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Pangea Audio HP 201 Tube Headphone Amplifier
Feb 23, 2015 at 2:55 PM Thread Starter Post #1 of 15
gPope

gPope

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Requesting feedback on this little puppy if anyone has had any experience with it.  Did a forum search and could not find anything.
 
http://www.audioadvisor.com/prodinfo.asp?number=PGHP201
 
Mar 1, 2015 at 9:04 AM Post #2 of 15
It is brand new. If the quality/value relationship is in this product like it is in their cables (I have all their power and HDMI ones) then this should be a winner. The obvious comparisons would be with the Little Dot 2, 3 and Schiit Valhalla 2 and Asgard 2 (and a few others) at this price point. I have been dealing with Audio Advisors for 20 years and the company is stand up.
 
Mar 1, 2015 at 12:01 PM Post #3 of 15
This appears to be a mild refresh of the Napa Acoustics headphone amp, which is itself a rebranded Mistral amp that's been around for a few years. Audioadvisor is big on storytelling, but I'm skeptical. Surely the OEM would have already seen the need for a 24/192 USB section to replace their old 16/48 setup. But who knows, maybe they did have 6 (or was it 7?) prototypes.
 
Apr 8, 2015 at 9:58 AM Post #4 of 15
project86 said:
  This appears to be a mild refresh of the Napa Acoustics headphone amp, which is itself a rebranded Mistral amp that's been around for a few years. Audioadvisor is big on storytelling, but I'm skeptical. Surely the OEM would have already seen the need for a 24/192 USB section to replace their old 16/48 setup. But who knows, maybe they did have 6 (or was it 7?) prototypes.
Click to expand...

What do you mean by Audio Advisors is "big on story telling"? I have always found them to be straight up with info and answers.
 
Apr 10, 2015 at 11:26 PM Post #5 of 15
dabtpa said:
  What do you mean by Audio Advisors is "big on story telling"? I have always found them to be straight up with info and answers.
Click to expand...

 
Agreed I've gotten gear there in the past and dealing with them has been great..
 
Apr 11, 2015 at 2:28 AM Post #6 of 15
dabtpa said:
  What do you mean by Audio Advisors is "big on story telling"? I have always found them to be straight up with info and answers.
Click to expand...

They have a long winded story about how this amp became a reality . If you have their catalog delivered to you than you could read about it. I'm not sure if it's posted on their website as well.
 
Edit: it is posted. The op's link have it it's the "Tale of two headphone amps".
 
It does have the "once upon a time" vibe to it. I'm also  a happy customer for over a decade BTW, but some of their stories and even product descriptions have my BS meter to light up. YMMV.
 
Apr 11, 2015 at 3:18 PM Post #7 of 15
Don't get me wrong, I've had nothing but good experiences with Audio Advisor. But their propensity for story telling has always bugged me. See this little gem, for example, and then the same story retold again here with different details. It's like reading the ads in a golden age comic book.... 
 
Jul 4, 2015 at 7:51 AM Post #9 of 15
The HP-101 is "on sale" at a reasonable $100, limited specs.  Is the DAC async?  Anyone heard it?   I found Audio Advisor to be a stand up company in terms of customer service/returns/repairs.  However, they are Marketing driven company given their store brands and full retail price national brands.  Much of their in-house brands are hyped up in terms of sale prices.  They never have sold any of their store brands at the original retail but they continuously advertised a $ off discount price.  I find this misleading and, frankly, dishonest.  I had difficulty with their 12v Pangea power supply that was offered for several years.  A design error caused an internal cap to continuously blow.  I changed the working voltage by a factor of 5 and it still blows.  They have withdrawn this product from sale...mostly likely due to the high failure rate and poor reviews.  AA is a mixed bag but I will give them another try simply because you can return what you are unhappy with. 
 
Aug 1, 2016 at 9:49 PM Post #11 of 15
So I grabbed one of these about a month ago, so far it has worked great. I live really close to AudioAdvisor so I just drove there and picked it up to avoid the shipping wait >_<. This is my first experience with tubes so keep that in mind. I have also been using the stock tube thus far. It pairs really well with my Beyerdynamic T90(250ohm) and T70p(32ohm). The HP-201 adds a pleasant bit of warmth and tames the highs. I tried plugging my Westone T1(16ohm) in just for grins and giggles, pretty obnoxious noise, but it is dead silent with the T70p. Also tried the LCD2f but the tube sound was not to my liking for this set. I have been using the dac output of the hp201 with my NuForce Ha200 connected, this is what I used for my LCD2f and He500.

As for power output this thing seems to have plenty for anything I plug into it. With the He500 I turned it up to about 11 o'clock, for me it was fairly loud but I listen at lower levels than most. With the T90 I stay right around 9-9:30 on the dial. I have heard no noise while adjusting the volume and the knob turns smoothly with just the right resistance. I have not tried the aux input yet but the switch has a nice snap to it, as does the power button. The tube cage feels cheap but looks nice and does what it is designed to do.

The only gripes I have about this system is the lights and the volume. In the user manual it states that all the digital volumes should be at maximum levels(iTunes and windows volume output). I followed these instructions for the initial setup and had odd distortion(in a bad way not a tuby way). After nearly killing my computer while trying to be sure my internal soundcard was not causing issues I decided to use the digital volume control to solve the issue. Seems like the distortion is clipping from to high of volume hitting the dac, after turning itunes volume down about 10% everything sounds great. The lights just bug me because as a tube amp I would rather see the tube gloe than some LEDs.

So far I am quite impressed with the Pangea HP201

Has anyone else grabbed one? I would love to hear others thoughts, especially from others with more tube experience.
 
Aug 1, 2016 at 11:00 PM Post #12 of 15
some pics 
smily_headphones1.gif




^ leds so bright the tube glow doesn't show through
 
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