Do clothes make the man?

@markw1951 I will let these modern tubes break in and see if I am satisfied, but I won't be because I think there are some NOS waiting for me out there somewhere.  The good news is that this very simple and inexpensive amp lets me spend a little more for some great tubes and I still will have arrived at my destination with a bargain fare.

Many years ago when I had big, wonderful tube amps and a tube preamp, I hadn’t yet learned about rolling tubes. In the last 10 years, however, in my two home office systems (one headphone only; the other headphones + speakers/sub), I’ve done fairly extensive rolling of tubes in headphone amps and the NOS DACs I have that use tubes in their outputs. And I can attest that high quality NOS tubes sound as different from each other as people look from one another. It’s that simple. Sometimes it takes 3 or 4 tries to find a tube (or matched pair) that completely locks in and synergizes with the component in question.

Speaking of Reflektors, I was unaware of these tubes until recently. I have a wonderful NOS DAC, the Lab12 DAC1 Reference 1, which uses a matched pair of 6922s in the output. I got very good sound with a pair of Amperex Bugle Boys, then with a pair of JAN 7308s. One of my headphone pals was kind enough to send me a pair of 1975 Voshkod Reflektors. I put them in the DAC and am getting easily the best sound ever with them. The other tubes sounded very, but the Voshkods simply take it higher; they lock in with this DAC. It’s easy hear this, particularly on the speaker & sub (vintage KEF 103.2s + JLAudio e110).

    @desktopguy Coincidentally, I own the same dac and enjoy it a lot.  I tried a different 6922 and didn't notice any difference.  Now you have given me another path for experimenting.  Thanks.  BTW, I also have the Benchmark Dac 3 with all of its correctness and find that it works very well when I run the output through the tube pre and power amp.  Fun, huh.

@abnerjack I’ve also heard that running a quality delta/sigma DAC like your Benchmark through a tubed pre w/ or w/o a tubed amp creates positive synergy. Never had occasion to test it, though.

FWIW, I’m a bit of a DAC hoarder (an everything hoarder). I recently picked up a "gently used" (read so mint it looks brand new) Mojo Mystique X SE. I have it and the Lab12 receiving signal from the same DDC (Matrix Audio X-SPDIF 2). Intriguingly, that DDC outputs signal simultaneously on all 4 outputs. I have both DACs’ outputs feeding a very transparent, full-featured preamp (Bel Canto Pre3). This means I can very quickly and easily switch between these DACs in the middle of a music cut, just by changing which input is live on the output of the preamp. I’ve done some fascinating comparisons of these 2 decidedly high end DACs, one with that beautiful tube output, the other with an overbuilt, refined PS and no tubes. They don’t sound alike, but each one takes that great NOS digital sound higher than any other DAC I’ve heard. 

At some point in the future I’ll also try 12AT7 output tubes with adapters in the Lab12 (I have a couple terrific matched pairs of NOS 12AT7s to do this with). The only problem with that is the adapter places the tube too high for the Lab12’s cover to fit, so I’d have to run it sans cover. Sacrifices, sacrifices!

"Clothes make the man"

If you had the offer to fly for free to another continent over a major ocean but the catch was that you either had to have the plane flown by a person dressed as a pilot who had never flown in a plane let alone flown a plane. The other choice is a paid flight over the same ocean by a top rated qualified pilot dressed in civilian clothing as opposed to a pilot's uniform.

Would you choose the man in the pilot's uniform and get a free flight?

Clothing does not make the man.