[Skylab]

Yes, dw6928 has some JAN-GE 5670's and Sylvania 6BQ5's from me to try in the Glow. I am awaiting his report

 

[stlblue]

I am not too keen on the DAC in the Glow either, but I found this (Dell Inspiron 8600 w/XP to Dac - firewire or USB, converter ?'s) and I do use a Dell, so maybe that was my problem. I do love the amp itself (w/ an Apogee mini-DAC) and have sent it to Wayne at Bolder Cables to do so mods to it. He is interested to see what he can get out of the DAC section. I'll report back when I get it.

 

[analogbox]

Quote:

Originally Posted by tfarney /img/forum/go_quote.gif Interesting. I wouldn't even think a competent DAC could do all of that to a good amp. Makes me wonder if something is amiss. Tim

Interesting thing is how the sound changes between USB to analog fed. Again, it's like night and day. Sound becomes so much fuller and livelier with all the details. I'm not sure what's causing the DAC to sound so deficient but I wouldn't ditch the Glow amp just because of it.

 

[tfarney]

Quote:

Originally Posted by analogbox /img/forum/go_quote.gif Interesting thing is how the sound changes between USB to analog fed. Again, it's like night and day. Sound becomes so much fuller and livelier with all the details. I'm not sure what's causing the DAC to sound so deficient but I wouldn't ditch the Glow amp just because of it.

That doesn't sound right. I'll let you know when I get one here for listening in the next week or so. I have a 16-Bit Burr-Brown DAC chip in a very simple, straightforward circuit in my Trends UD-10 digital transport. It should make for a good comparison.

Tim

 

[tfarney]

Thanks to Miguel, I have a little Glow in my office right now. The Glow Amp One arrived this morning and I wasted no time getting it set up and running. I'm listening right now and, I must confess, looking at it a lot. I have thought that if I ever buy one of these I'd order it in pearl, but sitting here looking at this one, in black, I'm not so sure. It is tiny. It is flawlessly executed. It is about as beautiful as a little black box can be. I think I'll lay down my impressions a little at a time, as I work my way through testing it, so here goes chapter one....

Apple Lossless>Glow>HD580

I can’t say I like what I’m hearing, and it is exactly the opposite of what I expected: Bright. Brittle, even. Harsh trebles. Weak bass. I keep wanting to turn it down, and that’s not a good sign. I wouldn’t characterize the bass as boomy, or loose, but it is…light. Wimpy. And when you can make HD580s sound thin, bright, harsh…something is amiss.

I’ll tell you the truth, I really couldn’t stand to listen to my entire 18-cut reference playlist (everything from Shawn Colvin to King Crimson to Dwight Yoakam to Miles Davis), but I sampled every cut and gave the Glow plenty of warm-up time and listened more than enough to know what I was hearing. And what I was hearing was very, very bad.

Apple Lossless>Trends UD-10.1>Glow>HD580

My apologies to analogbox for doubting his DAC report on the Glow.

Note to Patrick at Glow (are you out there listening, Patrick?): Put a new DAC in this amp. Don't build another one without it. Seriously. Find a new supplier, pull stock in production off of the assembly line, do what you must. The UD-10 is no high-end piece. It is a simple, inexpensive 16-bit Burr-Brown DAC in a well-designed circuit that doesn’t seem to add anything, including noise. But in spite of the fact that its purpose is a digital transporter, and the DAC is thrown in as an extra bennie, using it, and bi-passing the Glow Amp One’s built-in DAC completely transformed this little amp.

Now it sounds a lot more like my old Harman Kardon integrated amp, which is to say big, warm, full, powerful. Is it different? I’m sure something is, but that’s going to take a bit more time. Right off the bat I’d say the bottom end is not quite as big as the HK's, but it’s not light. It actually seems to have a bit more control, which is not what I’d expect. I guess what I’m listening for is that famous tube lushness, detail, presence in the mids. And It might be there, but it’s not jumping out at me.. I’m gonna listen for awhile, then switch back over to the HK and see what I get. There is no lack of power, I can tell you that. I don’t think the switch from the Glow’s internal DAC to the Trends added or subtracted any overall volume, and in either set up, 10 o’clock on the volume knob is probably too loud for extended listening. My gauge, right wrong or indifferent, is to bring the volume up to where it is as loud as I can get and still understand myself when I speak at normal volumes. Anything much louder than that is only something I go to in passing….head bobbing, fist pumping, that sort of thing.

