Bottlehead S.E.X.

Interesting impressions vs Vidar. Impressions of how the SEX fares with speakers in general are kinda sparse, so thanks for posting them. The C4S upgrade should improve the bass for you and add a bit of clarity--I'm curious how it stacks up to Vidar with those changes. Look forward to reading your impressions as time goes on and after you get a chance to install the upgrade!

 

I've spent some more time listening to the S.E.X. through the Vandersteen 2C speakers, and it's quite engaging. Tonight I sat down for a more direct comparison with the Vidar, and went through a varied playlist tonight with both amps. I'm still running the base S.E.X. without the C4S upgrade. That may get installed this weekend.

As I noted in my initial impressions, the amplifier is surprisingly good with my normal speaker setup, and can easily hit 85 to 90 dB (unweighted) at my normal listening position in my relatively small room, which is louder than I typically listen unless I've been drinking and am in that sort of mood.

Obviously I didn't expect that a low powered tube amp would truly compete with the much more powerful Vidar. That is the case, but the amp most certainly does not fall over on its face in comparison. Instead it presents some plusses and some minuses, and is a heck of a lot of fun to listen to. I'm still planning to eventually set the S.E.X. up with some smaller speakers for listening in my home office, but for the moment I'll probably switch it back and forth with the Vidar in my main setup as the mood strikes me.

So let's get down to the plus and minus of this fun little amp.

Vocals are clear and very well placed. I'd go as far as to say the S.E.X. with these speakers is a little vocal heavy, as they seemed to stand out a little ways from the music. On King's X's Dogman, Doug's voice was centered exactly between and just slightly behind the speakers, about 5 feet from the floor. Listening to Onward from The Banner Saga soundtrack was similar, with a great sense of space around the vocals and lovely reverb. Similar story with Dave Matthews' vocals in Two Step.

On all of these songs, the Vidar didn't do as well with vocals; Vocals on the King's X and Dave Matthews tracks were about 3 feet from the ground and more mixed into the rest of the track. Vocals on Onward were a little harsher with less air around them.

The S.E.X. put out plenty of bass with these speakers, but compared to the Vidar that bass was somewhat fat and uncontrolled. The bass lines of Two Step sounded boomy and loud, as did the line of M83's 0078h and Purity Ring's Belispeak. It was kind of like the amp was able to get the woofers moving fine, but couldn't hold on to them well enough to keep the bass controlled, and some detail felt missing. Fun to listen to though, if I'm honest, and modern indie/electronic stuff like Grimes, Phantogram, Purity Ring, CHVRCHES, Yeasayer, etc all sound great.

Another weakness was some lack of detail in the highs. Tangled Up in Blue, for example, sounded dull to me. Both Dylan's guitar and voice were missing some of the bite and sparkle that I love in that song, which were both very present on the Vidar. It was the same on 0078h, which was missing some of the harder edge and buzz on the wall of noise that makes up that track. And on Baba O'Riley the arpeggios didn't really pop the way I like.

Also generally while the amp had great vocal placement and separation, things tended to get a little muddy in the instruments when tracks got busy.

This last one is a little interesting to me. I was running both amps through the same chain: Roon to RPI3 with HifiBerry Digi+ Pro to Modi Multibit to Schiit Saga to Amplifier to Vandersteens. The Saga was in passive mode in both cases, but was in bypass mode (all the way up) for the S.E.X. since both my Bottlehead amps act a little funky with the Saga controlling volume in passive mode. But for normal listening I prefer running the Saga in active mode with the Vidar with the tube in the path. It seems to add a little heft and fun to the sound compared to pure passive mode. With the S.E.X. I felt the opposite, like active mode was taking something away instead. No idea why the difference.

 

Which source are you using? With BF2 the SEX sounded mushy when paragraphs got complex. I felt the BF2 + SEX combo was too lush. When I plugged in the Gunngir A2 which is very neutral, mushiness was gone. In short, synergy between the SEX and G A2 is better than that with BF2 (I also posted the same observations earlier in the synergy thread).

 

Modi Multibit over optical from Raspberry Pi 3 and HifiBerry Digi+ Pro.

 

What happened? Was the c4s any good?

 

Oh man, two years already? Followup is definitely overdue.

Yes, I installed the C4S upgrade shortly after that post. It's a pretty quick installation, roughly equivalent to the smaller board in the Crack's speedball upgrade, and should be fairly easy to revert or even make switchable, but I want with the standard install. The difference is not nearly so large as with the Crack and Speedball. Compared to the Crack the S.E.X. was already a fairly well controlled amp without a lot of bloom or overly "tubey" sound to it, and I don't have the impression that the C4S fundamentally changed the overall sound of the amp. For the cost (low) and difficulty of assembling it (easy) I think it was worth it.

Unfortunately I didn't do any detailed before/after listening after installing it to easily give more specifics.

 

I have S3X and listened for a couple months before installing the C4S.
Using HD6XX and both analog and digital sources, the C4S really improved the bass response making it have more detail and impact. It also improved the air and upper details. I didn’t find it subtle and unlike Crack/Speedball, I can’t see someone wanting to go back to stock on S3X.

 

I did it after a week of regular S3X years ago. I remember liking the bass/dynamics upgrade and disliking the reduction in the little bit of bloom it had. I still have the C4S installed, but occasionally think about installing a switch for when I want a little more romance.

 

Probably with a more romantic sounding headphone like the lcd2c c4s is better and something leaner may like stock?