REVIEW: Firestone Audio Amps - Cute Beyond and Fubar III - Page 2

Excellent, I look forward to your impressions.

Have to agree, for what it's worth. I've been very impressed with the stock Cute Beyond. In fact I'm surprised it's not making more of a stir. I suspect some people are turning their noses up at this cheap little op amp based upstart that doesn't look as if it could possibly sound as good as it does.

I only first heard about headphone amps recently, a friend of mine has a Cute, so I searched, read your Cute Beyond review and I decided to give it a shot after debating on how much money I planned to spend Anyways I picked up mine and although I'm very "noobish" on the whole headphone amps topic I must say Im really impressed. I had no idea that headphone amps can make such an impact on my music. I had to post and say thanks for the nice review. Great job, even if the spec's (and some jargon) are a little over my head

Cheers

I use a set of Sennheiser HD600's.

I use it with one of these bad boys

Great setup IMHO

Here is a very late thank you for the fantastic review. It was one of the many endorsements that led me to my Cute Beyond purchase! I was very impressed from the get-go and later added the Supplier PSU and added a separate USB DAC to really get the most out of it. After playing around with a few other amps and DAC's I can really appreciate the tremendous value and competence of the Cute amp. I always thought the high gain setting would not be a desirable feature to me but once I tried it out with my K702's I haven't gone back. The signal may be slightly less clean (I'm not sure, it could just be in my head!) but the difference both in fidelity and full frequency range, especially at the bottom end, was very surprising to me.

And I just received my Little Country III, but need to get some hours on it before I can give a decent review.

What is your impression of the LC3?

The LC3 puts out a fuller and more enveloping sound than the Cute Beyond. It's not so much a wider soundstage as much more complete fidelity. All sounds and instruments have much more girth to my ears. It has more authority over the sound. The Bass goes deeper but has a bit of a warm and fuzzy quality to it with heavier and more complex bass passages. I've never owned or heard a tube amp before but I'm guessing this is both a characteristic of tubes in general and the fairly mediocre quality of the factory provided tubes. Though this may sound like a criticism it still sounds superior to the low-frequency fidelity of the Cute Beyond+Supplier.

As with the Cute Beyond, I found the LC3 delivered the best overall sound in the High-Gain setting with my K702's. Maybe once I hit 300 hours or so of play time with my K702's they may open up enough that the extra gain is not beneficial but for now these cans really seem to benefit from the boost in power.

The LC3 has another feature which I've found to be extremely useful, which is the pre-amp output in the back. I've put more hours into it playing computer audio through my home stereo system using the LC3 as my pre-amplifier than as just a headphone amplifier.

Hopefully that helps!

BTW, Audiophile Products now has a few ready to install op amp upgrade options for the Cute Beyond on their site so that may close the gap in performance somewhat. I'm going to try that out soon as well before considering parting ways with the Cute Beyond.

Awsome! thanks for the impression. the LC3 should be here on Monday. I also have some amperex tubes coming so it will be fun. I'm looking forward to it

if you don't mind me asking, where did you buy those tubes?

I got them from e-bay, and they do sound much better then the original tubes. It does sound beautiful and smooth on the DT-880 very details and deep bass, on certain songs (more than a feeling from Boston comes to mind) the bass sounded like it was little distorted, I hope that's the recording and not the amp.

Does ECC81 Tubes match the LC III?