YES couldn’t agree more
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Just received my E30 DAC and connected it with my A-100 and DT880. A beast and i love it.
The problems i mentioned before are just gone! The sound is clean and all the noise disappeared. Plus the ‘spikey sound’ and sililant is greatly reduced. It is now super comfortable to listen to. This bad boy combination does actually need good dac or A-100 will magnify all the unwanted sound.
Also, i adjusted eq following the pdf given by @Cb1scu1t to let the bass stand out a bit. 10/10.
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dat bass though…honestly i just figured out a couple of days ago i can put my topping dx3 pro in dac only mode and feed my headphone and speaker amp. but hey if you decide to upgrade, asgard 3 and 880 has been perfect for me. im not wanting for anything more
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If only I have that much budget for another amp, I would def. rush for it as the current set up have already meant perfect for me. But for now, it is all good for my daily use and i have had a lot of joy with this combo. Thank you anyway!
What are some tube amps out there that are capable of driving these headphones with authority?
There are a fair amount of them, what budget range are you thinking?
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This question has been rolling around in my head since I ordered these yesterday. Not to hijack but I would be curious if there is anything worth looking at in the sub $300 range. I know beyond that you get into the BHC as an easy rec.
I mean the bhc+sb is the real easy pick and is absolutely worth the money, I think really there aren’t many sub 400 options I would really recommend for tube amps
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Probably no more than $1,000 is what I’d be looking at for a tube amp. I’m still in the research and learning phase of tubes and have yet to purchase or even use one.
If your up for building one or don’t mind paying someone a bit extra to do it for you, the crack + speedball is a very fun pairing for sure, spacious, forgiving but still has good technicalities, impactful and thick, warmer tilted, very fun listen. If you wanted something pretty neutral and clean with lots of refinement, a hagerman tuba is pretty great (although I would swap stock tubes for something else as stock it’s a bit mid centric). You could consider something like a feliks echo for something capable and refined but laid back and going for something a bit smoother
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The Crack + Speedball approach is a rabbit hole I want to avoid if I can! I have no experience in soldering and don’t want to go down that interesting path at this time.
I’ll have a look at the other two brands, especially since I’ve not heard of them before. I’m in no rush to buy at the moment so I’ll spend some time learning about tubes first so I can make a well-informed decision.
Fair lol
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Are there any other brands of tube amps out there that can drive these 600 ohm headphones, even if they’re over $1000? I know of the Solaris amp, but at $4600, that is a bit over my budget.
There are a ton of options in the 1k+ range, what max cap are you considering since you can go much higher than the solaris if you want to lol? I would say though I’m not the biggest fan of audiovalve products as I think you end up greatly overpaying for the versatility, in terms of pure sound quality there are many other things I would rather have at the 5k range, but they are still good
(To complain more about the solaris I don’t think the stax output on them is really all that good for the price, the internal dac wasn’t impressive if you got that option (and it adds an extra grand too), and also while the ability to switch between otl and transformer coupled is pretty cool, I don’t really think it ends up adding all that much value as in the 5k range most transformer coupled will drive about anything and honestly you can grab otl that will even drive low impedance just fine as well in this range, hence why I don’t think it’s really a good value overall because while it does have a lot of cool features in practice, I don’t really think it ends up adding much value in the end and you can get better sound for your money. I did like the RKV-3 more from them as I think it offers similar performance to the solaris without the unneeded estat energizer at a lower price, but I still would prob have other options I prefer in that range)
HA-1A MK2
My apologies, I did not mean to imply that I could afford the Solaris. I mean I could if I saved up for several months, but I’d rather spend that kind of money on other things, like more CD’s or records - a lot more!
I don’t really have a max cap, other than to say that the Solaris is far more expensive than I’m willing to spend money on for what it is.
While the 880 600 is really good, I would also make sure you try out higher tier headphones and consider moving up before you spend more than 1k on an amp. The 880 do scale very well and imo I do think you can justify some of the sub 1k options on an 880 if you are really a fan, but you can get more out of higher tier headphones imo.
I would say you could look for a used zmf pendant, decware csp3 or taboo mk4, linear tube audio mz2 + lps, dragon iha 1, anything from eddie current if you can find it, wolf ear natayo, mapletree od300 octal duo or mellow boy octal duo, perhaps a woo wa22, these should all be able to be found used around the ~1.5k and that’s the max I would suggest spending if this is your first higher end amp. Also this doesn’t include the dac which would depend on what amp you go with. I can go into more depth on ones that you might be interested in but I don’t want to clog up this thread lol
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Thanks for all the information; much appreciated.
The reason for my questions on tubes is that I just bought the DT880 600 ohm and it arrived on Saturday. It’s approaching 40 hours of burn-in at the moment. I also bought the BasX A-100 a couple of weeks ago. I wanted to see what all Zeos’ fuss was about in those two videos and for the combined price it wasn’t a bad deal at all.
But I’m also interested in getting into tube amps and want to be sure I select a good tube amp that can scale well for the headphones I have. That is the 32 ohm BLON B20’s up to the 600 ohm DT880’s. Though, I think from what I see here and there, the B20’s might not be a good match on some tubes, maybe.
Either way, I just want a good quality, well performing tube amp that can drive my HD650’s, B20’s, DT880’s (250 ohm and 600 ohm).
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If you want to go with a wide range of headphones, then I would only suggest transformer coupled amps, so I would narrow it down to something like the pendant, taboo mk4, lta mz2 + lps, dragon iha 1, or wa22 since those can run some planars pretty well imo and handle a wider range of headphones. The 650 and 880 are really good on tubes in general, but the b20 isn’t, but you could most likely get away with running the b20 on the amps I just mentioned (going off how the sendy aiva reacted)
The pendant is going to be a more neutral warmer sounding amp, pretty wide and spacious, good technicalities, nice impact and thickness but not overdone, also high and low impedance taps which is handy. The Decware is also going for that warmer sound but is going to be more fun, more body and impact, more saturated richer sound that still is pretty refined, but def more fun leaning. The mz2 + lps is pretty interesting, it’s pretty neutral and clean but still pretty fun, works well with lower impedance, pretty great and different imo, almost like a tube ss hybrid but is a tube for the most part. The dragon iha1 is also a more neutral tube amp that’s pretty clean but might lean a bit dry for some peoples tastes but that can depend on the tubes in there as that’s a good amp for rolling. Regarding the wa22 that’s a bit more saturated fun sounding amp, but it’s also somewhat forward and more energetic at times imo
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Certainly no big deal if I shouldn’t use the B20’s on most tube amps. I have enough solid state amps to pair them with.
Again thanks for the information. I have much reading to do. I also need to learn about the different types of tube amps and design characteristics and tubes and so forth before I make a decision.
I will report back in this thread on my experience with the 880’s and the BasX after I’ve spent some time listening to them.
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