[Bitten by Bug]

@Porteroso - He, He.  Yes, I am loving it!  Guess it shows!  Glad for the entertainment value!    Agreed the SP is very sweet in the dark. And thanks for your take on its' value which @joseph69 agrees.  And good points on not only drivers, but also cans having impact.
 
OMG so sorry about your amp.  Yikes. In my house the cat is always at fault.  Glad you are resurrecting it.  Thanks for sharing your experiences and info on a replacement plug. Does not sound like it was fun. Hope you are sorting it out fully soon.
 
If in the future you find yourself in a situation where you need to remove solder, this type of stuff works well. You can't reuse the solder, but it allows you to clean up easily.
Also in your solder kit, single edged razor blades make stripping wire much easier.  With very little practice you can become quite adept. Wire strippers are nice too
 
Too bad the new valves do not pair nicely. You can probably find another and hopefully it will play nicely with one of the others.

 

[Bitten by Bug]

Feathers are yucky tasting -My bad    Sorry.  Yup, eating crow.  I previously unfairly stated tubes I received from Woo are noisy. After further investigation, is apparent I was hasty in my declaration. These are in fact silent at a 11 o'clock position.  Poor premise leads to bad conclusion. Premise was that my setup is silent because the stock tubes are dead silent. Thus my conclusion that when 'upgrade' tubes are installed and there is noise that said noise is from them.  Wrong!
 
The noises are introduced from the computer via usb to DAC.  These 'upgrade' tubes would seem to be much more sensitive and are sharing artifacts that the stock tubes do not.  I guess that could be a good thing to draw out more detail????.  In this instance, though, no.
 
Sorry for providing incorrect information.
 
Now to fix issue....

 

[waterproofchick]

Silly question. Can I use my Fiio X3 (Second generation) along with a FiiO E12 Mont Blanc and be content with my current set of headphones, DT990, HD650, and HD800.

 

[WayTooCrazy]

I want to join the Woo audio group, but I will need a DAC to go with it. I think I want to do the WA6. I just wish I could get a Woo DAC that looks like the Woo amps. Would be nice to stack them.

 

[ChrisIsAwesome]

Hi guys, I was originally looking at the wa22 but decided I wanted something more towards the wa6se price point.

The only issue is lack of driver tube compatability is troubling me.
Would the wa6se really even be an upgrade from a wa6 running high end 6sn7's or 6f8g's?

 

[u2u2]

Hi guys, I was originally looking at the wa22 but decided I wanted something more towards the wa6se price point.

The only issue is lack of driver tube compatability is troubling me.
Would the wa6se really even be an upgrade from a wa6 running high end 6sn7's or 6f8g's?

The lack of driver tube compatibility of the WA6SE drove me to purchase a WA6 as my first Woo amp. I wanted to tube roll and build a tube collection towards a future purchase. I have since added a WA22. According to the amp comparison chart published by Woo the WA6SE falls between the two performance wise. I have tried the WA6SE a few times and based on my limited exposure to the SE I agree with the chart. Many here use adapters for 6SN7 on the SE but Woo still does not list them as supported tubes. You could end up with some challenges making a warranty claim if the amp fails. The extra funds for the WA22 are worth it assuming you have a suitable DAC and headphones. If not, you will get 95% of the satisfaction with a WA6, save some funds, and avoid complications. Then there is also the option to buy a previously enjoyed amp...

 

[Guidostrunk]

These are the posts , that I admire. People who have actually owned the product, and give experienced information. I feel even more confident now , in purchasing my Wa6. Thanks for the post!
Cheers

The lack of driver tube compatibility of the WA6SE drove me to purchase a WA6 as my first Woo amp. I wanted to tube roll and build a tube collection towards a future purchase. I have since added a WA22. According to the amp comparison chart published by Woo the WA6SE falls between the two performance wise. I have tried the WA6SE a few times and based on my limited exposure to the SE I agree with the chart. Many here use adapters for 6SN7 on the SE but Woo still does not list them as supported tubes. You could end up with some challenges making a warranty claim if the amp fails. The extra funds for the WA22 are worth it assuming you have a suitable DAC and headphones. If not, you will get 95% of the satisfaction with a WA6, save some funds, and avoid complications. Then there is also the option to buy a previously enjoyed amp...

 

[u2u2]

These are the posts , that I admire. People who have actually owned the product, and give experienced information. I feel even more confident now , in purchasing my Wa6. Thanks for the post!
Cheers

I still use the 6 on a regular basis and have some tubes arriving for it over the next few days. One of my best bang for the buck audio purchases ever. Have a blast with yours and Thank You as well. Enjoy.

