Review and Measurements of xDuoo TA-10 Tube DAC & HP Amp

[MacCali]

Thank you

Audeze on their homepage claim that minimal power for this headphones is 100mW and recommended is 250mW

So not even close to xduoo's theoretical power.

The TA-10R is 2000 mw or 2 watts per channel

 

[860lacov]

The TA-10R is 2000 mw or 2 watts per channel

I know. I think that power wise it should be ok.
But lcd2c are quite worm headphones.
I never tried tube amp but if I'm correct it adds some warmth too.

Not sure what's coukd be the problem with tube + planar.

TA-10R is not noiseless and lcd2c requires only 70 Ohms.
Can there be noise problem?

Lcd2c are very bassy in my opinion. May there be a problem with warm tube ?

If there are no deal breakers such as much to less power.
Extreme bass
Extreme noise
Just want to avoid extreme problems

Than I could give xduoo a try

 

[MacCali]

I know. I think that power wise it should be ok.
But lcd2c are quite worm headphones.
I never tried tube amp but if I'm correct it adds some warmth too.

Not sure what's coukd be the problem with tube + planar.

TA-10R is not noiseless and lcd2c requires only 70 Ohms.
Can there be noise problem?

Lcd2c are very bassy in my opinion. May there be a problem with warm tube ?

If there are no deal breakers such as much to less power.
Extreme bass
Extreme noise
Just want to avoid extreme problems

Than I could give xduoo a try

No clue, but on dynamic headphones sound amazing. Remember this unit is a hybrid, it’s not pure tube. But it definitely adds way more tube’yness than other hybrid units at this price do.

I use the liquid platinum for my HE6Se, but I would say it’s not a fair comparison as I believe either the tubes do nothing, since tube rolling does nothing. The design is messed up, or from my knowledge if a tube is only used in the buffer stage it’s far less noticeable vs a tube for power. The TA-10R may have it as a buffer stage as well, no clue, but it does a really good job implementing it.

 

[860lacov]

I need a little help.

I have 10r
The volume knob is a jit loose. I can move it a bit up and down and left and right.
Is this normal?

I want to be sure if it not a problem with a transport because the tube was a little crooked and I had to straighten it up.

 

[MacCali]

I need a little help.

I have 10r
The volume knob is a jit loose. I can move it a bit up and down and left and right.
Is this normal?

I want to be sure if it not a problem with a transport because the tube was a little crooked and I had to straighten it up.

just checked mine, it does have a bit of wiggle, but nothing crazy, more up and down than left or right; which has less travel

 

[860lacov]

Could You recommend tube for ta-10r?

I was told that good choice coukd be
Psvane treasure mark II
or
Mullard 12au7 tube

Is it even worth changing the factory tube?
I'm sure that I don't need more bass. More treble is ok

 

[MacCali]

Could You recommend tube for ta-10r?

I was told that good choice coukd be
Psvane treasure mark II
or
Mullard 12au7 tube

Is it even worth changing the factory tube?
I'm sure that I don't need more bass. More treble is ok

Wish I could help, I got a used tube that was like originally 60 dollars. Was tested by the tube expert at the audio shop and came out clean with no issues for 10 bucks. But honestly it did definitely change the sound to something to more of my liking. It’s a sylvania NOS

Something like this can’t take the tube out to see precisely, I can but I’m lazy

Edit: also I wouldn’t expect a price like that, they were just moving and it was a liquidation sale

 

[hcl-1]

Could You recommend tube for ta-10r?

I was told that good choice coukd be
Psvane treasure mark II
or
Mullard 12au7 tube

Is it even worth changing the factory tube?
I'm sure that I don't need more bass. More treble is ok

Sylvania 5814A or 6189(W).

I also have a very nice RCA 5963, but actually I have more than one and only one was really nice. The results with the Sylvania tubes were way more consistent.

I have some HOGES 12AU7, which were good to very good, but as far as I read, they were a rebrander, so you probably don't know what you actually get.

