David Clapp
New Head-Fier
- Joined
- Dec 15, 2011
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Hello and thanks in advance for any replies... its all about harsh sounds...
I bought a Little Dot and so far have 16hours on it. I am listening through the following kit.
MackBookPro > Echo Audiofire2 24/96 using Audirvana > Mackie Big Nob > Little Dot 1+> Grado 325is (all 320kb MP3s, FLAC files, etc as well as some audiophile recordings, so no choice of good source material.
Got the amp yesterday, with stock 6JI tubes. I have bought a few others and today a set of Mullard 8100 arrived. One of the 'stock' valves have an issue with a low frequency humming so luckily I had the Mullards to try which went striaght in after a pin clean.
I tried the 24/96 soundcard over the last week just using the headphone outs before the amp arrived, and its been extremely musical without any amp, listening to all manner of music form assorted drum and bass, to Elbow to Amon Tobin and beyond.
After the LD1+ was brought into the equation I tried it sat directly after the sound card outs. It was attenuated to -10db on the soundcard mixer, as the leads I use are a balanced outs into an unbalanced input on the 1+ amp. It sounded very harsh as I threw different music at it, so I disconnected it and then sent the soundcard into the Mackie Big Nob, tweeking the attenuation back to +4db (balanced) and then hit a selector switch on the Mackie to drop it to -10db to match the the 1+ unbalanced inputs. What in improvement...
BUT still things are harsh some 16hours on, am I being a bit premature here, should I expect a much longer 'burn in' period? The valves seem to sound wonderfully snappy bottom end when there is a limited amount of treble, but it can get easily aggressive and too shrill which has me reaching for the volume.
There is great sound staging with the Grado's so I can see the potential... is it perhaps valve choice? I have a set of RCA 5645s and a mate sold me some Amperex 5654s which are coming next week, so I am off to a good start tube rolling Christmas!
I have done a lot of reading but I need some opinions I can. Listening to Elbow - The Birds is not a pleasurable experience right now, verging on distorted highs.... I dont know...
David
I bought a Little Dot and so far have 16hours on it. I am listening through the following kit.
MackBookPro > Echo Audiofire2 24/96 using Audirvana > Mackie Big Nob > Little Dot 1+> Grado 325is (all 320kb MP3s, FLAC files, etc as well as some audiophile recordings, so no choice of good source material.
Got the amp yesterday, with stock 6JI tubes. I have bought a few others and today a set of Mullard 8100 arrived. One of the 'stock' valves have an issue with a low frequency humming so luckily I had the Mullards to try which went striaght in after a pin clean.
I tried the 24/96 soundcard over the last week just using the headphone outs before the amp arrived, and its been extremely musical without any amp, listening to all manner of music form assorted drum and bass, to Elbow to Amon Tobin and beyond.
After the LD1+ was brought into the equation I tried it sat directly after the sound card outs. It was attenuated to -10db on the soundcard mixer, as the leads I use are a balanced outs into an unbalanced input on the 1+ amp. It sounded very harsh as I threw different music at it, so I disconnected it and then sent the soundcard into the Mackie Big Nob, tweeking the attenuation back to +4db (balanced) and then hit a selector switch on the Mackie to drop it to -10db to match the the 1+ unbalanced inputs. What in improvement...
BUT still things are harsh some 16hours on, am I being a bit premature here, should I expect a much longer 'burn in' period? The valves seem to sound wonderfully snappy bottom end when there is a limited amount of treble, but it can get easily aggressive and too shrill which has me reaching for the volume.
There is great sound staging with the Grado's so I can see the potential... is it perhaps valve choice? I have a set of RCA 5645s and a mate sold me some Amperex 5654s which are coming next week, so I am off to a good start tube rolling Christmas!
I have done a lot of reading but I need some opinions I can. Listening to Elbow - The Birds is not a pleasurable experience right now, verging on distorted highs.... I dont know...
David