DemonicLemming
500+ Head-Fier
- Joined
- Mar 13, 2008
- Posts
- 953
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- 24
After using my HFI-780s and Travagan's White for about two years now, I'm ready to add a tube amp and another set of cans to my collection...and I forgot how confusing it all is. Cans are taken care of with a set of K702s in the mail right now, but the amp is another story.
Before I jumped out of headphone stuff for financial reasons (car, job change, etc), I was pretty much set on the DV336SE. Reviews seemed relatively positive, not too expensive, and ostensibly a good selection of tubes to roll. After puttering around here for a couple hours this morning, though, I'm not so sure. Reading through the review threads on the EF2A, Audiotailor Jade, and HTA-1, it seems that they're all solid tube or tube-hybrid amps in my approximate price range. However, never having personally used (or even heard) a tube amp, I'm not sure which would really fit my music and headphone selection the best; music ranges all over, primarily around metal but including everything from Emilie Autumn to Andy McKee, using a set of well-burned-in HFI-780s (no mods), occasionally a set of K241s, and soon, K702s.
Since I don't have an RCA out on my computer, I'd either be using a USB-to-RCA DAC, like the nuForce Icon, or a headphone jack-to-RCA converter...honestly not sure which would work better. Computer audio card is a Creative X-Fi Titanium, and while it's decent, I don't know how much of its meh would translate through a headphone jack converter and into the amp.
I'd like to stick to $450 or under for the amp (and, if necessary, the DAC).
Before I jumped out of headphone stuff for financial reasons (car, job change, etc), I was pretty much set on the DV336SE. Reviews seemed relatively positive, not too expensive, and ostensibly a good selection of tubes to roll. After puttering around here for a couple hours this morning, though, I'm not so sure. Reading through the review threads on the EF2A, Audiotailor Jade, and HTA-1, it seems that they're all solid tube or tube-hybrid amps in my approximate price range. However, never having personally used (or even heard) a tube amp, I'm not sure which would really fit my music and headphone selection the best; music ranges all over, primarily around metal but including everything from Emilie Autumn to Andy McKee, using a set of well-burned-in HFI-780s (no mods), occasionally a set of K241s, and soon, K702s.
Since I don't have an RCA out on my computer, I'd either be using a USB-to-RCA DAC, like the nuForce Icon, or a headphone jack-to-RCA converter...honestly not sure which would work better. Computer audio card is a Creative X-Fi Titanium, and while it's decent, I don't know how much of its meh would translate through a headphone jack converter and into the amp.
I'd like to stick to $450 or under for the amp (and, if necessary, the DAC).
