kmmbd
500+ Head-Fier
I guess for a lot of people the novelty of tubes in a miniature form-factor makes the solid state mode seem less interesting, and that's understandable. However, I was so smitten by the class-A solid state timbre that I kept missing the transparency in other modes.Majority of the reviews are focused on the Nutube timbre, we have always want to add a few review that focused on the Solid State timbre of C9 to balance thing out. We have put in a lot of effort to improve the solid state timbre when almost all reviews have discard the N8 solid state single end option completely.
Yes, it would be the HA-6A, forgot to put the A at the end. I went to audition one recently and that is pretty much one of the desktop endgame amps I've tried so far (the other being Accuphase E380). I'd put the HA-6A over the likes of PrimaLuna Evo 400 and the Passlabs HPA-1, and they are great amps in their own right. These are products of entirely different class, price category, and size/power demand but they are the only ones I could think of as truly an upgrade over the C9, which speaks volumes.Quick suggestion, you have mentioned HA-6 in the beginning of the review, with the i missing, since we have iHA-6 and HA-6A in our line up, this can be a bit ambitious to readers.
The comparison against iHA-6 is already in the review, I have one and it was very interesting to A/B them on the course of the review.