[jlbrach]

i think you are being too hard on the 430 which i thought was good but the 281 is better...it has tons of power and i love the pre gain feature which really makes it easy to adjust to the HP you are using

 

[Badas]

It wasn't just me. I had a mate and we listened to the same track on 4 different amps. Woo WA22, 430, 230 and V281. 430 was scrubbing treble detail. Both of us heard it. We were floored that the tube amp was letting the detail through and the 430 was not.
Seriously flawed the 430 was sold the next week.

 

[CoLdAsSauLt]

It wasn't just me. I had a mate and we listened to the same track on 4 different amps. Woo WA22, 430, 230 and V281. 430 was scrubbing treble detail. Both of us heard it. We were floored that the tube amp was letting the detail through and the 430 was not.
Seriously flawed the 430 was sold the next week.

Did the 230 let the detail through? Never having heard a Moon amp, I suspect that might have been just an iffy 430 maybe?

 

[Badas]

Did the 230 let the detail through? Never having heard a Moon amp, I suspect that might have been just an iffy 430 maybe?

Yes. The 230 did. That baffled us. We wondered why the flagship amp didn't let the detail through. The conclusion we came to was the engineers had designed the 430 to sound like a tube amp sacrificing detail. Not really what a SS amp should be. Our opinion is a SS amp should be transparent.

 

[Mediahound]

Anyone know how many watts the V281 uses when on (and not playing)?

 

[astrostar59]

I would say about 20 watts looking at my P10 power regenerator read outs.
It is class A so same when on and playing music. I leave mine on 24/7. It doesn't get that warm. BTW sound amazing!

 

[astrostar59]

Yes. The 230 did. That baffled us. We wondered why the flagship amp didn't let the detail through. The conclusion we came to was the engineers had designed the 430 to sound like a tube amp sacrificing detail. Not really what a SS amp should be. Our opinion is a SS amp should be transparent.

My opinion is a good tube amp can be as transparent as it needs to be for realism. If an SS amp is more transparent than that, it is going to become fatiguing for sure. With good modern design tube amps and transformers up to the task, you get FR up to 100kz but no treble coldness or artificial edges. The old story of warm, slow and rosy glow tube amp sound is not where they are nowadays (as long as they are designed right). Most failings in tube amp design is poor capacitor quality and too small transformers.

 

[Mediahound]

I would say about 20 watts looking at my P10 power regenerator read outs.
It is class A so same when on and playing music. I leave mine on 24/7. It doesn't get that warm. BTW sound amazing!

Thanks.

I leave mine on 24/7.

Is that recommended?

 

[Fegefeuer]

Sure, why not? As long as your room temperature isn't something of maybe 40°C you should be fine. I don't see any musical benefits though, only if you want to save an hour or two warming up when you come home. Time is scarce nowadays.

However I see always-on much more critical with DACs where I recommend to leave them fully on, 24/7. Even Delta-Sigma ones. I've been seeing the Lake People RS06 become best after a whole day. From there on it's always prime time.
Schiit DACs or Multibit DACs are much more "painful".

 

[rgs9200m]

Is the V281 relay stepped volume control much better than the continuous one?
Are the steps of the relay one small enough for sensitive headphones?
Thanks.

 

[Pharmaboy]

Is the V281 relay stepped volume control much better than the continuous one?
Are the steps of the relay one small enough for sensitive headphones?
Thanks.

I have the big stepped pot that's remote controlled. It has 128 steps. I haven't compared sound of the V281 w/this relay stepped pot vs the continuous non-relay one, though several others in this thread have. The 3-4 comments I've seen, including one by a trusted INNER FIDELITY reviewer, John Grandberg, suggest the relay-stepped pot does make an audible difference--not a huge/extreme difference, but an audible difference in favor of the relay-stepped pot.

The steps of the relay-stepped pot should be sufficient for any headphone--but only if the V281's gain settings are optimized to match the gain of your system. For example, if your DAC feeding signal to the V281 has the typical nominal output voltage of 1.8-2.0v, you can get away with unity gain or something a bit lower on the V281 (which has dipswitch gain setting separate for headphone amp output vs line out...extremely convenient). But if your DAC outputs 2.5v, as mine does, you might need to knock down those gain settings even more. I have both the headphone amp out and line out dipswitch arrays set to -12 dB (out of a maximum of -14dB), which works fine. Sensitive headphones are well controlled in the 8AM-10AM range on the dial; planars and less sensitive designs are 10AM-12PM on the dial.

 

[Mediahound]

Is the default volume stepped at all, or totally smooth to turn?

 

[rgs9200m]

Thanks Pharmaboy. 128 is an insanely great number of steps. I had real trouble with the DACT 23 stepper.

 

[Pharmaboy]

Is the default volume stepped at all, or totally smooth to turn?

Smooth/non-stepped.

 

[Mediahound]

Smooth/non-stepped.

Thanks. I got mine used and it is stepped but doesn't seem to have 128 steps. Mine seems to have 40 steps. Any ideas what did I get?