Recent content by Valorum

That's at least 80% of the hobby, no?? :D

Thanks for the extra testing, Amir! This quality and performance seems about par for Hifiman, with their infamous headphone headband cracking issues.

I think you have a future in marketing! :D

Interestingly I found this Amazon review from nearly 2 years ago, and it almost prophetically predicts the test results you obtained...

Looking at the Amazon reviews, the first is from 2009, so I think this unit is already quite old itself. I appreciate you taking it apart and analyzing the components and build quality. I'm impressed by how many high quality components they appear to have used. It's a shame they aren't...

I read it in a different context, but it seems like it applies here, too. That's correct.

That's welcome by me, it's up to Amir how sick he is of reviewing DACs. :)

I read at one point that tubes were desirable due to how "nicely" they clipped. While this is obviously subjective, does this apply to this clipping scenario?

If I liked the rest of the unit, I might consider trying other tubes. I found it rather uninspiring on the whole. I would be curious as well to see how different tubes impacted the testing.

I will not pretend to have any understanding of how tubes work their black magic, but could the non-stock tubes amplify the signal more than intended until it runs into a ceiling imposed by other components?

I must admit I have no idea. I've not played with tubes before, and the previous owner of the unit installed them and used them before I did. I have maybe 10-20 hours on them, I'd guess.

The unit does not have stock tubes. It has aftermarket tubes, Mullard/RTC 5654 (6AK5W), that were included when I bought it. According to one Amazon review, those are "the best."

Awesome, thanks for reviewing my unit, Amir! I did not want to divulge my impressions prior to your testing and potentially color the review. This was my first DAC/amp in any capacity, so I did not have a frame of reference or expectations. Issues I noted: Extremely high gain, nearly...

Actually, there are some odd issues where the screen/text entry box jumps around while trying to scroll typing out a longer post. I had much worse issues (the cursor would randomly move while typing, inserting your text into what you'd typed previously, very aggravating) on another forum's...

Without having read through all of the previous pages, has anyone had any issues with their D50? For some reason I decided to join the Massdrop for the D50, and it arrived just last week. I'm left to infer the damages were due to their poor packaging techniques, as the D50's box rattled around...