Gotta say, in my many decades of spending my own money on hifi and music, I never understood what "wooly bass" is, or why wooly would be the descriptive word for the actual sound people are hearing when they use it. There is an MHDT family sound I'll generally characterize as organic. A Havana out of the box could fairly be accused of having thicker bass than ideal, but this is easily tuned out or mitigated by selection of the buffer tube(s). Havana was a little soft on the top end but not muted or rolled-off. This could also be adjusted by selection of tube and further by upgrading chips and / or capacitors. Still, Havana made 16 bit sound beautiful.
But the newer Atlantis, Pagoda are far from rolled off, and bass is quite disciplined. One still has the tube rolling option to tune it. These are highly articulate, agile DACs that retain the MHDT organic qualities, and provide greater transparency and spatial information than the older models.''
The single greatest, most transformative sonic improvement to my Atlantis and Pagoda has been using converters to run 6922/CCa/e88cc tubes. This improves everything. Deeper more articulate bass, more nuanced, harmonically-complete top end, more authentic full band, expanded soundstage. No downsides, nothing not improved.
Phil
