Headphones:
The simplest definition of what I hear is, without the tube amps, you hear the sound is coming from… “somewhere in front of you”. And with the tubes, the sound is right there, left-right, singers whispering at your ears, etc. More soundstage, more wideness, but more closeness too.
Trying with speakers.
You know what Zeos said about good speakers? They “disappear”. What does theeze do to speakers? Yup. They make my 125$ Fluance SX6s “disappear”… more than usual. I recently bought a Micca center channel. I just verified if it was on. Nope. I think I just understood why Zeos doesn’t use centers.
Random song, with tubes: The piano is somewhere 10ft, a bit at my right, echoing. The singer is in front of me, 4ft away from me. Two acoustics guitars behind him. Left, right… and I just heard the left one screw up. Never heard it before. It was not subtle at all.
Same song, no tubes: The piano is 8ft away from me. The singer is 6ft away from me. The guitarists are beside him. The left one screwed up, but it was subtle.
Final verdict: In all cases, drum kick volumes are reduced. A lot. The bass knob on the Tube-03 might help, but if you’re a basshead, pass. This tube amp’s job appears to be to smoothen everything and make everything sound “airy”, not “bassy”. If you want to know what is “holographic soundstage and depth”, give this a try. I find it quite disconcerting that headphones and speakers can do this actually. Inexpensive ones even. Will a 30$ tube amp and tiny 5$-or-less Voskhod “CCCP” ☭ tubes make your system sound better? That’s subjective. Will it make everything sound different? A lot.
Listening to the new Testament album through my Tube-03 – because why not.
I’m wondering if it’s normal but I’m “breaking in” tubes (voskhods) and if the volume on the tube-03 is at more than 10:00 there’s a ton of distortion (the one you definitely don’t want to hear). Oh well, my 1 watt per channel JDS Atom is useful right now!
These ones work for sure though, lol. They glow twice as much as the 2 others I got (bought 4). Oh well, time to leave these on for 10 hours (too!) I guess (…and not unattended).
I feel like this tube buffer makes everything “airy” and really “close” to you, lifts the veil off everything – but maybe too much. You can actually control how much “air”, and “veil”, therefore how much soundstage you want, with this little 90$ Class A amplifier.
The SMSL SAP-1 is bass and mid-focused and lacks “air”. This is the perfect match.
And to continue with that, yes, apparently, the higher the volume, the more the little Tube-03 works. I said “more tubes” or “more Class A” without realizing what it meant.
It’s a tube pre. Leave the volume at max.
Sometimes it’s as if I can hear the reverberations coming from the wall at the back of the studio.
Have you tried any other tubes beside the Voskhod 6J1P-EV? I’m considering picking one of these up. I’m also planning to pick up a Bottlehead Crack 10 months from now when it probably goes on sale. But 10 months…
Has anyone compared one of these cheap tube buffers (tube swapped) with a nice amp like the Crack?
What GE tubes specifically did you use for the preamp? Are those still the best one’s you’ve heard? I think I may give this thing a try since it’s so cheap.
The link to the Amazon page where I bought those tubes is in that post. I don’t know if they’re the “best” but there seems to be limited options for that tube type. These GE tubes are much better than the stock tubes.
Yeah all I know is the Voskhod sound better than the stock tubes. I said they sound “classier”, which might be a new one for audio descriptions, lol. But yeah, it means good mids and a ton of clarity, good soundstage. Stock tubes also sounded… muddy, or just lacking detail, compared to these.
So I own a Hagerman Tuba. But the Tuba lives in the bedroom (where I would use it more) and I wanted tubes in office. So I decided to give one of these tube buffers a try. The one I got was from FX Audio and it was about $30. The tubes were GE JAN 5654W and were $25 for the pair. I set up the tube preamp between my RME ADI-2 DAC and THX 789. Because the ADI-2 and 789 have two outputs and two inputs respectively, I could set it up so that I could instantaneously switch between having the tubes and not. I did the testing with my HD600 and here are my impressions:
It didn’t make the 789 sound worse. At least as long as you didn’t turn preamp knob too far past 12 o’clock. It gets really distorted if you do.
It brought up the lows up a bit and it relaxed the upper mids and highs some.
It helped improve sound stage a little.
Overall the change in sound more subtle than I was expecting. But depending on the sound I’m looking for, it’s still an overall improvement. So I will continue to use it some of the time in my system.
If anyone else wants to get into tubes, I don’t really recommend this unless you’re on a super tight budget. I’m sure anyone new would want something more substantial. Although it is possible the other brands might be better than this one.
Update:
It turns out the extreme distortion at high volume was the result of the preamp clipping. This can mostly be remedied by reducing your DAC volume. This is worth doing because the tubes have greater effect at a higher volume setting. So in conclusion, I can recommend this particular setup more than before. But it’s still worth investing in a proper tube amp.
Might be that the tubes haven’t burned in too – or you got bad tubes. Something like 50 to 100 hours of burn-in is recommended for tubes (literally “burn-in” this time: gets rid of unwanted stuff in the tubes).
With my Tube-03 my volume is set to max and there’s no distortion whatsoever. I got two pairs of (6J1P-EV) tubes, one starting to distort at 10 o’clock , and the one I use now, zero distortion.
Well that’s interesting. I did let them burn in but not for quite that long. Do you get a better tube sound if you max out the volume as opposed to having it half way?
I’ll try letting them burn in more. Although the particular tubes I have don’t get that hot. I can touch them without too much issue. Maybe I should have got different tubes? The GE tubes were well rated and recommended for this thing on amazon so I’d figured they’d be decent choice.
I can’t keep my fingers on mine after a few minutes. Maybe move em around in the socket and push em a bit to be sure they’re 100% well connected, too. Better connection might equal better sound.
I bought Voskhod 6J1P-EVs because someone on Amazon said they got impressive soundstage from em. Perfect for me because I got more bass (warmth), more smoothness (sounds “classy” lol) and still decent detail and “air” (10khz+).
Edit: 25$-ish for the pair too. I want to try GE tubes too… even if I’m pretty sure nothing will make it sound better than what I hear right now.
I let the tubes burn in longer, but that didn’t seem to make a difference.
So I went on Amazon and submitted a question to other users with the same preamp and tubes on whether they experienced significant distortion if go past around 1 o’clock. 2 people said they had the same problem while 1 said he has “'no problems with distortion cranked up.” He also suggested my amp could be clipping if the amp input voltage is greater than 2 V. So I decided to take some measurements my multi meter.
RME ADI-2 RCA Output at 0 dB: 3.3 V.
RME setting to get 3.3 V out of Preamp: -14.5 dB
RME setting for getting 2.05 V out or RCA: -4 dB
Tube Preamp outputs 3.3 V at about 10 o’clock
Preamp max output is about 6.7 V at around 3 o’clock
Preamp output voltage will start decreasing after going past 3 o’clock.
So in conclusion, it’s pretty clear that preamp is the one clipping for one reason or another. If I lower the volume of the ADI-2 enough, I can max out the preamp volume without getting major distortion. The “tubiness” of the sound also does appear to increase with preamp volume based on early tests
there’s a ton of distortion (the one you definitely don’t want to hear). Oh well, my 1 watt per channel JDS Atom is useful right now!
, and the one I use now, zero distortion.
“volume” should be labeled “tubes +/-” really. It’s like “how much tubes do you want in your sound”.