[Roasty]

oh man I really love how this pre looks! ordered it with the ultimate upgrade last week, and took only 6 days to travel around the world.

Cary Audio is the masterclass in packing components! double boxed, pre-shaped air foam inserts, bubble wrap, both units double protective cling wrapped. the paint job was done to perfection!

made the huge mistake of stacking the units. not long after I took these pics, I emailed Cary Audio and Billy Wright mentioned he preferred not to not stack them, and that the rubber feet would leave marks on the bottom chassis. I took the top unit off and true enough there were already marks. had to get some gentle car polish to get rid of them.

The stock rectifier tube (sovtek 5ar4) is quite terrible. swapped out for a NOS Mullard GZ34 and it is much much better. bass extends super low and is punchy too. mids are very clear and slightly forward. top end has a bit of SS pre feeling right now; a bit sharp sometimes, but it's still very early on and they suggest 100 hrs to break it in. so far, definitely a clearer and faster sound with less low end bloom than the Atma-Sphere MP3, and bigger/wider sounding and better bass than the Primaluna Evo 400 pre. going to order a set of matched Sylvania 6sn7 tubes to swap out the stock EH tubes and see if I can get the top end more to my liking.

I briefly tried the headphone out but sadly, it is quite terrible.. LOL. I may revisit it down the road, but definitely not any time soon.

 

[ufospls2]

Well, after ages of no real change in my set up, I've pretty much changed (or am in the process of changing) everything up. Boulder 866 is gone. Eksonic T2 is up for sale. Rockna Wavedream Edition XLR arrived a couple weeks ago, and the Mjolnir Carbon CC arrived today. Main headphones are still the 1266TC and Shangri La Sr. The amp plan for the 1266TC/non electrostatics isn't fully figured out yet so I'll have to wait and see how that goes.

 

[WhenKittensATK]

Currently comparing my daily driver Focal Elex and Monoprice THX DAC/AMP to Hifiman headphones and Topping stack.

 

[ThanatosVI]

Well, after ages of no real change in my set up, I've pretty much changed (or am in the process of changing) everything up. Boulder 866 is gone. Eksonic T2 is up for sale. Rockna Wavedream Edition XLR arrived a couple weeks ago, and the Mjolnir Carbon CC arrived today. Main headphones are still the 1266TC and Shangri La Sr. The amp plan for the 1266TC/non electrostatics isn't fully figured out yet so I'll have to wait and see how that goes.

Why are you selling the T2.
Feels like a downgrade

 

[ufospls2]

Why are you selling the T2.
Feels like a downgrade

Long story, but the short version is simply a different allocation of funds within my setup.

 

[ThanatosVI]

Long story, but the short version is simply a different allocation of funds within my setup.

As long as the new setup still makes you happy it's fine.

I'd cry if I had to let go of my Envy...

 

[Elegiac]

Got these bad boys in the BA3 now. NOS NIB, same batch. Probably early 70's.
Breakin' them in with music at the moment.

3 hours: Definitely the best tubes I've had in here. So transparent... flicking the bypass switch to skip the tubes, and then flicking it again, comparing solid state to these... it's an improvement. A tweak to the midrange. And other tubes I've tried, I've commented on as having a good amount of bass. But these lose NO bass. They have just as much bass as solid state.

9 hours: Alright they lose bass. Damn. Oh well. Things gain some... dimensionality. Except the bass. The track I'm listening to- in solid state there's a deep midnight-black wall of bass that whelms up from below and sits behind the entire scene like a giant, black, monstrous wall- I don't get that sense with the tubes.
Depth and width of scene, though, and the details lurking there, are excellent. Cymbals, hi-hats, ect, sound very splashy.
It's all very subtle, but very attractive. Things vibrate and fade. Spaced out. Floating and crashing down. Things don't linger like this if I hit the bypass switch.

Day 2, hour ???: They seem to have settled. They're still the best tubes I've had in the BA3, and where I will stop, but what does that mean? The sound is a little softer and fuller than purely solid state, with less bass, allowing everything to come through clearer. I keep all my solid state detail. This is basically what I wanted my 'best' rig to be, at minimum. I was hoping these Siemens would work some miracle of sound. They're just solid.
And it causes me to reflect, $900 worth of tubes later, that this will be the biggest, and last, obscenely ridiculous audio adventure I have. Now that I've done it (and I did feel driven to do it), I can live with it. But I've learned a lot about the sort of exaggeration and fanciful fantasy attached to tube talk (at least in regard to the E88CC family). Tubes are nice. Tubes are fun to play with. There must be a better way though. I'll figure it out for next time.
$1500, all told, on this one piece of gear, for these results, is decadent, and I despise decadence on a dying planet, from a doomed lifeform. Save that sorta thing for Mars... save it for when the survival of the species is a lot more guaranteed than it is now. Otherwise I'm just wallowing ineffectually in the effluence of the death machine. I at least like to wallow effectually, if I'm going to.
Oh well, you live and learn. I'll give myself a slap on the hand and move on.

