SuperBAF Cheap Tube Amp Guide ~$1200 or less

Are tube headphone amps inherently noisier than SS?

can you get a deep blackground with a tube amp and the nice staging with tubes?

thanks!

 

So, no secret that I am a Eufonika fanboi ever since I got my H7mk2. Since then I’ve also acquired a custom H5 second hand. Both with fat Miflex KPCU caps. Former is with 6N1P / E88CC, latter is 6SN7.

These two amps have an exceptionally well engineered power supply with some chunky chokes. Yes the blackground is real: dead quiet and give me a beer and I’ll doze off drooling in musical inter-dimensions. Did anyone say deep?

Inherently noisier? Technically, hard if not impossible to say, mostly depending on implementation, plus the question: do you count harmonic distortion, that tubes definitely do bring, as noise? On ASR it would seem so, for others, it’s precisely what they are after.

Finally, there’s the fact that tubes get noisier as their life expires.

I love my Eufonikas because they have this special trait that they don’t get in the way of the tubes. As an amazingly transparent tube “platform”, you get to play the chef mixing and rolling tubes and the Eufonika will respond to it in equal kind.

 

I will definitely second this sentiment. Wieslaw's implementation with those chokes and power supply make his amps supremely dead quiet, max blackground especially for tube amps in this price range. I've also had the H5 (stock) and H7 (miflex caps). Tubes that were noisy in various other amps disappeared when plugged into Eufonika amps. Probably the star quality of his amps.

 

Anecdotes only here, but of all the headamps I've tried the cleanest I've ever heard my HD600 was when I got to try them running out of the XLR outputs of @Taguro 's EC Studio Jr with the stock (I think?) tubes at a mutual friend's place. Just the sense of control that had, which I do think correlates with "blackground" but doesn't explain the whole of it, was uncanny.

There was also the Master Phones Amplifier from way back which was terrible in many respects but excelled in background clarity.