Headphone Amplification

Hey all, I was thinking of upgrading my 45 tubes for my custom made SET Headphone amp. Currently I have a simple ST shape pair (Rytheon or Sylvania, I don't recall). There are quite a few options, most of them are expensive and some are scary expensive (Like the EML stuff). The Old NOS ones: Blue arcturus 145 (probably around 300$ for a NOS pair), If you can find some. Baloon type 45s (245/345/etc...) NOS, around 250$ a pair for those rare units from 1930-1940, don't know any preferred manufacture. The New ones: EML 45- 400/500$ for a pair of Solid Plate/Mesh. EML 45 Ballon style speical Edition - 600$ a pair. Sophia Electric 45 - 250$-275$ for a new pair …

Has anyone used these in any amp? Are they worth the premium price?

After my recent experience with the Zana Deux in Cinci I was again reminded what a difference power can make. As I have found more powerful tubes to run in the Singlepowers they just keep getting better. Mikhail, I believe, has a little bias against the bigger power tubes like the 2a3/ 300b etc.. because he doesnt feel they maintain the amps refinement .... and you have to admit at a certain point how much output power is necessary. But me ... I think if you have a refined gain tube that sets the character of the amp ..... the more power you add ..... things only get better. With this in mind I contacted Mikhail about a 6c33 amp. I had discussed this about a year ago …

Good Day, I'm wondering if you'd be so kind as to reply to some questions I have. I am just getting into this hifi headphone world. I want to hear your thoughts good, bad or otherwise. here we go, I'll start with what I have. Senn HD-650's and have a cardas audio cable coming in the mail atm. I have a headroom coda amp le ( It just don't seem to cut the mustard) therefore my endeavor for better stuff. The more I look around and research the more overwhelmed I get with the seemingly endless list of choices. I try to take anything I read on forums with a grain of salt as I know that most posters push the products that they own as being the best, as it helps…

Short version: Do the 6SN7 tubes in the Woo Audio WA5LE (300B SET topology - see pic below) need to be matched? Long version: I am getting ready to sell my Woo Audio WA5LE to make room and money for the future BHSE. However, one of the stock "matched" driver tubes that Jack sent me with the amp (a cheap Tung Sol 6SN7gtb) was very noisy and tested much much lower than the other when I got it. Since I never planned to use the stock tubes, it wasn't a problem. Now that I am selling it, I am thinking of selling the amp with an option to buy the amp stock (without "upgraded" tubes) and so I feel that I should include one pair of cheap 6SN7 tubes. I do have another Tu…

So I recently purchased a Yamaha RX-V365 A/V Receiver for use with my new 5.1 system. The receiver has 3 HDMI inputs and one HDMI output. I had intended to hook my Blu-ray player and my satelite receiver into the A/V receiver via the HDMI inputs. As it turns out this receiver will not send audio to the speaker outputs via the HDMI inputs. This seems pretty lame to me, as the whole idea with HDMI is to have one cable carrying evrything. It also seems that this is fairly common. My receivers manual says to use the digit output of my Blu-ray into the digital input of the receiver. That works fine for 2 channel playback, but the manual says that it's only compatible…

Got an email advertisement today introducing a new line of Samsung hybrid amps. Here is a link to the product page: http://www.samsung.com/us/2012-vacuum-tube-amplifier/?cid=smc-nahq-mult-0702-10000079

I just checked Craig's site...

Just up on InnerFidelity - Katz's Corner has a review of the KGSS Carbon and Dynalo Mk II built by Mjolnir Audio - well done, kevin and spritzer! He used an SR-007 Mk II with port mod and LCD-4 for the reviews.

Hi! Got a WA2. Use it with HD650 and T1. Any other WA2 owners out there?

Somebody save this guy. Anyone who flies an airplane should be concerned about fires.

In the ongoing battle against the flying squirrel infestation in my house (that is not a joke) I have been emptying out the attic spaces upstairs. My house has a Gambrel roof, that lends itself to an awful lot of storage space. That means after 33 years in the same family, there is an ungodly amount of crap up there. Mixed in with the other detritus, I found this: Sorry about the lousy shot, I didn't have time to futz around and get a better one. My father dealt in antiques, including radios, and sometimes he'd get a collection of tubes. I am recalling some much bigger boxes full of tubes, but I don't know if he still had them when he died. This box might be …

Hi, been lurking for a while but finally signed up! Quick background on my gear: I'm in the Stax ecosystem with an L700(Mk1), SR-3, and an SRM-003. I also have a D10 and T1S, the latter of which was on a shelf unused in the original box for 25 years or so and last year I bought it. I'm still planning to recap it and upgrade it with the constant current mod, but that's to come soon. In the meanwhile, I came across a curiosity online, a homemade normal-bias tube amp. No real info provided, but it was a reasonable price so I took the shot in the dark, and I don't have the electronics knowledge to grok what I'm looking at. Can anyone more educated help me?

