I’m fairly new to the audiophile world while my dad is super old school audiophile that has collection lot of vintage tubes that would literally outlast even my grandkids(Even made his own tube speaker amps for a while). I’m thinking of saving and setting up an all in one system that I can switch through between outputs of headgear and a pair of bookshelf speakers.
As of now current set up/collection is:
Fiio Q3 to Thieaudio Oracle and Olina on my laptop
Generally phone via bt to Ifi zen blue dac to a small speaker amp to a pair of cheapish bookshelf speakers
Title pretty much sums up my current plan since I want something with enough power to run pretty much any headphone/iem as my own collection expands and that runs balanced. Thinking of grabbing a Hifiman 400se or Sundara next(Sennheisers are too lean for me) but I’ve read that tube amps don’t play well with planars and most modern efficient gear so would using something like a tube preamp then running it through SS work and still get that tubey character? It would be a huge shame and waste not to dip into tubes when I got easy free access to so many different kinds.
Suggestions would also be welcome, but budget is pretty lean for the forseeable future so nothing too heavy on the wallet.
Edit
Edited title to be more specific on gear but the general question still stands, after reading up a little bit and getting some other bits of advice, though still not a complete answer to my question
The setup is gonna look like this
DAC >(RCA out to RCA in)> BH Crack >(SE out to RCA in)> Magnius > Headphone/IEM
DAC>(balanced 4.4 out to XLR in)> Magnius > Headphone/IEM
if it’s rca out from zen blue → preamp → magnius or zen blue → magnius → preamp would work
if you plan on going balanced later the blue doesn’t have balanced outs could do something like a zen dac now and use it’s HP out and RCA out then get a better amp later
a geshelli amp would also be a good choice
Sorry, I should have specified that it’s the v2, but the v2 does have a balanced 4.4mm out and Ifi even sells 4.4 to XLR balanced out cables for that exact purpose.
Also my dad remembered that he has a still unassembled kit of a Bottlehead Crack OTL tube headphone amp, since it’s a DIY kit I think we could(maybe?) possibly modify it to run balanced. Mainly it’s because the specs on the website look to me that it won’t play very nice with iems and modern low impedence headphones
From Bottlehead:The approximate specs are input impedance 100K ohms, output impedance 120 ohms, gain about 15dB into a 300 ohm load like a Sennheiser HD600, max output about 10V into a 300 ohm load
Though like I said Sennies are a bit too lean for me, though perhaps tube rolling could fix that but I’m still on the fence about grabbing one
yeah tubes generally don’t play well with IEM’s, tubes like things that want power
would be a very nice amp for headphones though based on what people say about it
Yep, that’s why I’m looking for ways to get a SS between the tubes and the gear to be able to get a lot more flexibility because that setup would be pretty much endgame for me(well maybe aside from upgrading the dac and getting a DAP). Since there’s no decently “affordable” high impedance headphones be they DD or Planar aside from stuff like Sennheisers, AKG, and Beyerdynamic. Another big limiting factor is that I’m not from the US so I gotta be extra picky on choosing gear since wait times can be forever and returns are pretty much nonexistent
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Bump due to additional info, learnings, and on more specific gear