My hypothesis is these little Chinese tube buffers are underrated. I don’t know for sure, and that’s one (of several) reason I ordered the Darkvoice on the last drop. Someday I’ll find out…
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I don’t have the same model @LeDechaine is using, as I state in a post above. However, they may actually be the same thing in a different box and with a different name. I’ve plugged into both an Atom and an SP200 and it made a huge difference on both. The Atom is nice because it has 2 inputs. So you can get a splitter and bypass the buffer to one input and route through the buffer on the other and switch back and forth at will (and underappreciated feature of the Atom, IMO).
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Yes, I was thinking about A/B-ing with a splitter too. 
(Adds a splitter to his Amazon cart, lol)
Could you link me a splitter? Doesn’t matter if it’s good or bad, just want to know what one looks like.
I’m really confused on how you would wire everything with the splitter to achieve this.
Do you have an Atom?
Here’s I connected mine to the Atom…
You’ll need 2 standard stereo RCA cables, and 1 RCA-to-3.5mm “y-cable” - links at the end. Plug the single end of those blue splitter cables into the L & R RCA outputs of your DAC. Those splitters will duplicate the signals; meaning, they will take the L channel and turn it into 2 identical L channels and do likewise for the R channel. I’ve ordered 2 pairs of those splitters. They come with a red band and a white band around the faemale ends of each splitter. Swap one band on each (they slide off pretty easily) so that one splitter has both white bands - use that as your left splitter - and one has both red bands - use that as your right splitter.
Now, take one of your standard RCA cables, connect one of it’s reds to one of the reds from the R splitter, and the corresponding RCA white to one of the splitter whites. Route the other end of that cable directly into the Atom’s RCA inputs. Use the other RCA cable and do likewise to connect the splitter to the input of the tube buffer. Then, use “y-cable” to connect the RCA output of the tube buffer to the 3.5 mm input of the Atom. The Atom’s “input” button will toggle between the 2 inputs.
Your chain will look like this…
PC-DAC - [splitters] - Atom RCA in
|
tube buffer
|
Atom 3.5mm in
Links:
Does that make sense?
Thanks for explaining it to me. I fully understand your explanation of it. Also, yes, I have an atom amp.
What exactly does the term buffer mean? Also, do these allow you to reach higher levels of volume through your amp?
This may not be 100% correct, but I think a buffer is a line level stage that simply puts tubes in the signal path, injecting a bit of tube sound. A preamplifier gives a little bit of gain to boost a line signal (the type of signal that comes out of a DAC or CD player, etc) to the signal that a power amp can more comfortably accept. These tube buffers have very little gain. They are sold as preamps but I don’t know that they have enough gain to be properly considered preamps.
Ok… now for the funny shit. A/B-ing with HD58X… makes no difference at all, lol. I mean, I hear a difference, but, it’s so subtle… for open-back headphones with a lot of “airiness” already, it’s not worth it at all.
But if your closed-back headphones lack “air” (10khz+), even if you won’t ever use the bass/treble knobs, yeah, recommended.
And if you want a bass/treble knob… The FX Audio Tube-03 is 1/5th the price of a schiit loki. 
I wonder if you tube rolled it if it would make a difference to the HD58X then.
Yeah, tubes are cheap apparently. 
Right now, it’s just clean, neutral, and adds “air”. Neat.
Also, I just got an e-mail, I’ll receive my Atom soon.
(And order this.)
I haven’t received my Atom yet (it’s shipped, though! ) but still, A/B-ing, yeah, my guess is it compresses everything and adds “air”. Also removes bass (under 100hz). You hear that especially in really energetic electronic music – because even that sounds smooth.
Yup, zero regrets. You had a bad day, you need to calm down, even acoustic guitars sound “stressful” because it’s a “dynamic” sound, well, flip the switch of this little tube amp, sit back and relax.
This guy looks extremely interesting and I expect we’ll be seeing all the youtubers reviewing it sometime. $768 for such a great piece of tubery seems like too good to be true. The psvane-kt88-tii tubes are regarded highly.
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I mean that seems about right, in the pricing of like a diy and a line magnetic
Got it back. Confirmed. It just smoothens everything. Soundstage is wider. More “air”, which might give you the impression there’s more detail. Yes, even with HD58Xs.
At the start of Rodrigo Y Gabriela - Tamacun, I hear someone screaming. I don’t think I ever heard it before, definitely not coming from the right (I mean, the soundstage is wider). At 2:20, I believe I hear the guitar picks… .77mm or smaller picks, soft, “paper-like” guitar picks for one guitar – or both. It’s even distracting. And it’s an mp3 even.
Don’t worry about treble by the way. I’m treble-sensitive and this tube pre actually smoothens everything I don’t like. I could put the volume at 100% when, without it, treble peaks at 50% could get annoying.
Zero hiss at all either.
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Oh also, a tube does some weird, weird shit to electronic music (like Trance – or 8-bit, 16-bit video game soundstracks). Just don’t. Lol.
