Quote:
Originally Posted by joel_hifi
The Brocksieper EarMax-Pro OTL Class A headphone amp arrived today 
This small device looks very well executed with its nice black gloss chassis, a solid/swift volume knob, quality connectors and external PSU.
It sounded immediately very pleasing out of the box without much warm up (but even better after 30 mins) and with the stock ECC81/ECC88 tubes.
I chose the Mytek Brooklyn DAC over the Ayon Stealth as I wanted to avoid additional tubes in the path. Source is the Innuos ZENith Mk3 streaming the High Rez Masters Jazz Essentials playlist from Qobuz via Roon. Cans are the Audeze LCD-2 and my newly acquired Sennheiser HD650.
What is immediately sticking is the wonderful liquid midrange. Listening to Wayne Shorter's tenor sax on Infant Eyes from the album Speak No Evil and to Ella Fitzgerald's Ain't Misbehavin' from the album Ella And Basie was an absolute bliss. Pretty deep/tight bass, sweet highs although maybe not the ultimate word in terms of extension. Good dynamics and effortless presentation. Overall highly musical 
Serge, thanks for this very nice recommendation  |
Joel, you are very welcome! It will get better and better. Just give it a bit of time as tubes do have a tendency of going through a curve of better and better performance. Enjoy!
Tube rolling will yield a substantial enough difference in certain aspects of the balance. I had NOS Telefunken, the best of the best... but this was many years ago and it was a present from a very enthusiastic friend from Germany who had a small collection of them. Don't be in a hurry to swap out the tubes just yet though.