Quote:
I actually broke one of my M8161's by not changing the jumper on the left channel.
Oh really, guess I was lucky then!
Anyways I've tried the m8100 and the Voskhods
now for some time (after using the m8161).
I was after more bass in sound when watching movies and also music, and wasn't satisfied with what m8161 had to offer.
I use the sennheiser hd650 and a xonard dx soundcard which delivers excellent sound imo.
So which of all these tubes gave the best bass?
The answer is ironically also the one which is the cheapest of all, the Voskhods.Without a doubt this one has the best bass.
The problem with the other tubes, especially the m8161, was that the bass was too slow basically. What I mean by that is that the Voskhods tube is able to deliver faster moving bass, almost creating wind inside your earphones, and thus it gives you more punchy and alive bass experience.
I tried all tubes very extensively. At the beginning I thought the bass of the m8100 was worse than the Voskhods. Then I preferred the m8100 had a bit fuller bass than the Voskhods. But then I tried a particular punchy bass scene in the movie Transformers (at 44 min where the plane uses 105 shells against the ground target). I realised then that the air moves faster in the Voskhods than the other tubes and gives a much more rich bass experience.
The problem with the m8100 and more so the m8161 is not that they don't provide deep bass. It is that the bass is more deep and slowish instead of deep and punchy. The m8100 is about 70% of the Voskhods in terms of fast moving bass sound I would say. And the m8161 is about 45-50% of the Voskhods fast bass.
Conclusion: Which tube you want for providing best bass of these 3 tubes depends upon what you are going to use them for and what bass type you like. If you like the bass to be deep and don't care about it being fast, then the m8161 might be the way to go. I actually prefer the m8161 in some cases, such as when a male sings hoarsly, this tube really creates a superb vibrating deep bass and the sound of the voice is incredible. A good example of this is the song Wishing Well by Terence Trent. Ofcourse the treble in the m8161 is better too than atleast the Voskhods.
If you want punchy bass then I would go with the Voskhods. Song that have this faster bass like Michael Jackson or in movies, this is definately your pick. The m8100 does provide nice bass too, it is not slow bass but it is not really fast either. So basically if you go with the m8100 you get more deep bass kind of like the m8161 but with faster bass than the m8161, although you don't get quite the deep slow full bass like the m8161.
The treble and soundstage of m8161 is far superior the Voskhods and a good amount better than the m8100. That said I did not like the m8161 because it had too much treble. You couldn't turn up music without the treble cutting into your ears. The tubes are so strong the ones I'm using that the equaliser really does not change much at all, I can turn down treble to 0 in my xonar dx equaliser and it doesn't change much.
The Voskhods still has really nice treble, there is nothing wrong with it. For example in Watchmen the glass is breaking in the beginning when a man is thrown out a window and you hear the glass breaking so freakin clearly it's sick (with great punchy bass at the same time!!). The Voskhods is just not as clear sounding and exact as the m8161. But having more exact treble at cost of not being able to turn up sound in movies nor music without that punchy bass is not a good trade off in my book. For anyone interested I can post my AC3 filter settings (in k lite codec pack older verion) for being able to turn up sound extensively in movies without it hurting your ears so you get max volume at action scenes aswell as having the speech in a high volume and the treble at a nice level (this took me 2 days to set so it sounded good at max volume). I actually have the mk iii at MAX and the equaliser in my computer at MAX and the AC3 filter at more than default max volume level, so you can imagine the things I've turned up in the filter, it just sounds Awesome now. You can hear things in movies you never could with speakers I believe =)
Hope this helped someone =)
haha, awesome!! I just had to switch the ef92 switches to on (they're in the holes beneath), that's it. No more crackling bass or strange volume.
)