What are your opinions on the Corda Symphony? There's a thread on the other site where its been reported that coaxial input to the DAC causes the signal to drop out. This is caused by the SPDIF receiver chip resetting when new signal is present. (takes a few ms) Optical is fine tho. And the SPDIF receiver chip was upgraded from the Opera's to alleviate the problems with the Opera's clicking noise when no signal was present.

OK I swore that I would I would not buy any more equipment, especially amps in 2008, pretty much settled on the stuff in my signature. But this new balanced Chinese tube amp has caught my eye. I doubt there's any of these in the wild, and certainly no one in the western world would have one. The question is, would it even be possible to manufacture a credible balanced, all-tube amplifier at the supposed price point of ~US$800. Let's leave out labor cost, obviously cheap in China. Just on parts/component, is it even feasible? Because all my core phones are terminated in 4-pin XLR (K1000, HD650, DT880-600ohm), I am very tempted to take a punt on this.

Considering the overwhelmingly negative sentiment on Head-Case regarding RSA and its designs I have up until now stayed silent. I defer to KG technical expertise. I do read most of the anti-Ray propaganda that is posted. I believe that all of this propaganda has given me a slight predisposition against liking the Sonics of RSA?s products. It is with this predisposition that I attended this weekends NYC meet. I tend to pay attention to products that might be considered very high end. I already own what I consider to be the finest portable amp so I had little interest in listening to the new Tomahawk or even the Hornet, so I won?t comment on their performance or value ex…

I've recently taken delivery of an MPX3 SE, which is to say that the voltage has been raised to take advantage of the more powerful output tubes, namely the 6BL7GT/As, 6BX7GTs, the 5687sw and the like. If you've got a low impedence and/or low sensitivity can (K701, Grado, etc..) then you definitely need to take this into consideration if you're getting a Singlepower. And given that this is Headcase, I'd also like to mention that this is the second/third trnasformation my amp has taken on For me the SE deals with the increased voltage and current bias. I have 2 voltage settings on my amp, one which is 300V and one which is 375. For me it allows me to take full adva…

I thought it was about time my cheap ass got a cheap headphone amp (I wouldn't be so cheap if I wasn't so broke ) and due to the overabundance of orthodynamics in my collection I need something with a good bit of powah, so far the only ones I've found that are both cheap and powerful seem to be the Darkvoice amps @1w. I'm thinking the little Figaro or 336. I've heard and liked the 336 but heard not the Figaro and that one is cheaper and looks less vulnerable to my clumsy ways. Anyone here heard one and have an opinion of it as a smallish and cheap workaday amp or others similarly priced ($200 inc shipping) with enough juice to run orthos?

Can anyone suggest the dirt cheapest amp that will adequately drive the O2's? Will the SRM-252 work?

I got a chance to listen to the Singlepower Platinum Extreme at CanJam. I liked it compared to other tubed amplifiers because it didn't have that tubey warm colored sound. I wanted to pick one up used, but I have been reading that Mikhail is MIA and there may be problems with getting it fixed if I ever needed to. Can someone suggest some comparable amps with a similar sound? Just a FYI, I listened to the WooAudio3, Cary Exciter, and the Cary 300SEI. I thought all three of these amps sounded to warm and tubey for my taste.

I would like to build a Solid State balanced amp and need recommendations. I have LCD-2's non fazor to power. I've built in the past(guitar amps too) soldering skills good, I'm not coming up with anything besides B22 amps. Suggestions please.

Well I just bought a NuForce Icon Mobile, for my first amp/dac. I will be using it to power my Denon Ah-D2000, which I am absolutely loving so far (Have had for about a month, maybe a bit longer). HeadphoneAddicts review suggests good synergy with them so I figure i'll give them a try. When I get them I will do the same kind of thing I did with my headphones, I will do an initial review and then an After burn in review :] Hopefully will be of use to other people. This will be my first amp/dac experience so I am intrigued on what changes this will make to the sound. The amp will be coming in 1-3 days, wish me luck hopefully I don't spill things in excitement when I…

I've heard a few Zana's at the meets but the only Beta I heard was Nate's first one......... and meet conditions are, far from optimal, so what do you guys think? Thanks USG

I recently bumped into this site decware, where they make SET amplifiers without circuit boards. Being a complete electrical engineering idiot, Im wondering if there is any merits to it. If im not mistaken, audionote uk does not use circuit boards too. There's the internals to one of his speaker amps. Im quite tempted to put down an order for one just for novelty sake and the lifetime warranty. If im not mistaken he makes headphone amps and kind enough to include the schematics. Quite skeptical about the beeswax caps though. http://www.decware.com/newsite/TABOO.htm

Do you like stepped attenuators in your amps? I had one in my Corda HA-2 MKII SE which I've since sold, and find myself missing it. I never really had the problem of finding the "right" volume level that other listeners have. Right now, I think I will definitely have one in my next amp. So, what is it for you?