if you get the Empyreans and want speakers eventually, the Sprout100 works great - better than the 789- on the Empyreans and does all I need from near field on the KEF LS50
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forgive the mess, Iām planning on setting up some headphone rack on the back wall, but keep finding better things to do on the weekends, but the LS50s are really nice:
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The speakers look nice 
Nice Battle station.
Itās all set up ātemporarilyā until I figure it out, but I would have said the same thing a year ago when it was different clutter
I actually have stands and wall hooks, and a general plan to move everything around now though where before it was only a concept
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When you get your zmf would love to hear your thoughts comparing them to the Empyreans. 
I canāt wait, but other than test runs I plan to use them almost exclusively off of tubes
What tubes and what tube amps?
I got a little nuts when I was waiting for my 789. I have a dark voice, ZDT Jr, and la figaro 339 which is basically a doubled up but cleaner darkvoice that planars and my Focals sound good off of
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I only dropped seriously extra money on the la figaro tubes, only to find out I didnāt need to per se, so I doubt Iām the guy to give advice on whatās best to buy
The dark voice and
http://feliksaudio.pl/en/products.php
Are the tube amps that look super nice to me
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They definitely look nice, I know Iām gonna end up getting a dark voice or a feliks audio echo.
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For $200 from Drop the Dark Voice is an amazing entry point to see if tubes are for you. If you own an HD 6xx or even better an HD600 youāll see what it brings to the table. Since I donāt have a refined perspective of whatās best for which amp paired with which headphone, I went to head-fi and followed more or less the consensus for the La Figaros. There may be better pairings, but I really liked what I ended up with and canāt wait to hear it with headphones meant to take advantage of it
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I say this with zero expertise, but if you are looking at tubes, I would recommend going cheap to start but going full tube vs hybrid. As in go for a Dark Voice before you look at a CTH, assuming you have a ss amp to begin with. I donāt personally think hybrids do enough tubey stuff, and Iād rather spend the extra money on a dac like the SMSL VMVD1 that allows you to put tubey sounds through your ss than take the chance the hybrid will do it better. Just my 2 cents based on limited experience
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I tend to agree I like the CTH, but the tube sound is very mild.
for selfish reasons I want you to get the Empyreans so there is someone else here singing their praises, but I wouldnāt really recommend them with the Dark Voice. With your manufacturing background you will appreciate them more than most to begin with, but Iām not sure they are the best off of tubes until you get to the very expensive low/no noise floors.
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Itās honestly one of my regrets as a purchase. I got it with the SDAC combo and itās now taking up space on my work desk and not getting used very often
I consider mine like a solid state amp, with some warmth.
I donāt have a lot of headphone amps, so it gets some use.
I have a Eddie current ZDT jr arriving early next week. My speaker system is all tube, but Iām mostly trying to decide if I can deal with the inconvenience of them for casual listening.
Curious to hear what you think of the ZDT Jr. I personally wanted a little more from it than it gave me. And yes, buying a tube amp-even a top of the line version, usually means you are just getting started with your final cost
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That said, I love it. I love the fact that when you find the amp for you, you can swap tubes to make it feel like a totally different experience without having to change up all your wiring. But the cost of getting that stable of tubes is often overlooked. I think a lot of people who say they donāt like tubes really mainly mean they donāt like the stock tubes they got with their amp.
When you get the ZDT Jr, Iām especially curious about how replaceable you think the tubes are in the back. I applied as much pressure as I was comfortable with and was convinced theyād break if I applied any more. From what Iāve read, they are supposed to be decent, so not super urgent to replace but iām curious if you have any more wiggle with them than I do
Some tubes can be pretty tight lol. In a studio compressor I was replacing a tube and almost had a heart attack when it cracked when I pulled it out lol. It did not want to come out