AudioTailor Impedance Converter
Several months ago I read a thread where Joseph Lau of AudioTailor was offering a free impedance converter to anyone who was willing to write a short review. I took him up on his offer deciding that if I liked it I would write a review and if I thought that it came up short I would just give him feedback. Here is my mini-review.
I have used speaker amps to drive headphones with good results for years. I have used both tube and SS. Last year I decided to get the “amp to end all amps” and bought a Tektron TK2A3/50S-I tube amp. This amp allows me to run 300B, 2A3, 45, 206, 50 tubes by switching the heater voltages. I would never have considered an amp with a “one size fits all” scheme if I had not read a glowing article on 6Moons and was not sitting on a stash of NOS tubes.
I use the amp to power my K1000s with very good results. The problem was that I also wanted to run my lower power 45’s but they did not have enough horsepower for the K1000’s and sounded quite bad with my HD650’s. I diagnosed the problem as an impedance mismatch and started looking around for a pair of impedance matching transformers. Along came Josephs kind offer and voila! a match.
His permalloy 1:4 transformers are neatly encased in a good quality extruded aluminum case. Opening the case you find small seemingly well built transformers soldered to a suited to purpose circuit board. Case connectors are ¼ inch phone jacks with an accompanying cable which has ¼ tips on both ends. I am not really sure why he has plug for the amp output since with most amps that you would need an impedancer for you would be coming off of speaker terminals… but that ends up being my only criticism of the unit. My current system is PC Audio based. Bel Canto 24/96 USB adapter to Twisted Pair OPUS dual mono to Tektron TK2A3/50S-I tube amp to K1000s or HD650s.
The bottom line is that the AudioTailor impedancer did exactly what I had hoped for. It made my HD650’s happily useable with my tube amp without sacrificing anything that I could notice. I think that is certainly the most one could ask of this type of device. My understanding is that is sells for about $100US direct from AudioTailor.
Several months ago I read a thread where Joseph Lau of AudioTailor was offering a free impedance converter to anyone who was willing to write a short review. I took him up on his offer deciding that if I liked it I would write a review and if I thought that it came up short I would just give him feedback. Here is my mini-review.
I have used speaker amps to drive headphones with good results for years. I have used both tube and SS. Last year I decided to get the “amp to end all amps” and bought a Tektron TK2A3/50S-I tube amp. This amp allows me to run 300B, 2A3, 45, 206, 50 tubes by switching the heater voltages. I would never have considered an amp with a “one size fits all” scheme if I had not read a glowing article on 6Moons and was not sitting on a stash of NOS tubes.
I use the amp to power my K1000s with very good results. The problem was that I also wanted to run my lower power 45’s but they did not have enough horsepower for the K1000’s and sounded quite bad with my HD650’s. I diagnosed the problem as an impedance mismatch and started looking around for a pair of impedance matching transformers. Along came Josephs kind offer and voila! a match.
His permalloy 1:4 transformers are neatly encased in a good quality extruded aluminum case. Opening the case you find small seemingly well built transformers soldered to a suited to purpose circuit board. Case connectors are ¼ inch phone jacks with an accompanying cable which has ¼ tips on both ends. I am not really sure why he has plug for the amp output since with most amps that you would need an impedancer for you would be coming off of speaker terminals… but that ends up being my only criticism of the unit. My current system is PC Audio based. Bel Canto 24/96 USB adapter to Twisted Pair OPUS dual mono to Tektron TK2A3/50S-I tube amp to K1000s or HD650s.
The bottom line is that the AudioTailor impedancer did exactly what I had hoped for. It made my HD650’s happily useable with my tube amp without sacrificing anything that I could notice. I think that is certainly the most one could ask of this type of device. My understanding is that is sells for about $100US direct from AudioTailor.
