[PopZeus]

They are very technical and still very musical. Don't know about the Art because I swapped the stock tubes with JJ. I think that i prefer the Horizon!

Good to know! The only place I've seen the Horizon series for sale is on Amazon, so I'm a bit hesitant to start buying matched sets of tubes from there. Seems a bit sketchy to me, but others might have positive stories about buying tubes from the most unspecialized online retailer ever.

 

[eriktous]

This combo with the Sennheiser HD660S2 is awesome. Can't stop listening.

I have the same combo. The TA-84 is my first OTL (and only my second tube amp after the Vali 3). If I were to consider some tube rolling, which would make the most impact, changing the preamp tubes or the power amp ones?

 

[PopZeus]

I have the same combo. The TA-84 is my first OTL (and only my second tube amp after the Vali 3). If I were to consider some tube rolling, which would make the most impact, changing the preamp tubes or the power amp ones?

My understanding with OTL amps is that all tube changes the sound more so than other tube amps where the pre-amp tubes make the most difference. Though there are exceptions to that rule generally.

Fwiw, the K11 drives the 660S2 to a pleasing musical level without missing anything beyond that upper level of refinement for higher tier gear. Makes for a fine everyday rig when I don't wanna turn my desktop into a hotbox.

 

[Ichos]

I have the same combo. The TA-84 is my first OTL (and only my second tube amp after the Vali 3). If I were to consider some tube rolling, which would make the most impact, changing the preamp tubes or the power amp ones?

I have changed all four tubes and I like the end result. I suggest to do the same. However, from what I Know and my experience from reviewing a bunch of OTL and transformer coupled amplifiers, I will have to respectfully disagree with @PopZeus.

In OTL amps , the preamp tubes are the ones that affect the sound the most while in transformer amplifiers they are the power tubes. Of course this is a general rule and it depends on the design of the specific amplifier.

The TA-84 tubes are pretty affordable so I suggest to change all of them.

 

[Ichos]

Good to know! The only place I've seen the Horizon series for sale is on Amazon, so I'm a bit hesitant to start buying matched sets of tubes from there. Seems a bit sketchy to me, but others might have positive stories about buying tubes from the most unspecialized online retailer ever.

I am not sure that Amazon can offer you matched tubes.

 

[PopZeus]

I have changed all four tubes and I like the end result. I suggest to do the same. However, from what I Know and my experience from reviewing a bunch of OTL and transformer coupled amplifiers, I will have to respectfully disagree with @PopZeus.

In OTL amps , the preamp tubes are the ones that affect the sound the most while in transformer amplifiers they are the power tubes. Of course this is a general rule and it depends on the design of the specific amplifier.

The TA-84 tubes are pretty affordable so I suggest to change all of them.

Happy to defer to the expert. I'm relatively new to tube amps and my knowledge is pretty minimal.

 

[Hyde00]

Out of curiosity, anyone tried the K11 R2R with RNHP?

 

[feeder6]

Hi everybody. I want to buy a Fiio K11 R2R to use it wirh my Raspberry 4. OS will be volumio or picoreplayer. Can somebody tell me if the Fiio supports hardware volume control?

 

[nioh]

I got one of these today and I'm impressed !
This one is great value for money and brings my Hifiman HE-R10P to newer heights.
It could use a tad bit more sub-bass though.

I noticed a small issue. When switching tracks with different bitrates, the sound skips a bit in the beginning. Anyone else noticed this ?

 

[FiiO-Yellow]

K11 R2R review from Z review in youtube.

 

[nioh]

@FiiO When switching tracks with different bitrates, the sound skips a bit in the beginning. Is this a known problem with the R2R and if not could you please ask your team to check this ?

Thanks.

 

[nzjw]

@FiiO When switching tracks with different bitrates, the sound skips a bit in the beginning. Is this a known problem with the R2R and if not could you please ask your team to check this ?

Thanks.

Do you mean bit depth or bit rate? I can switch between 320kbps and 192kbps mp3 files (in iTunes) with no sound skipping at all.

Also tested 16bits and 24bits flac files in foobar2000 using WASAPI (push) without skipping neither.

 

[Edward Ng]

Do you mean bit depth or bit rate? I can switch between 320kbps and 192kbps mp3 files (in iTunes) with no sound skipping at all.

Also tested 16bits and 24bits flac files in foobar2000 using WASAPI (push) without skipping neither.

Switching between encoding rates for MP3 files doesn’t change anything that hits the DAC because when your software decodes MP3 to PCM, it is likely sending a fixed sample rate and resolution to the DAC (likely red book/16-bit, 44.1KHz).

-Ed

 

[nzjw]

Switching between encoding rates for MP3 files doesn’t change anything that hits the DAC because when your software decodes MP3 to PCM, it is likely sending a fixed sample rate and resolution to the DAC (likely red book/16-bit, 44.1KHz).

-Ed

Yes and thanks, that's why I doubted nioh's query thinking he mixed up bit rate and bit depth, but I didn't think of your explanation.

In Windows, in shared mode all streams regardless of the bit depth and sample rate are up or down scaled by the OS to a fixed depth and rate (configured in the output device properties) before sending to the DAC. iTunes runs in shared mode only.

In exclusive mode using WASAPI or ASIO, the original bit depth & sample rate are send to the DAC in real time. foobar2000 supports exclusive mode and I tested that and found no skipping.

No idea how Mac or DAP behave in this regard.

 

[PopZeus]

MacOSX has an app that is used to set the audio quality to any given output device, if you want to use something other than the OS default. I wish they had an option to force the original bit depth and sample rate of the audio stream to get output, but afaik only Audirvana can force bit perfect streams on a Mac. And while Macs make for a pretty good upsampler, I’d rather upsample along a 2 or 3x multiplier, instead of forcing everything to 192 or 96 kHz.