[umeng2002]

Old thread from the dead,
 
   This AMP is very neutral and precise. It's not supposed to color the sound in anyway. If you have junk source, you'll get louder junk. If you have an excellent source, you'll get excellent sound. I you're use to an old setup and use this and don't like the sound, you just learned that you liked the colored sound of your previous amp.
 
   Since I use this for gaming, movies, and music, I like the nature of the amp. Something too warm and smooth wouldn't be good for gaming or some genre's of music. Something too bright would hurt your ears after extensive listening sessions.

 

[eggyhustles]

Just inherited one of these

Going to be used on my desk. Will these work well with the JVC HARX900's? If not, anything good around $150?

 

[bflatfinesse]

Just inherited one of these

Going to be used on my desk. Will these work well with the JVC HARX900's? If not, anything good around $150?

Looks like the impedance of those headphones is 64ohms. It will handle those no problem.

 

[umeng2002]

Mine recently died, last year actually, after replacing the pot (Alps pots are great but not impervious to over a decade of riding the volume), which didn't work out so well due to my crappy de-soldering skills. The PCB quality of Little Dot products are suspect in my opinion.

Prior to that, I had to replace the transistors because I accidentally shorted one when operating it out of the case. When I was in there, I re-capped it with caps that were lower series resistance. It sounded really great after that. But, as I mentioned before, in 2021, I damaged the PCB taking the old pot out. I fixed it as best I could, but it damaged the board enough to cause another short in the power supply section after a day of operation, which damaged the PCB in the power supply area.

In the end, I retired it instead of getting a custom PCB made. It's a very simple design.

The main weakness is that it only accepts single-ended inputs. So, most DACs will send it lower voltage.

In fact, I replaced the MKV with an S.M.S.L. SH-9. My Little Dot DAC_1 is still rock'n, though. And the DAC sounds WAY better because the SH-9 accepts balanced inputs. So I can finally use the balanced output of the DAC_1, which increases the voltage output.

The SH-9 clarity and separation blows the MKV away, but again, I'm using proper balanced output now from the DAC_1. Honestly, my only complaint about the move is that the SH-9 is a bit "dryer" than the MKV.

I think this is mainly due to the DAC_1 sending lower voltage over the single-ended outputs. The sound stage gets narrower and more muddled when sending single-ended output to the SH-9 from the DAC_1.

So, again the only weakness of the MKV is that is only accepts single-ended inputs. It had a great run for me from 2009 to 2021.

 

[eggyhustles]

How is this compared to something like the Topping L30?