[ThurstonX]

  Quick question about socket savers, does it really matter which ones I buy as long as they fit?
 
Someone told me to buy some from tubemonger, but they're like 4x the price of other ones I've found.

I've only tried the Tubemonger savers, but IIRC I got them after reading about the cheaper versions failing (not always, but sometimes).  But others mentioned they were fine.  Tubemonger backs up their product.  I thought I had a problem with mine, and was offered a replacement pair immediately.  They wanted my pair back to investigate, as they were genuinely surprised the savers had failed.  Fortunately the problem was in a cable, but the reaction of Tubemonger told me a lot.

 

[reddog]

Oh my God, those tubes are a thing of beauty, thanks Bill! I guess I'll Photoshop them too and put them onto a Centerfold. Wonder what my Wife will say when she finds the '57 Pinched Waist D-getters between the mattress and frame, with a some crumpled tissue!

On another note, just able to listen too my '61's, they are dead quiet, with an incredible organic tone, body, soft liquid, flesh and bone, with reasonable bass. In other words, I love them!!!

Those tubes truly sound sweet to behold. Tube rolling is such an addictive hobby.

 

[ThurstonX]

A couple questions for all you smart folks.
 
I rolled a pair of Valvo E88CCs (Heerlen 1970) today.  I didn't listen at first, just warming them up.  They sounded OK when I finally got a chance to listen with the HE-560s.  Then I went to switch cans, killed the music and noticed an annoying hum.  I've never heard a 60 Hz ground loop hum, but maybe now I have.  I switched cans, power outlets, but it was always present.  It's louder with more sensitive cans like the Grado SR-225s and Q701s compared to HE-560s, and it was louder/more noticeable in the left channel.

I also tested powering off the Lyr, then back on with cans attached.  Before the... what? protection relay(?) kicks in (that audible 'click' that says, OK, you can feed me a signal now) there was no hum.  As soon as I heard the click, the hum returned.
 
Then I switched tubes.  Nothing.  On my second different pair now (Teles) and nada.  I would assume the hum was affecting the music, but I'm not going to bother comparing.  Anyone ever experienced this?  I assume the tubes are bad, but what would cause that?  Bad internal wiring that ends up in the Lyr, which passes it along?  I wonder if the seller would take them back?  This should motivate me to get off me arse and test my tester.  No time to focus on it these days.
 
EDIT: found this
"In vacuum tube equipment, one potential source of hum is current leakage between the heaters and cathodes of the tubes. Another source is direct emission of electrons from the heater, or magnetic fields produced by the heater. Tubes for critical applications may have the heater circuit powered by direct current to prevent this source of hum."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mains_hum#Causes_of_electric_hum
 
 
My other question is about cans in the Lyr when powering it on, vs. having nothing plugged in.  The 'click' is audible if I'm wearing the cans, but it's mild on the HiFiMANs, e.g., but with the Grados it was quite loud, which got me worried.  If it's OK to have nothing plugged in when powering on the Lyr, I'll change my habit.
 
Thanks.

 

[ThurstonX]

Stumbled across this resource for the hardcore enthusiast:
 
http://www.tubebooks.org/
 
Free schiit! 

 

[gibosi]

  A couple questions for all you smart folks.
 
I rolled a pair of Valvo E88CCs (Heerlen 1970) today.  I didn't listen at first, just warming them up.  They sounded OK when I finally got a chance to listen with the HE-560s.  Then I went to switch cans, killed the music and noticed an annoying hum.  I've never heard a 60 Hz ground loop hum, but maybe now I have.  I switched cans, power outlets, but it was always present.  It's louder with more sensitive cans like the Grado SR-225s and Q701s compared to HE-560s, and it was louder/more noticeable in the left channel.

I also tested powering off the Lyr, then back on with cans attached.  Before the... what? protection relay(?) kicks in (that audible 'click' that says, OK, you can feed me a signal now) there was no hum.  As soon as I heard the click, the hum returned.
 
Then I switched tubes.  Nothing.  On my second different pair now (Teles) and nada.  I would assume the hum was affecting the music, but I'm not going to bother comparing.  Anyone ever experienced this?  I assume the tubes are bad, but what would cause that?  Bad internal wiring that ends up in the Lyr, which passes it along?  I wonder if the seller would take them back?  This should motivate me to get off me arse and test my tester.  No time to focus on it these days.
 
