I don't know if it's my bad luck with tubes, the ET-5 being somewhat tough on tubes or what.
In the last few days... the system has been moving to sounding "2D" vs that lush magical almost "3D" sound stage. bass seemed a bit anemic and overall just less pleasing.
Just for the heck of it on a whim today, I popped the Ediswan 6922 back in. well right off the deep end was back..and I was back to "seeing the sound in 3D"
So then I do my standard micro phonics tube test on the Ediswan. A simple light touch of the tube in question. In this case it causes a monstrous sound in both speakers. This tube has become one of the best microphones I've ever seen. I know some of this is normal with any tube...and some tubes I can slap pretty good with no micro phonics whatsoever.
So, at this point, although the EAT 6922 is dead quiet and seems to "work", and the Ediswan works wonderfully, but is micro phonic as all get out. (oh and yea, this is of course a "Platinum" version of the Ediswan.) I'm keeping it in for now and ordering another. I'm not sure what I'll do with the EAT.
My first EAT went way noisy, this one started off sounding wonderful, it still works, but sounds terrible.
Happy Holidays to everyone!!