Doge 7 tube DAC

jjss49, as a Doge 7 owner with 6 West German Telefunken valves and 2 GEC A2900  tubes rolled in I'm very interested in your further impressions after tube rolling. Also wondering, if you happen to have tried it with RCAs instead of XLRs and whether either of these variables change its ranking. Since my Denon 4806 AV doesn't have XLR connections I can only take advantage of 4 out of the 6 Tele's I swapped in. I concur completely with your impressions on the deep soundstage. My other sources (burr brown, Wolfson),  are much flatter and even my Sony ES SACD player with its great center voice imaging isn't nearly as deep. I thought the tube swap might have improved cohesiveness and basically just further extended existing charactetistics making it sound even more dynamic and powerful. I didn't switch tubes back and forth so could this could just be confirmation bias from buying expensive tubes. Sounds several db louder too and now I sometimes turn my head thinking background vocals are coming from my surrounds when listening to certain recordings in stereo. I'm using Audio Envy RCA interconnects btw and have newer KEF R series bookshelf and center speakers with Martin Logan sub and old 80's uni-Q towers for surrounds. Not that it matters with the Doge, but I'm mentioning to say it has brought my 2-channel enjoyment almost up to par with my love of SACD surround when streaming hi res through the Doge.
 

@nnsixx

i have not carefully compared balanced vs rca outs on the doge as yet... nor have i had a chance to tube roll... with the multiple paralleled tubes in the unit it is a bit of a pain, but i will eventually get around to it

i would agree a weak point in the doge is that despite using a multitude of 12ax7’s in its output circuit the output voltage is not strong... i am always adjusting other dacs down in volume to match the weak output level of the doge even at 127 max output setting when doing comparisons

i am a two channel listener only, no ht for me