EDIT: found this
"In vacuum tube equipment, one potential source of hum is current leakage between the heaters and cathodes of the tubes. Another source is direct emission of electrons from the heater, or magnetic fields produced by the heater. Tubes for critical applications may have the heater circuit powered by direct current to prevent this source of hum."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mains_hum#Causes_of_electric_hum
 
 
My other question is about cans in the Lyr when powering it on, vs. having nothing plugged in.  The 'click' is audible if I'm wearing the cans, but it's mild on the HiFiMANs, e.g., but with the Grados it was quite loud, which got me worried.  If it's OK to have nothing plugged in when powering on the Lyr, I'll change my habit.
 
Thanks.

 
As I have commented before, I find the 6DJ8-type tubes to be the noisiest double triodes in my collection. In fact, 6SN7's manufactured in the early 1940's are typically quieter. This evening, I have been listening to a 1952 Tung-Sol 5687 and it is dead quiet. In my experience, installing DC heaters helped quiet down the 6DJ8's quite a bit, and I suspect that this is the reason the Lyr 2 has DC heaters.
 
I always unplug the headphones before turning the amp off, and only reinsert the plug a minute of so after the amp is turned on, to give the tubes a chance to stabilize. This may not be necessary in the Lyr, given the protection circuitry, but still, it is a very good habit to develop when using tube-based equipment.

 

[ThurstonX]

  As I have commented before, I find the 6DJ8-type tubes to be the noisiest double triodes in my collection. In fact, 6SN7's manufactured in the early 1940's are typically quieter. This evening, I have been listening to a 1952 Tung-Sol 5687 and it is dead quiet. In my experience, installing DC heaters helped quiet down the 6DJ8's quite a bit, and I suspect that this is the reason the Lyr 2 has DC heaters.
 
I always unplug the headphones before turning the amp off, and only reinsert the plug a minute of so after the amp is turned on, to give the tubes a chance to stabilize. This may not be necessary in the Lyr, given the protection circuitry, but still, it is a very good habit to develop when using tube-based equipment.

 
re: 6DJ8s, this is the first pair with which I've had this problem.  I have a pair of D-getter 6922s that have issues, but not producing this hum.  Most of mine are quiet enough for me.  I'll chalk it up to the info I quoted from Wikipedia.  I see direct current heating was mentioned there.  Learn something every day.
 
That seems like a very sound practice, and while it may not be necessary with the Lyr, I'll adopt it.
 
Thanks.

 

[reddog]

I will try to follow your lead and unplug the cans before I turn off my lyr 2. I am new to all this stuff and want to devolve safe habits, that reduce accidents.

 

[htr2d2]

  Stumbled across this resource for the hardcore enthusiast:
 
http://www.tubebooks.org/
 
Free schiit! 

Thank you ThurstonX. Will grab them this weekend and add to my ebook library.

 

[Flisker]

  Really, Optical in every implementation has sounded worse to me.  But Optical SPDIF are you running straight out of the PC card or laptop?
 
In that case the PC has to do three functions: 1)convert bits to a digital stream, like (WAVE, FLAC, DSD, MP3, etc).  (2) Then convert that stream to the appropriate output format for the DAC to lock onto - say PCM.  (3)Then convert that electrical signal to light pulses.  The DAC then has to reconvert those light pulses back into electrical signals and then convert those digital electrical signals into analogue wave forms to send to the pre-amp.  All in Realtime.  With USB Asyn 2.0 the digital output is kept in the OS digital domain, using different standards or protocols (for example in Windows) like ASIO, KS (Kernal Streaming), WASAPI, DS, etc.. The best like ASIO and KS bypass the Windows mixer and on chip sound processing, passing a 'pure' digital stream to the interface processor which then converts to PCM or DSD, here the interface can output this signal in either optical or electrical formats and transmit those over spdif, either optical or coaxial to the DAC. 
 
I've heard all the arguments about optical 'galvanic isolation' but the sound to me is closed in, almost muffled.  And I have tried some of the best optical chords, and it still sounded inferior.  The issue is the very inexpensive electro-optical/optical-electro converters on most MBs, cards, interfaces, or DACs.  But if you like optical, the Gustard has an optical output.  It comes down to clocking, jitter management, and ps filtering - all things the Gustard does extremely well.
 
Dedicated dual 0.1ppm Temperature Compensated Crystal Oscillator Clocks in the Gustard U12.  Rather using one clock and the realtime errors prone to converting the math, the Gustard uses a dedicated high speed clock for each frequency. 
 

