Lehmann Black Cube Linear? - Page 4

My taste leans towards vintage and tube gear.  My two main sources are a rebuilt Revox B226 Signature CD player and and a Sony s900ES SACD player.  For vinyl it is a Sl1200 with Shure V15 III and Jico SAS stylus.  

The C220 with NOS Telefunkens really tames the sibilance on the HD800.  The vocal midrange is lush, the bass is full and the highs sparkle without piercing. I am quite thrilled with the sound.  I have tried Bluegrass, Blues, Pop, Classical and Jazz.  

Having the Lehmann in line with the C220 gives me the advantage of switching sources, EQ (although it is now bypassed) and tube rolling.  I think NOS Bugle Boys would be even better.

Revox B226>McIntosh C220>Lehmann BCL>HD800

^^ sounds like an interesting idea, tubed pre-amp + BCL. i tried BCL with vinyl setup (Music Hall mmf 2.2 le + Pro-Ject Phono Box II) and i really liked what i heard. it wasn't perfect, bass was loose and less controlled than with digital, sibilance of vocals sounded little weird and overall sound was definitely not neutral, even AKG K701 sounded like bass heavy cans which is quite an achievement  but it did so many things good that i could easily live with that setup - huge soundstage, rich tonal textures, musical involment, timing, lack of listening fatigue and most of all sense of naturalness and continuous sound without grain. it seriously got me thinking about vinyl.

you mentioned you are using pre-out outputs of C220. have you tried the fixed outputs? (labeled as TAPE i believe). it makes more sense unless you insist on using C220's volume control.

OK, I'm definitely going to go and try all the different preamp/headamp stringing combos I can now. 

By the way, has anyone been enjoying the LBCL pre-amp? I'm trying to work out whether using the LCBL and buying a pre-amp would work better than my current pre-stringing that I've got going on now.

At the moment, because my integrated amp doesn't have a pre-in and none of the loops or RCA inputs bypass the pre-amp, to get audio out of my speakers, I'm going:

DAC - LBCL - Marantz IntAmp - Speakers

The Marantz pre-amp is being fed by the LBCL pre-amp. It sounds slightly different to just using the Marantz on it's own (but is more convenient and not necessarily detrimental to sound quality).

Quote:

Originally Posted by dex85 

 

you mentioned you are using pre-out outputs of C220. have you tried the fixed outputs? (labeled as TAPE i believe). it makes more sense unless you insist on using C220's volume control.

I think the tape out does not use the 12AX7 stage, so I am using one of the other outputs.  The owners manual does not have a schematic and I can't find one online, but I am pretty sure that only the one balanced and two unbalanced outs go through the tubes.

Not even the C220 headphone amp is using the tube circuit, so using the Lehmann BCL to monitor off the tube stage  is an excellent solution for me. 

As someone on HeadFi said, Tubes are where it's at for the HD800.  Not sure how this set-up will compare with a Woo, but for now it is providing many hours of enjoyment.