I guess that makes sense, but I never said I needed a "pure" tube amp.
That's why I said
if, since I don't know. You said you wanted a "tube amp" but listed the Lyr, so I have to say "if" since I don't know exactly what you mean. The Lyr's
amplification stage is
solid state, so it's
not a
tube amplifier; it has that paired to a tube gainstage, hence a
hybrid. It's like the difference between a Mazda Skyactiv or Prius vs a Tesla. The Lyr has tubes sticking out but its not a hybrid in the same sense that a Mazda can't use the carpool lane with a single occupant, but calling it a tube amp is like the Prius being allowed to join single occupant Teslas in the carpool lane (except it happened before the Tesla and the Mazdas).
I like the tube sound, and I see tons of people saying both the Little Dot MKIII (my old amp) and the Lyr 3 work great with the HE-400. If it's not neutral or technically transparent, I don't really care. Does that help
@ProtegeManiac?
Not really.
It can just rephrase how I put it above from "in photog terms,
what I want vs
what you want" (sic) into "in photog terms,
what you heard from other people is technically good vs
what you want."
Those in blue mean the same thing and those in green mean the same thing, and the examples above still work, including if instead of the Lyr it would be something like the WA6(se) or similar.
I figured noting that the Little Dot was my previous amp was a sign that I am fine and, based on my budget, actually prefer hybrid amps. I'm fine to just buy another Little Dot MKIII at this point, I was just wondering if there were new insights since the last time I checked in. I suppose not.
You'd be better off buying another LD MkIII.
This is because OTL tube amplifiers have a very high output impedance and deliver very low, high distortion and sometimes higher noise, low current power into lower impedance loads (the noise might not come up unless really cranked up, hence how easy it is to get away using some OTL amps on Grados). As much as planars are less affected by reduced damping factor due to high output impedance - the very general rule is a 1:8 ratio of output impedance to load impedance - that usually doesn't hold as well once the output impedance is already far higher than the load impedance.
This kind of interaction between a high output impedance, high distortion, possibly higher noise, low current power and a low impedance (worse if low sensitivity) load can wildly. I had a Little Dot MkII, and while it can sound fine on the HD600 (if with a tiny bit of bass bloat) since it's a high impedance load, the AKG K701 sounds like a tin can (the sound has full body on a Meier Cantate.2 for example) while the Grado SR225 has its upper bass boosted and when cranked up a bit to my hearing threshold, the normal Grado "thump!" goes from "THUMP!" then all the way to "THWWWUMP." Put the same set of headphones on something like a Darkvoice DV336se, and it's not just an across the board lower distortion as it is on the HD600 (the perception that it's darker is due more to no background hiss even when cranked up) but the K701 goes from it's "thump!" on the Meier Cantate.2 to more of a "THWump!" while the Grado mostly just stays at "THWUMP!" Use a solid state amp circuit which has a similarly high output impedance, ie my old NAD 304, and the HD600 is a little bit boring (low voltage output) though at least not sharp, and both the K701 and SR225 sound like absolutely unusable tin cans.
In short, since you don't care about transparency in the amplification quality, it's safer to get the MkIII than gamble on another OTL amp unless you get feedback that that other OTL amp can do exactly what it does. And you shouldn't get any of the good transformer couple amps either, since those amps tend to have sound closer to the Lyr - low output impedance (just higher than the Lyr, usually) with a lot of power for low impedance loads that provides a clean musical sound in the sense that the amp isn't distorting nor clipping as opposed to deliberately introducing an equalizer effect to the sound. One possible distinction being that a pure tube amp, even transformer coupled, is
usually more likely to be able to preserve the 3D quality of the imaging, as much as it can on a system like headphones where you only hear one driver per ear; that said, my Meier Cantate.2 with Crossfeed tends to work better at that than my Pangea HP101 even with software Crossfeed at the same settings as the Cantate's.
The thing about the unpredictability though is that while there's a possibility that the MkII and the Lyr might sound similar on the HE400 (if at least when not cranked up), the thing is I can't have a good guess about it. At best what I can presume is that they might sound similar, but you
might be able to note that - to use flowery audiophile adjectives - the Lyr would be less syrupy sweet in the midrange, and perceive its tighter low end thump to be outright weaker (despite more power) compared to the EQ effect from the OTL amp losing control.
In automotive terms, it's like talking about engine power and handling on buying a car. You want it a bit loose so it will be a bit of fun, so you need to get a pre-993 generation Porsche 911, which you already had before anyway and you know exactly what you're getting, while I'm more likely to go with, say, a 997 Carrera S with a 3.8L, which has more torque but even with the heavier, torquier engine, also comes with wider tyres and so is more planted and less "fun" in Jeremy Clarkson's sense of what a "fun" car is. Clarkson wants to throw it around a runway, I just want to hit the apex and throttle steer it pulling out and not so much sliding sideways with the risk of spinning right off the road and into the cliffside. Or actually I'm most likely to grab a V6 classic NSX (if the revised version from the early 2000s) and then put a supercharger on it so it's easier to throttle steer with some torque (but not have weight behind the rear axle to make that torque spin the car almost instantly with traction control off).
Mammoth Twin Lake
