’m used to the Atom (another JDS Labs product) having 2 inputs. The EL amp only has one.
The first step I’d recommend is to split the output from the EL DAC with a pair of these:
You can then send identical signals from your EL dac to both the LDII and the EL amp. That gives you options 1 and 2 from my previous post. That would also mean you don’t have to use the LDII as a preamp. You have one DAC signal being sent to 2 headphone amps.
If you want to go the hybrid route you would need an RCA switch. Something like this:
Or a Schiit Sys, if you can find one.
If you go that route you will essentially have 2 signal chains, both starting with the EL dac. Both chains start with PC->EL Dac, then use the blue splitter cables. From there…
Path 1) to RCA switch -> EL amp
Path 2) to LDII-> LDII Pre-out to RCA switch -> EL amp
If you do all that then you will have the 3 options I mentioned above. Food for thought.
oh awesome, I think the splitters would work for me for now. Is there any kind of signal degradation because you’re outputting to two paths simultaneously? or maybe that would depend on the DAC
There won’t be any noticeable degradation. Splitting a signal once or twice usually isn’t an issue. If you introduce too many splits you run an increased risk of ground loops, but with only this one split you’ll be fine.
Oh this Amp is clear enough so adding a tube preamp is OK.
Adding colors(distortion) to the sound and soften the texture of it.
Nomally it will make the sound details harder to be picked out from the music.
Mostly , you don’t need that much details listening to the music.
Too much details actually will ruin the listening experience. Couse you have limited concentrations . Once the details extracted your concentration to them. You can be less focus on the music presenting.
Details is just like spices in the dishes. You can hardly tell them out. But that flavor is part of the dish making it marvelous. Adding too much of them just make the dish taste wierd.
Adding tube is actually making your tongue nerd. Milding the flavour.
In my opinion, some cheap dac and dap actually conbines pretty well. They just cannot present so much unneeded details. Listening experence is just on point. If you stop your audiophile journey there. Then you will realize that others is just stepping further then find out further is not what they want and then they just return to your point.
Hi. Does the sound output from ur chain with little dot mk2 before el amp the same as directly coming out from the little dot mk2 headphone jack? How noticeable are the differences? Planning to do the same tube to solid-state thing but worried about losing the coloring of the tube too much. Thanks
Hey Dude it’s been awhile since I’ve owned these amps, but I ended up going with the splitter solution as wavetheory recommend as it was easier to control the volume per amp and just plug into the one i preferred as opposed to dealing with one going into the other
