It sounds clear and lush. It drives both low impedance and high impedance headphones.
The DT-880 600 ohms, which is a bit of monster all its own sounds fantastic with the buffer.
In the 20 dB of gain configuration I have in place, it can drive most headphones with 1V out of a DAC so far.
I will post measurements later.
With a 330 ohm load, I already say the FR is very good. -2 dB at 20 Hz and flat after 30 Hz or so. THD+Noise sits at 0.1% with 1Vrms of input. H2 being the biggest contributor.
The DT-880 600 ohms, which is a bit of monster all its own sounds fantastic with the buffer.
In the 20 dB of gain configuration I have in place, it can drive most headphones with 1V out of a DAC so far.
I will post measurements later.
With a 330 ohm load, I already say the FR is very good. -2 dB at 20 Hz and flat after 30 Hz or so. THD+Noise sits at 0.1% with 1Vrms of input. H2 being the biggest contributor.
@sov, don’t do part 2 yet. And I’ll post the cap change, which I found to be very useful.
I’ve been enjoying this beauty recently. That’s a Type 85 tube, which has an absolutely glorious sound. The load is a CCS, similar to the SCG. Power supply has a Maida reg. I built this just before starting down the SCG journey, so it is maybe three years old now. It has a truly lush sound where you can forget about everything else and just enjoy the music. If I wasn’t a slave to building new stuff and experimenting, I could just stop here and be happy forever.
When I hooked it up recently, I remembered why I fell in love with this tube. The SCG is cleaner than this, it doesn’t editorialize as much, and it shows you more without ever being close to harsh. But sometimes, you just want to relax and not really want to notice everything. That’s why we have more toys than we need.
I’ve been enjoying this beauty recently. That’s a Type 85 tube, which has an absolutely glorious sound. The load is a CCS, similar to the SCG. Power supply has a Maida reg. I built this just before starting down the SCG journey, so it is maybe three years old now. It has a truly lush sound where you can forget about everything else and just enjoy the music. If I wasn’t a slave to building new stuff and experimenting, I could just stop here and be happy forever.
When I hooked it up recently, I remembered why I fell in love with this tube. The SCG is cleaner than this, it doesn’t editorialize as much, and it shows you more without ever being close to harsh. But sometimes, you just want to relax and not really want to notice everything. That’s why we have more toys than we need.
I just listened to Flamenco Sketches on my build and it was truly excellent!
I do love tubes, though, particularly the 300B, so now I have to wonder about the Type 85.
Tubes are not superior, but the way they work is so close to fundamental research in physics, it’s as magical as science can get.
I do love tubes, though, particularly the 300B, so now I have to wonder about the Type 85.
Tubes are not superior, but the way they work is so close to fundamental research in physics, it’s as magical as science can get.