596 and 6c8g ts
Beautiful combo.
So detailed

Thanks everyone for all the input that has lead to this setup.

your amp looks great also..

abvolt said:

your amp looks great also..

Click to expand...

Thanks

Just need a new dac.
More revealing
Pro ject dac rs
Rega dac
Or music Hall 25.3
Not sure

khragon said:

  I wouldn't buy SERPs at $1200, at that price I agree Takatsuki is probably (because I never heard them) a better buy at $1350 USD from price japan.
Woo sells them for $1620 I believe.
 
Sophia only sell their 30 days warranty SERP on eBay:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/demo-Sophia-Electric-Royal-Princess-300B-tubes-for-Western-2A3-RCA-845-amplifier-/161723108987?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item25a772ce7b

Click to expand...

 
Thank you - good to know

3083joe said:

596 and 6c8g ts
Beautiful combo.
So detailed

Thanks everyone for all the input that has lead to this setup.

Click to expand...

Are you pleased with the Aussie guys Tung-Sols? I spoke to him on Thursday. He is out. I purchased his last 3 sets. I think he has two left on eSlay and then that will be it.

3083joe said:

Just need a new dac.
More revealing
Pro ject dac rs
Rega dac
Or music Hall 25.3
Not sure

Click to expand...

Well, recognizing that I am plugging gear that I own, but... go with the Rega. Not a detail king, but absolute magic with tubes.
 
...
 
As a side note, I've been playing with re-clockers: a Bel Canto mLink for USB-to-S/PDIF (from the Mac; had this for awhile) and a Wyred4Sound Remedy for S/PDIF from my spinner or Airport Express (i.e. iPad playback of TIDAL, Spotify, SoundCloud, et al.).
 
See photos: HDMI out from the Blu-ray player --> HDMI de-embedder (extracts high-res audio from BD, SACD) --> W4S Remedy (digital buffer and re-clocker) --> Rega S/PDIF --> Woo. Sounds as good (almost?) as my Bryston BDP-1 for S/PDIF output.
 

^

I can't work out what you are doing there. Are you extracting SACD from the player and then putting that into your DAC that does't decode DSD?

If so I would be interested in that. I have two blu-Ray players that do SACD but I can't listen to it with my HP's unless I use the ****ty Oppo HA1 DAC. I refuse to do that.

badas said:

^

I can't work out what you are doing there. Are you extracting SACD from the player and then putting that into your DAC that does't decode DSD?

If so I would be interested in that. I have two blu-Ray players that do SACD but I can't listen to it with my HP's unless I use the ****ty Oppo HA1 DAC. I refuse to do that.

Click to expand...

Sorry... my post was probably mis-leading. I set the Blu-ray player to output LPCM, as opposed to DSD.
 
IIRC, @Badas, you have Oppo spinners and all of the Oppos (and my Pioneer) output SACD as 88.2/24 LPCM (which is correct and good - Oppo has a nice write-up on why they do that, as opposed to 176.4 which Sony and Yamaha players will output). For Blu-ray audio or DVD-Audio, it's whatever the source material is sampled at - it's unchanged. Copyright BS will prevent the original content from being output from anything but HDMI (i.e. it requires an HDCP handshake and de-crypting).
 
The challenge is that most BDPs will not output anything but 44.1/48-16 from the S/PDIF port, if anything comes out at all (e.g. SACD).
 
So, the KanexPro box passes through the HDCP handshake from my attached monitor/AVR to "authorize the player" and then will "de-embed" the audio streams, in parallel, and re-direct via S/PDIF to your DAC of choice.
 
Finally, I decided to route the S/PDIF out to the Remedy to clean-up and re-clock any jitter introduced by the playback chain; then out to the Rega's S/PDIF input.
 
It's scary how clean this all sounds... 

3083joe said:

Just need a new dac.
More revealing
Pro ject dac rs
Rega dac
Or music Hall 25.3
Not sure

Click to expand...

I love my Rega… 

khragon said:

  I wouldn't buy SERPs at $1200, at that price I agree Takatsuki is probably (because I never heard them) a better buy at $1350 USD from price japan.
Woo sells them for $1620 I believe.
 
Sophia only sell their 30 days warranty SERP on eBay:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/demo-Sophia-Electric-Royal-Princess-300B-tubes-for-Western-2A3-RCA-845-amplifier-/161723108987?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item25a772ce7b

Click to expand...

 
Thanks for the link, and the input, everyone.  And sorry for the double post.  Got sidetracked and didn't multi quote. Still not sure what I'm going to do.  Was hoping I'd find something for a bit cheaper tbh, but I'm greener than grass at this, so it's only naiveté on my part.  If I'm going to spend more than I want, I'm going to get something that I'll absolutely love.  I think for the time being I'm still waiting.

michaelkeeney said:

Starting to think about some 300B's for my WA5. Anyone have any recs here? I've read some great things about Emission Labs recently. Trying to find something that isn't at the high end of the scale.... Best bang for buck. Thanks...

Click to expand...

I'm a fan of the EMLs.  I had the Mesh 300B and the Mesh 5U4G for several years.  They served me well until I moved up to the Elrogs.  I seem to have one of the few pairs that haven't had any trouble with Elrogs, and they sound terrific.  The EMLs have a spectacular soundstage and mids and highs are terrific, the only knock?  Not the best or deepest bass experience.  Otherwise, they're terrific tubes, and frankly, a bargain compared to some of the others in their class.
 
Someday I'm going to try the Taks.  They're a bit of a pain to order, though, and I haven't found a way to order the Tak 274B on their own, you can only get them along with the 300B, which is roughly a $3000 purchase all together.  

badas said:

Are you pleased with the Aussie guys Tung-Sols? I spoke to him on Thursday. He is out. I purchased his last 3 sets. I think he has two left on eSlay and then that will be it.

Click to expand...

Yes. I love them.
Better to my ears than the nu. Both 6f8 and 6c8. With my paradises dac and 596 nu was a little muddy. Ts with everything else brought out lots of detail. Might have to pick up a backup set of the ts

michaelkeeney said:

I love my Rega… 

Click to expand...

Which version you have? Reg or r

reeltime said:

I'm a fan of the EMLs.  I had the Mesh 300B and the Mesh 5U4G for several years.  They served me well until I moved up to the Elrogs.  I seem to have one of the few pairs that haven't had any trouble with Elrogs, and they sound terrific.  The EMLs have a spectacular soundstage and mids and highs are terrific, the only knock?  Not the best or deepest bass experience.  Otherwise, they're terrific tubes, and frankly, a bargain compared to some of the others in their class.

Someday I'm going to try the Taks.  They're a bit of a pain to order, though, and I haven't found a way to order the Tak 274B on their own, you can only get them along with the 300B, which is roughly a $3000 purchase all together.  

Click to expand...

My Elrog have to failed either (knock on wood!!) .