Overall, right now, at this very early stage, here are the cliff notes: This little amp really sucks with its own DAC. It's just awful. Switch to a decent DAC and it sounds really nice. More like my vintage Harman Kardon integrated than my digital Panasonic or any of my sources (no surprise there, I suppose). In fact, if I had walked in here and listened blind, expecting to be listening to the old HK, I don't think I would have known it was different. But subtleties sometimes reveal themselves with extended listening, so I'm going to listen to nothing but the Glow for a few days, then switch back to the HK. Then I'll report on what I hear. Then I'll test it against the Panny. Then I'll hook it up to some pretty efficient little speakers and see how she does there....

Should be a fun week.

Tim

 

[Skylab]

Interesting (and not so surprising) findings. While it won't help the sound of the DAC, the Glow will sound better with vintage USA tubes. dw6928, who had Miguel's Glow before you, told me that they Sylvania tubes I sent him to try were much better than the stock Chinese tubes, as one would expect.

 

[tfarney]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Skylab /img/forum/go_quote.gif Interesting (and not so surprising) findings. While it won't help the sound of the DAC, the Glow will sound better with vintage USA tubes. dw6928, who had Miguel's Glow before you, told me that they Sylvania tubes I sent him to try were much better than the stock Chinese tubes, as one would expect.

Well, I'd love to hear it with good NOS tubes, then. It sounds very, very good as is. I'm still waiting to hear that tube magic in the mids. I could be hearing it right now and just won't know it until I switch back to the HK and hear it missing. But there's certainly nothing wrong. No lack of bass control or excessive warmth. I'm listening to Joni Mitchell's "Travelogue" right now - a huge rich, orchestral recording - and the little Glow is all there. At least as big and rich as the old HK. As quiet too. At a little more than 1/4 of the footprint.

Tim

 

[earplay]

I've been following the discussion about the Glow dac with interest because I own a Glow amp. My experience with the dac is that the bass is missing-in-action. I wrote to the people at Glow and described the problem with the lack of bass through the Glow dac. They were interested and suggested I return the amp for evaluation. I told them I was happy with the amp, but the dac sound was so out-of-character with the beautiful sounding amp that I thought there might be a fault in the dac. Not yet heard from them, but they were very nice about it all.

Anyhow, before I talked with the Glow people, I hooked up my Trends UD-10 to the Glow amp. My Trends outputs through rca jacks I installed to replace the stock headphone jack (This resulted in a major... I should say incredible improvement in the sound of the Trends). With the Trends dac feeding the Glow amp, it sang soprano and bass. Plenty of low end punch. The Glow amp, per se, has a beautiful sound.

I'm looking forward to what the people at Glow decide regarding the dac, especially mine!

FWIW, earplay

 

[psc001]

My experiences with Glow dac confirms that the weakest part of the Glow is the Dac. Headphone amp and speaker amp are awesome but the dac is simply bad. Any other external Dac would be an awesome addition to the Glow amp. Maybe they'll address that part when a new Glow amp comes out later.

 

[mrarroyo]

Quote:

Originally Posted by tfarney /img/forum/go_quote.gif Well, I'd love to hear it with good NOS tubes, then. It sounds very, very good as is. I'm still waiting to hear that tube magic in the mids. I could be hearing it right now and just won't know it until I switch back to the HK and hear it missing. But there's certainly nothing wrong. No lack of bass control or excessive warmth. I'm listening to Joni Mitchell's "Travelogue" right now - a huge rich, orchestral recording - and the little Glow is all there. At least as big and rich as the old HK. As quiet too. At a little more than 1/4 of the footprint. Tim

Glad you are enjoying it! I was thinking of sending you a pair of Siemens NOS EL84's for the power tubes I bought from Skylab and a pair of GE GL5670 for the driver tubes. I would also send for you to try a Zu BOK power cord. But I need the amp for a mini meet we will have in Orlando, FL on August 16th.

Let me think about for the next day or two but it would be to much of a tight schedule unless you were to return it next day and due to the weight of the amp it would be prohibitively expensive. Dawg-on, what to do?

BTW, are you using the basic USB cable that Glow included w/ the amp? It might be the reason.

 

[stlblues]

Quote:

Originally Posted by psc001 /img/forum/go_quote.gif My experiences with Glow dac confirms that the weakest part of the Glow is the Dac. Headphone amp and speaker amp are awesome but the dac is simply bad. Any other external Dac would be an awesome addition to the Glow amp. Maybe they'll address that part when a new Glow amp comes out later.

I would be shocked if the DAC is not replaced on the next run of these amps. It is such a great product otherwise. Maybe they will go all out on the DAC on the Amp Two (in developement, per their website).

Edit: According to AudioMagus.com: "Audiomagus is working with Patrick and Mark at GLOW to improve the DAC. We are looking at different chips as well as other solutions. Watch here for info..."