But the best so far is a Tesla ECC82 with Rhodium pins (there is also a normal ECC82, which is good, but not as good and a VERY expensive ECC802S from Tesla which I didn't buy yet (matched pair, which I don't need, costs €262, abnormal), although it's said to be even better).

Oh and Telefunken is said to be very good, not especially for the TA-10R but in general. But these too are only available as NOS and abnormally expensive (€50-€100 for one).

 

[Bow_Wazoo]

After all the clarity and cleanliness that my Topping throws at me, I have now also ordered the ta-10r.
And in one wash directly a tube from Genalex...
I'm curious.

 

[MacCali]

After all the clarity and cleanliness that my Topping throws at me, I have now also ordered the ta-10r.
And in one wash directly a tube from Genalex...
I'm curious.

View attachment 219194

It’s worth it man, especially if you like a bit of tube. My description with growing experience is it seems like a high end tube amp. Because you get the decent numbers and tube sound.

Honestly wish I had more headphones to test it out with, but I gave up on the headphone game. I’m a stereoholic

 

[Bow_Wazoo]

The last time I tried to hear a difference between Tube + class A vs. NFCA, I failed...

 

[Bow_Wazoo]

Yes.
With this little animation, I would like to start my post.

I spent a few hours last night on the TA-10R (Genalex Tube) + Arya Stealth.

I don't think anything at all of hi-fi voodoo, amp sound, and so on.
Because that, I have to mention at this point,
that I bought the Xduoo,
because I think it's nice to stare at a glowing tube in the evening,
while listening to music.

The evening turned out differently than I expected.

Let's talk about Cypher:
I don't care by now,
if it's the Matrix that makes my brain think,
that the Arya on the TA-10R sounds particularly musical, exciting, and "organic."
But that is exactly my impression.
This combination really sounds unearthly cool.

-FIN-

 

[Wialex666]

Hi Everyone,

I sold my FiiO K5 Pro and bought the xDuoo TA-10R. (Also have the Topping NX4 DSD for portable use)

This hybrid tube amp is a SUPER SILKY MUSIC GENERATOR. It sounds magically good.

(Thundering amount of power, lively presentation, tons of detail, excellent separation, colossal soundstage, etc.)

I tried it with my Beyerdynamic DT 770 Pro (250 Ohm) and MMX 300 Gen 2 (32 Ohm). Drives them easily.

Unfortunately, I don't have any open-back headphones at the moment, because of my noisy environment...

Two "negatives":

1. I can hear a little hiss in my left earcup. Coming from the AMP for sure. Maybe because of the stock tube?

2. Unit temperature. It's getting really really hot. After 1 hour of use, the whole unit overheats and stops working, and goes into safe mode. Is this normal? Maybe because of the hot weather?

The outside temperature is around 42 °C. My room temperature is close to 30 °C, but technically the unit has "enough room space" to ventilate. I think this isn't enough, maybe some extra ventilation might help...

Any thoughts?

 

[Gruesome]

I was curious whether the hump on the TA-10R contained anything or was just for looks - an output transformer seemed unlikely, since this amp supposedly has a transistor final stage - , so I had a peek:

They put the power supply (or at least part of it) in there. Not a bad idea.
As others remarked before, the build looks sturdy. The vacuum tube seems to be in the audio path, judging from the headphone pinging induced by rapping against the amplifier housing. ;-)
Mine doesn't run too hot, about 36 ℃ surface temp. The tube is hotter of course, although not as hot as indicated by the glow from the orange LED illuminating it from below.

I verified that pins 1 and 3 of the XLR output (counting counter-clockwise from top left) connect both to the ground of the 1/4" jack.

 

[Gruesome]

I was curious whether the hump on the TA-10R contained anything or was just for looks - an output transformer seemed unlikely, since this amp supposedly has a transistor final stage - , so I had a peek:
View attachment 281953
They put the power supply (or at least part of it) in there. Not a bad idea.
As others remarked before, the build looks sturdy. The vacuum tube seems to be in the audio path, judging from the headphone pinging induced by rapping against the amplifier housing. ;-)
Mine doesn't run too hot, about 36 ℃ surface temp. The tube is hotter of course, although not as hot as indicated by the glow from the orange LED illuminating it from below.
View attachment 281966
I verified that pins 1 and 3 of the XLR output (counting counter-clockwise from top left) connect both to the ground of the 1/4" jack.

