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Old 04-22-2007, 11:15 AM
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cotdt cotdt is offline
Headphoneus Supremus
 
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I compared the Darkvoice 337 against the Doge 6210 at Mike's apartment. What a blast! Mike was not only super cool, but had amazing equipment. Well, to me it turned out to be more of an OTL Pentode (337) versus OPT Triode (Doge) tube amp comparison. They turned out to be polar opposites, and definately a matter of preference.

The Darkvoice 337 is an amazing amp! It is huge, and beautiful, with no hum. Sizewise, it's about twice that of the Doge. Coming from transformer-output SET amps like the Doge 6210, at first I thought that the Darkvoice 337 sounded like a solid state amp, since it did not have midrange bloom typically associated with tubes and was very clean-sounding. But then I A/B tested the Darkvoice 337 against a real solid state amp the M^3 (with STEPS power supply), and the Darkvoice sounded more lively, impactful, and dynamic. Mike says the 337 is said to sound similar to the 332 but better overall. It has tighter bass than the Doge 6210 and a cleaner midrange. The highs were very similar on both amps. I thought that the M^3, Darkvoice, and Doge 6210 were equally detailed, with the headphone being the limitation. If you just want to buy one amp and nothing else, the 337 might be the amp to get. It does what an amp should do, which is faithful amplification. That it does very well. It presents the music like it is, rather than sugar-coat it like the Doge. And did I mention the tighter bass? It drove the low impedance 25ohm Denon D2000 very well, which surprised me since tube amps have low dampening factors. The Doge made the bass on these Denons a little flabby in comparision (but definately something I can live with). The imaging on the Darkvoice is also superior to the Doge 6210.

On the other hand, if you already own a solid state amp, the Darkvoice will sound very similar so you are better off with a "tubey" tube amp like the Doge 6210. Harmonic distortion specs support this observation. The Doge has plenty of midrange bloom, expanded soundstage, and a sweeter midrange with greater emphasis on the vocals. It's more emotional and natural-sounding to me, but this effect could be in part because I am more used to this amp. It has the prototypical SET tube sound that some like but others dislike. It synergizes better with the K701 because it makes the sound more "full". I should note that my Doge was lightly modded. The gain on the Doge is higher than the 337, so much so that anything above 10 o'clock is useless. Replacing the 12AX7 with the 5751 should remedy this. The Doge also has greater max output than the 337, which is no surprise since it's transformer-coupled. But the only time this matters is when you use DACs without an I/V stage.

In short, while the Darkvoice 337 was technically superior in all aspects, and more neutral, I still prefer the Doge 6210 for its SET presentation of the sound and its better synergy with certain headphones. The Darkvoice 337 sounded like a good solid state amp, with some differences. It is probably in the same class as the Dynahi, probably livelier but won't have the massive bass impact (it is still very amazing in its bass qualities, though). Too bad the Dynahi wasn't represented in our mini-meet, but we did have the M^3 at hand and I already mentioned that I preferred the 337 over it. In turn, the M^3 is superior to the Gilmore Lite IMHO.

Something peculiar to the Darkvoice 337 is that it has two power switches and two volume controls (one for each channel). Channel matching turned out to be much easier than I anticipated, but it could be tiresome in the long term. This is definately a dual mono amp. If this were my own amp, I would mod it to use only one volume control and power switch.

Headphones tested were Denon D2000, AKG K701, Ultrasone 2500, Beyer DT880, and Beyer DT990. Various DACs were used. All these amp comparisons are relative and many people would not even be able to hear the difference. The choice of DAC has a far greater impact on the sound than the amp.
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Headphones: Denon AH-D2000, Senn HD595

DAC: Zhaolu 2.5 Zapfilter Mk2 balanced, amb Gamma1 γ1

Amps: SE EL84, Balanced β22, Dynahi, Mini^3, CKČIII, Singlepower MPX3

HOTRODDING the X-Fi: A Layman's Guide to sonic bliss
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