 

[tfarney]

Well, after a solid week of listening to the little Glow Amp One, and a lot of listening, a good 20 hours I'd guess, I switched back to the my old Harmon Kardon integrated amp yesterday.

First of all, a little background - the old HK is not just any junk from the 70s. It is royal junk from the 70s. It is an A-402, a great beneficiary of trickle-down; essentially a low-powered (45 watts per) Citation integrated amp. True dual mono design with a pair of hefty transformers, semi-parametric tone controls, tone bi-pass, yada, yada. It does not have the speed or tiny noise numbers of contemporary solid state (then again, neither do tube amps), but it has always had TONE. In spades. And it still has it. Recently serviced, it is running up to specs and sounds great.

So what do I hear between the boutique tubes and the old integrated? Not a lot, frankly.

The first thing I noticed when switching back to the old HK was bass. The HK's bass is bigger and more powerful. Some might even call it a bit bloated, but it is not unpleasant or masking. It gets out of the way quick enough. It just has a LOT of punch. So you could say the HK wins that round, depending on your tastes. I certainly never felt that the Glow was bass deficient in my week of listening, though.

The next thing I heard was the highs. After a week of listening to the Glow, the old HK's highs seem a bit thin for the first time in 30 years of listening. It is very subtle, but I think I hear it.

The mids - another subtlety, but a lovely one. I guess this is the famous valve magic. I don't believe in magic, but there it is. The critical mids - voices, horns, stringed instruments - seem to have an extra presence. They feel slightly forward without feeling boosted. They seem to have a smooth polish that manages to take off that tiny, almost imperceptible touch of grain, without losing any detail.

And that's it. That's the difference between a modern tube amp that has received rave reviews and a 30-something Harman Kardon integrated amp. All of that, by the way, is listening to Apple lossless files through a simple, but very good-sounding DAC in a Trends digital transport to my Sennheiser HD580s, so while I can't comment on sound stage, I used my best window into tone, detail and dynamics.

Here's the bottom line for me: I will not have to run out and buy a tube amp this week. But I'll send the Glow back to Miguel this week with a bit of sadness, and I may have to have one eventually. What I heard there was small, was subtle, was probably not even measurable, but it was pretty compelling. And that was with the standard Chinese tubes.

I'll probably wait for the Glow Amp 2, as it would be really nice to be able to use the Glow without an external DAC, and currently that's not the case. As others have said, the DAC built into the Glow currently completely changes, and ruins, the character of the amp. Plugged in via USB, it is not even an acceptable product. With a good source, it is a great one.

Tim

 

[[S]uds]

Is the DAC in the Glow One truly that bad?

I was planning on getting one as a good, all-in-one solution for my cans and speakers I use at my computer, but if I get the Glow I can't afford a separate DAC right away. I was also thinking of waiting on the Glow Two, but I e-mailed Patrick @ Glow and he told me that they are trying to keep the Glow 2 available for under $900. A bit over my spending limit.

I still might end up getting one though. It's beautiful and seems like the best option for me.

 

[tfarney]

Quote:

Originally Posted by uds /img/forum/go_quote.gif Is the DAC in the Glow One truly that bad? I was planning on getting one as a good, all-in-one solution for my cans and speakers I use at my computer, but if I get the Glow I can't afford a separate DAC right away. I was also thinking of waiting on the Glow Two, but I e-mailed Patrick @ Glow and he told me that they are trying to keep the Glow 2 available for under $900. A bit over my spending limit. I still might end up getting one though. It's beautiful and seems like the best option for me.

Yes, it is that bad. I simply can't recommend the Glow as an all-in-one solution at this time. If you plug even an inexpensive consumer cdp into it, it sounds wonderful. Plug your PC in through that DAC and it is just plain bad. Surely Glow is getting the message and will fix this problem. It's a deal breaker.

If the Glow 2 is going to be at that kind of price point, I'd wait for them to fix it, plan on using it with another DAC, or find another amp.

Tim

 

[stlblues]

Quote:

Originally Posted by uds /img/forum/go_quote.gif Is the DAC in the Glow One truly that bad? I was planning on getting one as a good, all-in-one solution for my cans and speakers I use at my computer, but if I get the Glow I can't afford a separate DAC right away. I was also thinking of waiting on the Glow Two, but I e-mailed Patrick @ Glow and he told me that they are trying to keep the Glow 2 available for under $900. A bit over my spending limit. I still might end up getting one though. It's beautiful and seems like the best option for me.

This thread says that the next run of the Amp One should have a different DAC, so maybe you could just wait a bit...

Glow in the house!