Snake oil or noticeable difference?

[F1Fan72]

Hi all,

What are your thoughts on this?

Musical Fidelity | X-Tube Tube Buffer

X-Tube | Tube Buffer The X-Tube is a Missing Link to Tube-Like Analogue Sound. Find a Dealer Product...

www.musicalfidelity.com

I can see some positive reviews on YouTube / Darko but as always as a sanity check, I ask here

Thoughts?

 

[Purité Audio]

Depends if it adds audible distortion or not, distortion equals ‘analogue’ sound, personally I never enjoyed analogue sound that much in the first place .
Keith

 

[Chrispy]

Why even consider it to begin with?

 

[F1Fan72]

Why even consider it to begin with?

No reason .. just wondering what would be the benefit and actually what’s the point of it ..

 

[Willem]

There may well be a difference, but one that removes you away from neutrality and realism. In short, snake oil.

 

[Waxx]

It adds distortion to the signal, hopefully mainly harmonic and low order because that is what many describe as warmth. But it's a deviation of high fidelity as it is distortion. If you like that or not is pure subjective (many do, many don't) so for you to judge. But for ultimate fidelity this is not what you want and that is why people here will call it snake oil.

 

[Mart68]

According to MF it does not add any appreciable noise or distortion it is instead supposed to solve impedance matching problems (rare but it happens) - here is their blurb:

''Come on! Who are you kidding? The Missing Link is just adding distortion, noise and altering the frequency response and therefore destroying the purity of the original.​

This is not correct. The Missing Link’s measurements are as follows:

• Distortion from 10Hz to 20kHz, less than 0.003%
• Residual noise measured at full output, better than 96dB unweighted
• Frequency response 20Hz to 80kHz + 0, - 0.3dB
• Crosstalk better than 95d8.
• 
  So as you can see, in practice the X-Tube produces no appreciable distortion or noise and does not alter the frequency response. In fact, its technical measurements are better than most source devices.
  

  Okay, so how does The Missing Link work then?​

  Some modern audio devices never quite seem to achieve the potential that their technical specifications promise. Musical Fidelity believes that we have discovered the reason why. The modern software or digital side is often quite excellent. However, we have found that they are usually let down by the analogue output stage, which has difficulties driving the variable inductive, capacitive and resistive loads presented by a typical amplifier and cable combination. What The Missing Link does is to offer a perfectly steady load for these source devices’ analogue stage to drive. Once The Missing Link has presented a perfect load to your sources, and allowed it to work to its full potential, it then drives the load presented by the amplifier with ease. The result is a hard-to-believe improvement in sound.''

 

[Chrispy]

No reason .. just wondering what would be the benefit and actually what’s the point of it ..

I was more thinking of looking at tweaky things like this for what reason to begin with....

 

[amirm]

Sounds like it is a placebo generator.....

 

[Heinrich]

No reason .. just wondering what would be the benefit and actually what’s the point of it ..

They praise the impedance match provided by tubes, but do not specify input or output, neither headroom in voltage and current. The claimed key properties are excluded from the product description. That's all to say on how much sense it has.
It is in the download, sorry.
• Input impedance: 470k Ohms
• Output impedance: < 33 Ohms

Spec on headroom is missing, though.

Not the least, what sense would using tubes make, if one doesn't see them glowing?

 

[Chr1]

Personally I see using tubes in the signal path as similar in nature to using an EQ preference curve, or adjusting old school tone controls.
ie. Nothing wrong with altering the sound to your taste per se, but ideally you should easily be able to switch back to a neutral/transparent, highest possible fidelity (reference) option, wherever possible.

PS I am of the school of thought that thinks that there is no point in using tubes unless they add some subjectively pleasing harmonics/compression.
Otherwise, what's the point?!

 

[Waxx]

if it's only adapting the impendance to drive an amp better, then you can do it better with a very cheap opamp based buffer, no need for tubes. The only reason to use tubes is for the colouration they do in certain circumsstances. Even a discrete transisstor based buffer would be better than tubes.

 

[SIY]

Otherwise, what's the point?!

Entertainment. (serious answer)

 

[kchap]

The interesting thing is the choice of name. Try a web search on X-Tube.

WARNING - DO NOT CLICK ON THE LINKS!!!