 
Edit: BTW The feedback on the Gustard U12 thread is the sound is better then the Schitt USB card even with the Wyrd.  Where did you see Jason say "optical sounds better then USB"?  Schitt did improve their USB card sometime ago, maybe he was referring to the older card implementation.

 
I have the "first gen" USB in Bifrost and I noticed some noises sometimes which shouldn't be there, when I switched to S/PIDF everything worked fine and had no issues since.
 
Jason : "USB vs. SPDIF. I think we've said what we need to say on our site. Our implementation of USB is one of the best, and we've heard all of them (that we can separate from the DAC, that is.) And, in our opinion, they're not up to the level of SPDIF."
 
- http://www.head-fi.org/t/545842/schiit-dacs-bifrost-and-gungnir-down-one-to-go-the-information-and-anticipation-thread/405#post_7593148

 

[ThurstonX]

  I have the "first gen" USB in Bifrost and I noticed some noises sometimes which shouldn't be there, when I switched to S/PIDF everything worked fine and had no issues since.
 
Jason : "USB vs. SPDIF. I think we've said what we need to say on our site. Our implementation of USB is one of the best, and we've heard all of them (that we can separate from the DAC, that is.) And, in our opinion, they're not up to the level of SPDIF."
 
- http://www.head-fi.org/t/545842/schiit-dacs-bifrost-and-gungnir-down-one-to-go-the-information-and-anticipation-thread/405#post_7593148

 
Just to clarify, S/PDIF does not equate to fibre optic.  While a fibre optic cable with TOSLINK connectors is one transmission medium, the signal can also be sent via coax with RCA connectors.  I get the feeling that people sometimes say S/PDIF when they're referring specifically to an optical connection.
 
That quote from Jason is from July 2011.  When did Schiit come out with their Gen-2 USB?

 

[Flisker]

   
Just to clarify, S/PDIF does not equate to fibre optic.  While a fibre optic cable with TOSLINK connectors is one transmission medium, the signal can also be sent via coax with RCA connectors.  I get the feeling that people sometimes say S/PDIF when they're referring specifically to an optical connection.
 
That quote from Jason is from July 2011.  When did Schiit come out with their Gen-2 USB?

 
Ye, I think Jason also stated that their preference is Coax>SPDIF>USB, unfortunatelly I don't have Coax on Rampage IV Extreme motherboard.

 

[Liu Junyuan]

   
I have the "first gen" USB in Bifrost and I noticed some noises sometimes which shouldn't be there, when I switched to S/PIDF everything worked fine and had no issues since.
 
Jason : "USB vs. SPDIF. I think we've said what we need to say on our site. Our implementation of USB is one of the best, and we've heard all of them (that we can separate from the DAC, that is.) And, in our opinion, they're not up to the level of SPDIF."
 
- http://www.head-fi.org/t/545842/schiit-dacs-bifrost-and-gungnir-down-one-to-go-the-information-and-anticipation-thread/405#post_7593148

Yes, this is now outdated. I remember reading this quote on the Schiit website. But it's no accident that Jason has removed it following the implementation of USB-Gen 2, which is now on par with, or even better than, the other Bifrost/Gungnir inputs. 

 

[Flisker]

  Yes, this is now outdated. I remember reading this quote on the Schiit website. But it's no accident that Jason has removed it following the implementation of USB-Gen 2, which is now on par with, or even better than, the other Bifrost/Gungnir inputs. 

 
Ah I see, but I don't feel like paying extra 150$ for USB when SPDIF works great for me. Would there even be notable difference ? Who knows.
 
Btw nice read : http://www.head-fi.org/t/701900/schiit-happened-the-story-of-the-worlds-most-improbable-start-up/690#post_10441924

 

[Nic Rhodes]

All products fail, I certainly have had Tubemonger savers fail (leak their goo) on me, there are many decent cheap ones but my favourite ones have always been NOS.

 

[ThurstonX]

 
Ye, I think Jason also stated that their preference is Coax>SPDIF>USB, unfortunatelly I don't have Coax on Rampage IV Extreme motherboard.

 
I think Bob's point about the Gustard is to go USB Out from your PC, then you could go coax Out to the DAC, assuming it has a coax In.  So if you have a Bifrost, Bob would argue you'll get the best sound with that chain.  And if Bob would not argue that, I'd like to know why