Audiophilepure

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But, the real diamond here is the Schiit Vali 2. If you have not heard a proper tube amp, you owe it to yourself to do so. The Vali 2 is incredibly musical, providing a sweet mid range, deep authoritative bass, unrestrained highs, excellent dynamic range and detail, with an exceptionally low noise floor, and the power to drive most headphones without issue. Is their a better tube amp out there, well the Lyr 3 comes to mind, but at three times the price. The Vali 2 is a personal indulgence, a guilty pleasure if you will, I would go so far as to say that if you don’t have a tube amp in your collection, buy a Vali 2, for a $149, how could you go wrong, and you will add a dimension to your music enjoyment hitherto unexplored.”

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The WA33 Elite is a tube amplifier, so yes it has some tube noise/hiss lurking in the background, but it was only audible when I played quiet music or movies. I do have issues with the four small knobs flanking the volume control, turning them they feel clunky and stiff, for this kind of money I want smooth and buttery.”

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“Unlike many tube headphone amps that exhibit the rolled off high frequencies and bottom end that a seeming majority of electrical engineers think is the “tube” sound, the Schiit Lyr 3 produces a true audiophile sound with extreme linearity in both the low bass extending into the subsonic and the upper registers, while retaining the musicality of midrange to tame the occasionally aggressive precision of the Schiit Multibit DAC. Despite the use of a shared tube for both channels, the stereo separation was competitive with many dual mono amps I have heard, and while the soundstage is a bit shallower than I prefer, it does depend a lot on which headphone you listen to, as listening through the Katanas put me exactly where I wanted to be. As to power and dynamic range, I can’t imagine a headphone that the Lyr 3 couldn’t drive easily and produce clean clear concert level volumes for those who wish to damage their hearing. I did find myself listening to higher volumes than I would normally without any fatigue, and could easily get lost in the music for hours.”

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“Before I talk about sound, I want to lay bare my preferences. I was at a meet a last year, and a guy there had a moded HD800 there with a few high powered tube amps (I don’t remember the names of the amps, sorry). They added a lot of warmth to the HD800, but I missed the deeper, tighter bass you can get with SS amps, and all the warmth seemed to be fighting with the natural signature of the HD800, and not working with it. Listening to it on my SS setup wasn’t any better. It was cold and ruthless. The guy called me back over and told me he wanted me to hear something. He broke out a hybrid amp (again, I don’t remember the name) and had me give it a listen. It was perfect. It was very linear, with very tight and deep bass, while adding just a touch of smoothness to the sound. To me, instead of trying to make the headphone something it wasn’t, it complimented the HD800, adding to the strengths of the headphone while smoothing out the rough edges. It made no effort to change the sound. Now, I am not saying this to dump on OTL tube amps, and I know, with different tubes, you can alter their sound quite a bit, but I want to be clear on what kind of sound I favor.”

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“You might lose a little in terms of ultimate fidelity but that’s more than compensated for by the well-balanced, musical sound. We just enjoy listening to music more when it’s fed through this box.”