At first, I wanted to go with a cheapo Chinese made tube preamp, My system would be like:
DAC >>> Tube Preamp >>> Solid state Headphone amplifier.
But someone on the other forum mentioned that with this setup, there are a lot of preamp stages…There is one in the DAC stage, one in the preamp and one in the SS amp. This would degrade the signal quite a bit.
So I looked around for a standalone tube DAC/AMP to reduce the number of preamp stages…Here are my findings:
Aune T1se, which is a Tube “DAC”
xDuoo TA-01B
xDuoo TA03S
xDuoo TA-10R
Tubemagic D1 Plus, despite being a tube DAC, the headphone out on this does not have a tube preamp.
Which one of these units has the lowest number of preamp stages(I use them as standalone) ?
Which one of them do you recommend ?
Do you have any recommendations in the same price range (under 200USD)?
What’s the best way to introduce tube sound to your chain ?
My current equipment:
Creative X7
Little Dot I+ with lots of tubes.
Schiit Heresy
Zorloo DAC/AMP
Ever seen the insane paddleboard setups some guitarists run?
Change it, yes. Degrade, depends on the quality of the devices.
Pick what works.
Get a DAC with a line level output and control volume at the Amplifier.
dac—>tube pre-amp---->amp is perfectly fine. thats not at all to many pieces in the chain.
edit: one of my setups is a bluetooth tube preamp into a hybrid amp. thats litterally the same setup, bluetooth being the dac.
xDuoo TA-10 for sale on here if you are interested.
1 Like
Hello,
Actually, you’re not doing anything wrong with the Little dot you already have.
If I were you, I would change the tubes and see what is good.
If you haven’t already done so.
I have the Little Dot myself and in my opinion it is one of the best hybrids for the money in its class.
Alternatively, the next step would be a better Dac stand alone.
Or buy a higher quality hybrid amp.
The next logical step would be to go to Otl tube amplifiers.
Feliks Echo 2 for example.
Just using a tube amp as a preamp and then going to Ss is actually more of a waste of money than a benefit.
It would make more sense to have a good Dac stand alone or Dac/amp and then via Rca/Xlr to the tube amp.