 

[Festive56]

Day 2, hour ???: They seem to have settled. They're still the best tubes I've had in the BA3, and where I will stop, but what does that mean? The sound is a little softer and fuller than purely solid state, with less bass, allowing everything to come through clearer. I keep all my solid state detail. This is basically what I wanted my 'best' rig to be, at minimum. I was hoping these Siemens would work some miracle of sound. They're just solid.
And it causes me to reflect, $900 worth of tubes later, that this will be the biggest, and last, obscenely ridiculous audio adventure I have. Now that I've done it (and I did feel driven to do it), I can live with it. But I've learned a lot about the sort of exaggeration and fanciful fantasy attached to tube talk (at least in regard to the E88CC family). Tubes are nice. Tubes are fun to play with. There must be a better way though. I'll figure it out for next time.
$1500, all told, on this one piece of gear, for these results, is decadent, and I despise decadence on a dying planet, from a doomed lifeform. Save that sorta thing for Mars... save it for when the survival of the species is a lot more guaranteed than it is now. Otherwise I'm just wallowing ineffectually in the effluence of the death machine. I at least like to wallow effectually, if I'm going to.
Oh well, you live and learn. I'll give myself a slap on the hand and move on.

Existential dread and tube rolling, god I love this site!

 

[jonathan c]

The little amp that could …

[The standers by will just have to wait …]

 

[jonathan c]

Existential dread and tube rolling, god I love this site!

…. …. does the vacuum in tubes fill the vacuum in the universe? …. ….

 

[ThanatosVI]

…. …. does the vacuum in tubes fill the vacuum in the universe? …. ….

How does a Vacuum fill anything

 

[mulveling]

oh man I really love how this pre looks! ordered it with the ultimate upgrade last week, and took only 6 days to travel around the world.

Cary Audio is the masterclass in packing components! double boxed, pre-shaped air foam inserts, bubble wrap, both units double protective cling wrapped. the paint job was done to perfection!

made the huge mistake of stacking the units. not long after I took these pics, I emailed Cary Audio and Billy Wright mentioned he preferred not to not stack them, and that the rubber feet would leave marks on the bottom chassis. I took the top unit off and true enough there were already marks. had to get some gentle car polish to get rid of them.

The stock rectifier tube (sovtek 5ar4) is quite terrible. swapped out for a NOS Mullard GZ34 and it is much much better. bass extends super low and is punchy too. mids are very clear and slightly forward. top end has a bit of SS pre feeling right now; a bit sharp sometimes, but it's still very early on and they suggest 100 hrs to break it in. so far, definitely a clearer and faster sound with less low end bloom than the Atma-Sphere MP3, and bigger/wider sounding and better bass than the Primaluna Evo 400 pre. going to order a set of matched Sylvania 6sn7 tubes to swap out the stock EH tubes and see if I can get the top end more to my liking.

I briefly tried the headphone out but sadly, it is quite terrible.. LOL. I may revisit it down the road, but definitely not any time soon.

Beautiful component! I haven't heard one but I think Electro Harmonix had been the stock 6SN7 in this preamp for a while, and that tube definitely has a "Solid State" like sound, especially treble and midrange (I have a post here on head-fi about this, like 20 years ago!). However, those tubes in your picture are definitely Chinese / Shuguang 6SN7. It's been a while since I heard those but I felt they were a little less "Solid-State" sounding than the EH.

If you want a much tubier 6SN7, try Ken-Rad or Tung-Sol black glass round plates (pricey). Ken-Rads aren't too terribly expensive, at least. Older Sylvania GT tubes can be amazing (later GTA and GTB merely decent), with gorgeous mids, but there are lots of variants and overall they tend to neutral-ish or even slightly bright (brown base WGT). I have some rare chrome domes where the chrome covers 95%+ of the glass, I've never seen another Sylvania like them, and they're the warmest Sylvanias I've heard. Lovely!

Yeah, there's not much hope for a pair of 6SN7 to drive headphones without the help of a proper output transformer. It might work OK with 300 ohm and higher headphones that are also efficient (Sennheiser), but you'll really be hearing a lot of distortion and coloration. The original Singlepower amplifiers used that to good effect, though

 

[Elegiac]

…. …. does the vacuum in tubes fill the vacuum in the universe? …. ….

How does a Vacuum fill anything

AI Art prompt: 'The Scream in a vacuum tube'

​

 

[jonathan c]

AI Art prompt: 'The Scream in a vacuum tube'

​

That a must be Philips ECG tube prototype ….

 

[Elegiac]

That a must be Philips ECG tube prototype ….

I was going to say, there's something wrong with the Reissue Bugle Boy's. New Sensor has done something wrong and I don't want one.