This is the new Limited Edition Earmen L-Amp Portable Vacuum Tube DAC/AMP. It retails for €399, only 1000 units are being made.
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Having listened to it for 5-6 hours - my first impressions of it as a product is that it pairs really well with anything that’s lean, bright, detail oriented and resolute. It should work well with anything that is near neutral too.
It is not meant to be paired with anything that’s warm or sensitive.
The tube-noise is real, especially with sensitive IEMs that has ESTs. Less sensitive DD, hybrid or planar IEMs do really well as they don’t pickup nearly as much noise as most ESTs do, and benefit greatly from the smooth, natural character of the tube sound. This is with IEM-match on.
The pinging I have found to be less of an issue personally - not very noticable imo, and fades rather quickly.
The bass boost button I would say puts a low frequency shelf at around maybe 300hz, giving a fair bit of body and juice to the bass, mid-bass and lower mids, rather than just simply deepening depth or increasing slam.
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Sound - a great blend of richness, smoothness and micro dynamics. Notes linger for very long, expressing themselves for longer than usual, kind of like the L-Amp is chasing the trail ends of notes. As such, notes echo into each other.
The duty of separation and resolute, minute deliniation of notes is handed off to the IEM or headphone you pair with, as the strengths of L-Amp almost necessarily means a decrease in these sound parameters.
But when you pair it with the right stuff and tuning - oh boy, that’s a good time.
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Sound continued - Microdynamics are so effing good on this thing!
As some reviews have mentioned, it has impeccable sense of flow and fluidity, making it easy to follow the musical intent and emotion of especially vocals. Very impressed.