Massdrop X Alex cavalli tube hybrid amp broke, looking for new setup

What do you guys think would be a replacement setup for this amp? Budget around 300 dollars max.

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Topping E30 with Schitt Asgard 3 :crazy_face:

Or the Schiit Vali 2, the Liquid Spark are nice.

Do you know what the consensus is on adding the DAC for the asgard? Is it frowned upon?

From what I’ve seen they’re on par with other $100 dacs, I’d personally suggest getting a separate dac due to the fact that you can upgrade independently. That’s personally what I did with my A3/e30 combo and I now have three amps and will be upgrading to the bf2.

E30 is a great dac and can suit you well up until you go for the ~$700 tier of dacs

Also, if you want to look at reviews of the e30, @WaveTheory did a really good review on it.

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The multibit is quite alright… it loses some headroom but it has some nice impact and still maintains its detail retrieval, coloration, and great spatial recreation on the amp. I found nothing wrong at all with the multibit however, 4490 is kind of meh in my opinion and you’d be better off just with a dedicated dac on that honestly.

Though, I definitely would say it will depend on if you really preferred that tube warmth from the alex cavelli. If so you’d of course want another hybrid of sorts like deleeh mentioned such as Vali or the same unit you had among others

also this yeah, another reason to get them seperate.

if your budget was a bit higher and you were near me I would just offer to sell you my black asgard 3 with multibit as I no longer use it, and plan to put it up for sale soon

Where are you? This seems too tempting… might have to uhh rearrange the budget but if you’re near me that would be good. I’m in south Louisiana.

lol your definitely too far from me bud, I am up north in indiana I could ship it to you but I would have to check the fees on that. Got a general quote. looks to be around $20 for shipping fees. Seems it will be a bit out of the question, so suggest the alternatives in that regard. I will leave it up to you man, the amp is in complete mint condition(I take good care of my stuff to point that plainly) and just need to essentially make good return value for it. You can pm me directly on it otherwise please do feel free to go with the suggested alternatives or like some of the entry levels like a the jds stack, monoprice stack, ifi stack, schiit stack or some of the combo units