Any suggestions on a good smallish endgame tube amp? (roughly the size of a Burson Soloist or a bit larger, not too heavy as my equipment stand is kindof small and not that heavy duty)
I am currently running:
Schiit Bifrost 2 + Lokius → Burson Soloist
Balanced cable connections.
I have a switch to allow switching between 2 amps so I want to keep my Bifrost 2, with my Soloist as my solid state and switch between that and a nice tube amp, both with balanced inputs…
LP could work for you because you already have balanced cables because what I know of it the se output of it isn’t up to paar compared to the balanced one
Otherwise for a cheapish option you could use the preout of the soloist and tryout the xdouu Mt 604 and see if tubes could be your thing
Other question would be does it have to have balanced inputs because the se of the bf2 isn’t worse than the balanced out and see would give you many more options for tubes
Cayin, Woo audio, amp and sound are all hot right now for tube amps. I would suggest that look at hybrid amps since you have a couple of planars but there are so TOTL otl amps that do work with tubes.
I agree with DB…the Monolith Liquid Platinum hybrid tube amp would be a real winner for you. I think it’s on sale for about $100 lower than regular price too.
@robotecture How important is it for you to keep your balanced connections? The only reason I ask that is I recently bought a Woo Audio WA6 and it is amazing…I have the 6xx and the Focal Elex, but have listened to the OG Clears on it also…They all sounded really good on it…The first thing I changed was the rectifier tube…The sound went from really good to wow!! Brand new they are $999, but if you look on the used market you can generally find them between $500-$650…They are rca out though…It is a solid option for you to look at if you wouldn’t mind using rca’s…Woo’s customer service is top notch as well.
Would absolutely second the quicksilver suggestion if you can find one, awesome amp for the money, check out the thread for more info
Should work with really all your headphones except the he6 and lcdx could be hit or miss. Only concern would be that it might be a bit heavy, but shouldn’t be too bad.
The WA6 is also pretty solid and should give you good flexibility, I do prefer the quicksilver but the woo is going to be easier to find used and will be smaller
While it would limit the headphones you would want to use, the Feliks echo isn’t a bad pick, and would be lighter than let’s say the quicksilver, have a comparison to the QS in the aforementioned thread
No balanced inputs for any of these, but the problem you’ll find is that there’s a pretty significant price jump for something with balanced in (transformer cost), and it also will add weight and size. The BF2 has about similarly good single ended outs that you can use at the same time as balanced, so you really wouldn’t need a switch. Though that would be skipping the lokius, if you wanted that in the chain I’m not sure how it’s single ended outputs are (but honestly I wouldn’t put it in line with something like a QS since imo I think it would cause more harm than good sound wise)
Hmm, yeah I think I want to keep with balanced cables on this rig since I have all my cables set up and switch and layout in balanced and I really like the Burson Soloist running balanced with the he6 se v2 and my other planars