 

[joseph69]

Hi guys, I was originally looking at the wa22 but decided I wanted something more towards the wa6se price point.

The only issue is lack of driver tube compatability is troubling me.
Would the wa6se really even be an upgrade from a wa6 running high end 6sn7's or 6f8g's?

Congratulations.
When I bought my first WA6 I decided to upgrade to the SE and didn't care for its sound/limited tube rolling options, so I sold it very quickly and purchased another WA6 and never looked back.
 

  I still use the 6 on a regular basis and have some tubes arriving for it over the next few days. One of my best bang for the buck audio purchases ever. Have a blast with yours and Thank You as well. Enjoy.

+1

 

[Bitten by Bug]

Woo Hoo!!!  I had previously determined, much to my chagrin, that high gain drivers were picking up computer noise via usb. You could hear the HDD spool, etc.  Also discoverd a very minor ground leak I could not work around. It only made sense to electrically isolate the computer to fix the issues. Toslink to the rescue seemed prudent. Finally got over to Frys (an electronics store) today and procured both a toslink capable sound card for pass through and cable to achieve. Installed card, drivers, adjusted to highest sample rate the Bifrost will take...and WoW!  There is great improvement in the music compared to the usb.  What a huge improvement in SQ! Woo Hoo!
 
I guess USB was not passing everything to the DAC. When I upgraded to a DAC there was a meaningful increase in SQ.  Going to the toslink is a significantly greater increase in SQ.
 
Oh, I digressed with my excitement over the serendipitous SQ benefits.  The toslink isolated the computer and the anticipated outcome was in fact realized.  The high gain drivers are, for all intents and purposes, silent! High gain valves providing additional headroom are making an impact too.
 
The Tube du Jour is a zero hour Philips 5U4GB - yes, the music is fantastic, but how much can be attributed to the new tube is unknown!! The optical connection and high gain drivers have made a radical shift to the baseline. Ha Ha. Guess I will have to roll in my current fav, Mullard gz32 and go for a sonic trip.
 
The manner in which the WA6SE continues to scale is amazing...

 

[Guidostrunk]

Ok , folks. Can anyone give me some insight on the differences between 5R4G vs 5Z4G?
Thanks!

 

[u2u2]

Ok , folks. Can anyone give me some insight on the differences between 5R4G vs 5Z4G?
Thanks!

error - deleted

 

[Bitten by Bug]

Doesn't seem your question was answered.  A cursory search of the interwebs yielded:
 
http://www.duncanamps.com/tdsl/show.php?des=5R4G that appears to have more links on the bottom
 
and
 
http://www.r-type.org/pdfs/5z4g.pdf
 
Hope these resources may point you in the right direction!
 
Cheers.

 

[SethG]

  Woo Hoo!!!  I had previously determined, much to my chagrin, that high gain drivers were picking up computer noise via usb. You could hear the HDD spool, etc.  Also discoverd a very minor ground leak I could not work around. It only made sense to electrically isolate the computer to fix the issues. Toslink to the rescue seemed prudent. Finally got over to Frys (an electronics store) today and procured both a toslink capable sound card for pass through and cable to achieve. Installed card, drivers, adjusted to highest sample rate the Bifrost will take...and WoW!  There is great improvement in the music compared to the usb.  What a huge improvement in SQ! Woo Hoo!
 
I guess USB was not passing everything to the DAC. When I upgraded to a DAC there was a meaningful increase in SQ.  Going to the toslink is a significantly greater increase in SQ.
 
Oh, I digressed with my excitement over the serendipitous SQ benefits.  The toslink isolated the computer and the anticipated outcome was in fact realized.  The high gain drivers are, for all intents and purposes, silent! High gain valves providing additional headroom are making an impact too.
 
The Tube du Jour is a zero hour Philips 5U4GB - yes, the music is fantastic, but how much can be attributed to the new tube is unknown!! The optical connection and high gain drivers have made a radical shift to the baseline. Ha Ha. Guess I will have to roll in my current fav, Mullard gz32 and go for a sonic trip.
 
The manner in which the WA6SE continues to scale is amazing...

Hey, I recently have been bouncing back and forth doing a similar thing with my Bifrost Multibit and Woo WA6-SE. First a question, which sound card did you buy and which OS are you using?
 
I've got a Mac Pro and went back and forth with the onboard optical out, but it's apparently limited at 96K. Overtime I was able to get the USB working better but also huge noise problems. 
 
What I've discovered is that the origin of the problem in sound quality is two-fold, first the ground loop, it's terrible. But be aware that with an RCA interconnect connecting the ground between the computer, the DAC and the amp, nothing is isolated. So, secondary inputs on all of the above will just make it worse. 
 
