[Geist]

Just a shameless bump of my own thread, but in very unlikely chance that any of you are interested...

I just bought a pair of 6DJ8-EI Elite Gold tubes and swapped out the stock Electro-Harmonix - all I can say is WOW! what a difference. I never gave tube-rolling much thought (seemed like too much of a hassle to me) but after a few people told me the Minimax improves dramatically with better tubes I figured I'd give it a go. I am very impressed. The stock tubes were decent, but a little "scratchy" at the top end I thought. Add the EI's and the sound is drastically improved, a smoother and much fuller, yet very detailed, sound. It's funny I didn't notice the faults of the stock tubes as much until I swapped in the new EI tubes. Such an improvement, and these are only decent NS tubes I put in! I'm glad I tuberolled before I sold the Minimax because I would have regretted it. Now I just have to try some NOS tubes...

Moral of the story: if you have tubes, TUBEROLL!

 

[elnero]

Yes, tuberolling the MiniMax can have excellent results. Now that you've tried the EI's you need to try some of the better 6DJ8/6922 variation tubes. My fav's were actually PCC88/7DJ8 Telefunkens and RSD's that were a rebrand but I'm not sure who manufactured them but I didn't get to try some of the more esoteric and expensive tubes.

 

[Geist]

Quote:

Originally Posted by elnero Yes, tuberolling the MiniMax can have excellent results. Now that you've tried the EI's you need to try some of the better 6DJ8/6922 variation tubes. My fav's were actually PCC88/7DJ8 Telefunkens and RSD's that were a rebrand but I'm not sure who manufactured them but I didn't get to try some of the more esoteric and expensive tubes.

Yeah I definitely want to try a few more, I'm going to keep my eyes open for deals as I would prefer not to spend hundreds on NOS tubes. I'm pretty happy with the EI's for now - do NOS tubes provide that much more of an improvement? Any suggestions on places to watch for cheap(er) tubes? Thanks.

 

[mjb]

Geist/elnero

How is the headphone out on the MM? What sort of amp would you compare it to (power-wise and sound-wise)? I really want to pick one of these up, but I can't justify it unless I can also use the built-in headphone amp. Would it have any problems driving 650's?

Tube newbie here...how long do the tubes typically last before they need replacing? How do you know they need replacing (is it an all-at-once thing or slowly degrade)? Are tubes fairly fragile once in place (need to be removed and transported seperately when transporting the unit in a car)?

Thanks,
mjb

 

[Geist]

Quote:

Originally Posted by mjb Geist/elnero How is the headphone out on the MM? What sort of amp would you compare it to (power-wise and sound-wise)? I really want to pick one of these up, but I can't justify it unless I can also use the built-in headphone amp. Would it have any problems driving 650's? Tube newbie here...how long do the tubes typically last before they need replacing? How do you know they need replacing (is it an all-at-once thing or slowly degrade)? Are tubes fairly fragile once in place (need to be removed and transported seperately when transporting the unit in a car)? Thanks, mjb

The internal headphone amp is actually a very good headamp. I have limited experience with other headphone amps but I know it's a far better amp than my $250 Porta Corda amp I owned previously. Hopefully Elnero can give you some more insight, as I believe he has done some better comparisons and said the MM internal headamp hold it's own against other amps in about the $500 range...

As for the HD650's I have plugged my friend's new 650's in the MM just recently and they drove the phones just fine. I remember reading somewhere here that others have tried the 650's with the MM headamp and had no problems whatsoever.

I'm a tube-newbie myself so I can't help you much with your other questions, though I can say that the Minimax can be moved about with the tubes in the player. Once they are in they are secure and protected, so they're not "fragile" in the sense that if you bump the MM or anything they will break. The MM ships with the tubes already inserted. As for life span I recall reading a number around 10,000 hours but I could be wrong. They last a pretty long time though, I think.

 

[murrmax]

THE only downside of the E5 is I get locked to the couch for hours and don't have enough new cds to play!!!

 

[ttueni]

Prior to owning my Esound E5, I had a Cary Audio 303/200 HDCD player that originally cost me close to $3,000 and was even assembled in Hong Kong. After the first week, the power light quit functioning so I sent it back for repair, a month later the transport kept skipping on all my cds so they replaced the transport, a year later ,same problem ,the transport was replaced again and I was told by Cary that they had been having problems with the this transport. I finally sold the unit and replaced it with the Esound E5.

I have had no problems with Esound transport, and this unit has better low level detail than the Cary with or without upsampling and is far less fatiguing in the upper midrange.

 

[philodox]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Geist Judging by the comments here, the E5 seems to have a slightly high failure rate for the transports, when compared to other CDP's. And these aren't just people who are trashing the E5 because they want to damage the rep, because most of the complainees that I've seen are still 100% Eastsound supporters...

Yes and no... The reason why it seems that way is because every single person who has a transport failure will likely post about it here on head-fi. Check google and see what comes up when you do searches about this player.

Conversly, any meridian CD player or minimax CD player [or what have you] problems will likely be posted in their own forums and will only rarely come up here on head-fi.