Review of the Little-Dot MKII Tube Headphone Amp/Pre-Amp - Page 9

Thursday or Friday?!?! Try TODAY! Absolutely incredible shipping considering this thing just traveled a couple thousand miles. Ordered on Thursday morning, received the following Wednesday afternoon.

Sounds fantastic. I know that the tubes aren't broken in and that will take a couple hundred hours or so, but wow oh wow does this thing sound SMOOOTH.

One quick question though: I checked the dip switches just to make sure they were set correctly for my high-impedance HD650's. The manual says the default is both 1 and 2 off, and that's for high-impedance. I'm glad I checked because both pairs of dip switches were actually set to the side that says ON, and so I flipped both pairs to the other side. Is this the correct setting for my HD650's?

mmmmm glowy tubey goodness. Did I mention that they even smell good as they're warming up?

I just swapped out the stock power cable on my LD MkII.

The bass is sounding cleaner and tighter now, i also feel that my setup is brighter now.

Another tweak for you owners to play around with!

Belden 83803 with Wattgate 320i IEC and hospital grade plug.

So what should I expect? I'm creeping up to about the 40-hour mark. I want to say that the bass is cleaner. Listening to some bass heavy electronica (Massive Attack, Phutureprimitive, etc), the massively low bass is fantastic and it seems more accurate than it was in the beginning. I can certainly tell a difference in power from this amp vs my PA2V2. Bass never sounded like this.

I haven't detected a change really in mids or highs as it's aging. Still absolutely as smooth and accurate as it was when I first fired it up. I cannot believe how velvety and rich female vocals such as Jane Monheit, Madeline Peyroux, and of course, Norah Jones sound through this amp. Stunning, really. Very sonically similar to my buddy's $50k B&W 2-channel listening room. And that's saying a lot from not even $1k worth of equipment. Excellent 'dimensionality', too. Really great channel separation and directionality from instruments. Nice and wide soundstage. I can even pick up a bit of soundstage depth from some of my 'deeper' recordings (Chesky stuff, for instance). I don't know if headphones can ever accomplish a truly deep soundstage like a good speaker setup can, but it's pretty amazing.

For example, I have one live recording where someone in the audience coughs. At home listening to this, I've actually been fooled into thinking that someone was actually coughing in the room behind my den. The effect is pretty neat. While working and listening to the same recording at work, I didn't really realize it was that song and actually hit pause and took off my headphones when it happened, thinking someone was coughing/clearing their throat at my office door, which is behind me. First time that's ever happened with headphones. Bravo!

I'm also surprised that it works quite well with sub-par sources such as XM Radio. Right now I'm listening to XM Pops (one of their higher-bandwidth channels) through it and it actually sounds pretty good. Sure, there are compression artifacts, but it's pleasant enough to listen to. The warm mid-range of this amp works really nicely to help take away some of the coldness of XM's compression. No, it won't turn a lump of coal into a diamond, but it's not grinding the coal up and blowing it in my face as I thought it might.

Luckily I can listen to headphones at work, and my work schedule allows for 4 or 5 hours of music every day, now done entirely with my LD MKII + HD650 pair. Talk about heaven in my office...

Yeah, the shipping is amazing. I think that Little Tube must send it before the money has even been payed O_O. I was a bit worried about that tube smell at first as I thought it was something burning... Good to know its normal


Hmmm my tubes have probably warmed up by now. BRB!

I do have one little question about the MKII, or perhaps tubes in general. When I flip it off, I shut down my source, then flip off the amp with my headphones still plugged in, then unplug them. But I noticed that a couple of seconds after I shut it down, I get a sort of neat little dinging noise from the headphones while it's plugged in. Almost like a wind chime or some sort of Tibetian meditation chime. It's actually kind of a lovely sound. Might do it in the right ear, then softer in the left, then maybe one more really faint one in the right. Just a little tink...tink.......tink. Is this normal? It certainly doesn't sound like a problem, just the tubes losing their charge or something.

Is there a different startup/shutdown order that I should follow?

Anyone else?

Are these (Mullard CV131 / 6CQ6 Little Dot Amp MkII MkIV EF92 - eBay (item 280201494031 end time Feb-23-08 09:32:32 PST)) good 6CQ6 tubes? How do they sound compared to stock? Im really interesting in buying a pair but want to check with you guys first.

-Frank

I agree with Penchum, the Mullard CV131 are very nice sounding tubes indeed, especially compared with stock. The price is right for a matched pair and that seller is pretty awesome, good find.