The second part of the problem, and at this point I think the biggest actual impact, is jitter. I used to be insanely skeptical of jitter, but started reading up on it's impact more on the signal. Basically it blurs the audio. By the time it's bad enough to break up the signal on transients you are hosed, before that is just poor sound quality. 
 
When I began focusing on jitter as a potential problem, I ran through a series of experiments to see if I could make it worse first. It's easier to push on it and make it much worse than to fix it, and at least you've found the problem. 
 
So, I started trying to overload the computer when sending audio, subtle at first, I put something else on the USB bus and send some data to it, or put nothing else on the USB bus and just ask the computer to do more work. The result was amazingly bad audio. Once you hear jitter (or ground loop noise for that matter) you can't un-hear it. 
 
Switching to the optical out seemed to solve half or more of the problem. Ground loop gone, but also I wasn't penalized by having the USB bus tied up doing something else. Of course I'd rather fix the USB problem, but it's all a long running painful experiment. 
 
For me the eye-opener was driving my headphones (LCD-XC) off the headphone monitor-out on my TASCAM DA-3000. It sounded twice as good as the Woo and Schiit, which of course is just a sign of a big problem, not some actual valid comparison. In the end it was jitter. 
 
Hope maybe this helps you in some way. 

 

[Bitten by Bug]

 
Hey, I recently have been bouncing back and forth doing a similar thing with my Bifrost Multibit and Woo WA6-SE. First a question, which sound card did you buy and which OS are you using?
 
I've got a Mac Pro and went back and forth with the onboard optical out, but it's apparently limited at 96K. Overtime I was able to get the USB working better but also huge noise problems. 
 
What I've discovered is that the origin of the problem in sound quality is two-fold, first the ground loop, it's terrible. But be aware that with an RCA interconnect connecting the ground between the computer, the DAC and the amp, nothing is isolated. So, secondary inputs on all of the above will just make it worse. 
 
The second part of the problem, and at this point I think the biggest actual impact, is jitter. I used to be insanely skeptical of jitter, but started reading up on it's impact more on the signal. Basically it blurs the audio. By the time it's bad enough to break up the signal on transients you are hosed, before that is just poor sound quality. 
 
When I began focusing on jitter as a potential problem, I ran through a series of experiments to see if I could make it worse first. It's easier to push on it and make it much worse than to fix it, and at least you've found the problem. 
 
So, I started trying to overload the computer when sending audio, subtle at first, I put something else on the USB bus and send some data to it, or put nothing else on the USB bus and just ask the computer to do more work. The result was amazingly bad audio. Once you hear jitter (or ground loop noise for that matter) you can't un-hear it. 
 
Switching to the optical out seemed to solve half or more of the problem. Ground loop gone, but also I wasn't penalized by having the USB bus tied up doing something else. Of course I'd rather fix the USB problem, but it's all a long running painful experiment. 
 
For me the eye-opener was driving my headphones (LCD-XC) off the headphone monitor-out on my TASCAM DA-3000. It sounded twice as good as the Woo and Schiit, which of course is just a sign of a big problem, not some actual valid comparison. In the end it was jitter. 
 
Hope maybe this helps you in some way. 

Howdy, thanks for taking the time for sharing your experiences. Yes it does help.
 
I grabbed a cheap ASUS Xonar sound card for pass through. Was tempted to pick up another Mac Mini to use as source, and was actually eyeballing them, but the Win 7 computer has such a fine ability to share music over my wifi without restriction that I thought I would try this and am well pleased.  Probably the best $35US spent on music yet including Toslink cable
 
It is pushing 24 bit 96K into Bifrost which is a huge improvement over SQ from USB and also iPod classic.
 
My system was stone quiet using stock drivers.  The high gain drivers were picking up all sorts of sounds from the computer including a previously unknown very minor ground loop. Toslink fixed all my issues and made a huge increase in sound quality. For all I know the SQ increase maybe attributed to toslink overcoming the jitter you explained.
I am probably too much of a neophyte to recognise jitter. I do respect your experimental approach and am pleased to learn you have isolated and found a fix for parts of your issue.  While I have seen various anti jitter solutions for USB, I don't recall seeing a conditioner for Toslink.
 
Like you, my preference, is USB.  But as long as I can not get out of the ground loop it is not going to happen. Seems that some DACs like the Cambridge Audio Azur DacMagic 100 have a ground lift switch on the back that I guess could maybe help to ameliorate similar issues...
 
Happy listening and thanks for sharing your experiences.  The greater the knowledge pool the better the chance for good outcomes for us and others.