I have the Thieaudio Monarch MK III’s and have been doing some tip rolling (Dunu SS, Xelastic’s, Velvet Widebore) and just received a set of Zeos’ Render Tips. I also have a set of Meze Alba’s on the way and will of course try everything on those as well.
I find the renders do indeed bump the bass a bit, and add a bit of warmth, but not at a trade-off of losing an appreciable amount of high end, or coloring the sound to a ridiculous degree.
I have been toying with the idea of buying a tube amp (Apos Gremlin) as I have never tried one before and am wondering if the bass and warmth the render’s add is somewhat of an equivalent of what a tube amp would do.
The “tube” sound is generally an increase in second order harmonic distortion. So, when a 100hz tone is played, you get a bit extra of the 200hz harmonic. This isn’t something you can do with EQ or tip rolling, though the added warmth may have a certain similarity to increasing the bass presence with EQ.
Tubes are fun, for a while. The problem is feeding the habit. They are ‘organic’ devices and change continuously (degrade mostly) and they’re not making them at all like they used to back in the early days of high tolerance, labor intensive construction and rare materials; for mostly military use. Are there some good new manufacture tubes out there, sure, but finding them is tough…new old stock is fraught with danger and/or great expense and risk. And then even when you find a great set or two they will continue to change and degrade. Signal tubes last much longer than power amp tubes though.
It’s quite the conundrum as we mostly chase low distortion and technical accuracy in the specs but then add tubes which are only adding distortion that just so happens to be so very pleasing to the ear when done well.
I’m just cautioning to be careful what you wish for as you just might get it - a habit that is exceedingly difficult to sustain in this modern world where the likes of the amazing tubes made in the '30s-'70s are simply long gone and the replicas are mostly a facsimile of the unobtainable originals.
My 2 channel system power amp has signal tubes but I no longer have a preamp at all let alone the ones I’ve had with tubes…10 years of chasing was enough for me.