Should I buy the Liquid Carbon X?

Unlike other people on the forum, I refuse to blame M0N ; )

So, something like the D90+Tor Balanced Amp would be recommended? Have you personally heard the amp?

I always blame Mon, but I have a rule that states you should never blame the person responsible.

Well, I don’t even know if the D90 is out yet so I haven’t heard that lol. I personally haven’t heard the balanced tor amp yet, but I’ve heard its an upgrade from the tor roger, and I have heard that. The roger was very impressive for the price to me, with my only complaint being the ergonomic issues I think it has (I don’t really like where inputs and outputs are). I highly doubt that the balanced version would be a disappointment, and also I have talked to other people who have heard it and they think it’s pretty sweet

Yeah, it’s a bit odd where the inputs/outputs are, but the look of it is also charming. I think I have a thing for handcrafted looks vs machined.

Hmmm how much would a balanced setup matter to you? There are other amps I would recommend but am not because they are not balanced

Not much really. Only reason would be that some equipment is balanced only, so in those cases it seems needed. All my stuff is right next to each other so I don’t need long distance xlr cables either : p

If I wasn’t going to go balanced, I’d probably just split my rca from the d50 and focus on an amp.

Bottlehead Mainline 1.1, Feliks Espressivo Mark II or Elise mkii, Hagerman Audio Labs Tuba, Woo WA6-SE 2nd gen come to mind from what I have heard keeping it under like 1.2k new

There are a ton of smaller brands made buy a few people, but typically prices are high for those

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Thanks, I’ll take a look at the suggestions later :slight_smile:

Of the ones mentioned, I think I find the tuba the most aesthetically pleasing (walnut panels? Sign me up ^^). If you’ve heard it what were your thoughts on it? It seemed people really like the stock tubes it comes with, so I wouldn’t have to worry about finding a golden combination of tubes for it. And I also saw positive/hype comments from a few who tried it with zmf headphones :smiley: though it doesn’t look like many have tried it yet to make it very popular.

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I just got my LCX+SDAC and it DEFINITELY improves the PC37x to the point where I can actually listen to it (it was SO muffled before), my other single end-eds are improved but marginally.
It’s a shame the Aune x1s sold-through, I’d like to have tried that.

I posted this deal a while ago. I have and like this amp. I would not want it as my only amp, but it really has a cool sound. Kind of tubey. Great to smooth out any brighter, sharp 'phones. I think it is a steal at this price. And you could add a nice balanced DAC with the SMSL SU-8 when it comes up at $170.00. That would be an incredible package for $330.00!

I thought it was pretty nice for the price imo, actually pretty refined sounding for a tube but still delivered on the tube sound. It’s an absolute brick in build lol, and felt super solid. Can definitely recommend for the price

I guess my only concern is what would be the limit I could expect on what it could drive. I’m assuming 300 ohm would be fine off of it.

Also, is the liquid spark still considered a good warm single ended amp? Because, if I end up liking the tuba over the atom for pure listening I think I’d like to replace my atom with something else for my pc37x and just leave that plugged in all the time.

Yeah, the liquid spark is a good warmer and smoother solid state, very nice for the price

I think you could use your ZMF for sure, you could also use your dynamics as well and prob be fine. The phantom is a maybe but prob not

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I guess that settles that then, I’ll post again when I’ve bought it, and then impressions later. I’ll definitely try the phantoms on it and see how that goes. Interested in trying IEMs on it too.

Also nice to see that it has a 10 year warranty (!) and a 30 day trial period. This guy is confident in his product.

Going with the tuba?

Yup. Seems like a good tube amp to start getting in to tubes with.

Nice, it’s a really well engineered design that’s pretty unique for an OPT design (has a transformer instead of OTL). Also be warned I think the wood is like 50 bucks extra

Also it was designed with crossfeed so it actually can make some headphones sound more speaker like (but you can’t turn it off from what I remember but it’s subtle)

The amp isn’t super powerful but you don’t plan on running any very power hungry headphones anyway, it’s just got a great unique sound