Update: The 36℃ was for 22C℃ ambient, so that's a Delta T of 14℃. I did not run the amp with the hood off, so I don't know what component temperature this corresponds to. I measured 14W total AC draw, independent of headphone volume. As a sanity check, taking the surface area of the amplifier top and sides (~930cm^2), and also allowing for heat transfer from the (hot but small) tube (assuming Delta T of 100K and area of 30cm^2), you get about 8.75 W/(m^2*K) heat transfer coefficient to (still) air, which is not completely unreasonable.
For the previous poster (from July 2022): that coefficient is a strong function of air speed; if you don't want to open the case and put a fan inside, even just pointing a small fan at the amplifier can easily double the heat transfer coefficient, cut the temperature difference in half and thus significantly lower the amplifier temperature.

Ever the optimist, I attempted to measure the frequency response of my TA-10R at the XLR output with a Sennheiser HD6xx headphone plugged in, using my new Evor04-slim audio display gizmo (see Amir's review).
Amir measured a flat response at the headphone output of the TA-10, so presumably the (load-independent, i.e. identical whether headphone is plugged in or not) dropoffs I see below 40Hz (-0.7dB at 32Hz) and above 5kHz (-1.3dB at 16kHz) are due to the Evor04, and not the TA-10R. I used test signals from https://www.churchsoundcheck.com/audio-test-signals.html, after verifying (within the limits of that method) with a chrome browser audio analyser plugin that the tones seem to be equal in amplitude.
The volume steps of the TA-10R seem quite linear in dB, with 0.5dB per step in the upper range:

volume setting	dB
100	0
95	-2.5
90	-5
80	-10
60	-19.9
40	-32.3
20	-52.2

For no input signal, the Evor04 indicates a noise level of -66 and -69dB +/-2dB for the left and right channel respectively.

 

[Gruesome]

I don't know whether this is expected, or an artifact of my way of measuring it using the Evor04 hooked up to the headphone output, but when cranked up until harmonics become visible (and too loud to listen, at least for my ears), the Xduoo TA-10R produces very little or no second harmonics, and a lot of third and higher odd harmonics.
Below a kilohertz the Evor04 has trouble (I think Amir already remarked on that), but even there it's pretty clear that the 3rd dominates.
200 Hz low/reasonable gain:

200 Hz, too loud to listen:

400Hz, overdrive:

1 kHz, overdrive:

4kHz:

Sorry about the lousy screenshots from my tube phone. ;-)

So it seems likely that the distortion is coming from a push-pull stage, not from the single tube stage (as one might perhaps have hoped).

 

[JeffJ]

Is there any way to eliminate the background noise, when plugging in sensitive iems? Change tubes or use a impedance adapter? I'm aware this is not designed for iems, but it would be nice to have one device handling everything.

 

[Gruesome]

You mean a thump noise at the moment you plug in, or constant hissing noise? if it's the former, and this is with volume turned all the way down, then I'm not sure you can do anything besides turning the amp off and then on again after plugging in. But that might be worse for the tube.
If it's the latter (constant noise), then I have no idea.

Sorry, not much help, I know.

 

[JeffJ]

You mean a thump noise at the moment you plug in, or constant hissing noise? if it's the former, and this is with volume turned all the way down, then I'm not sure you can do anything besides turning the amp off and then on again after plugging in. But that might be worse for the tube.
If it's the latter (constant noise), then I have no idea.

Sorry, not much help, I know.

Thanks for the advice! I demo'd one today, and there is constant hissing noise when plugged in iem, even when not playing any music. TA-10R has a high gain setting and lacks a gain switch, from my understanding is the cause of the noise floor.

 

[Gruesome]

And it's not whatever is at the input of the TA-10R? I have a Windows tablet that generates bad noise on both USB out and headphone out if the power from the docking station is plugged in, on all headphones, amps and DACs I've tried with it.