Audio Note UK Jinro - Any Good

[MRubey]

ANUK is on my list of consideration for my next upgrade. In the US every dealer I’ve spoken with has offered a nice discount off msrp. I do intend to replace everything except speakers. My Nenuphar are 6ohms, the same as AN.
Also if you do your homework there is a dealer here in the US that is based in a sales tax free state. Put those two together and it makes expensive kit much more reasonable.

 

[Richard Austen]

You really cannot make out what a 211 valve sounds like by listening to the Jinro in stock form alone. I preferred the KR 88 integrated to the Jinro with Psvane 211 on the AN-E speakers.

That said, Psvane < KR < GE < RCA << Amperiex, and United and WE 242c are supposed to be near the Amperex.

The upswing on any 211 amp if you can rebias it and take it to Amperex is quite high.

I now have 3 data points, myself included, who prefer the Kondo Gakuon mk2 (300b) marginally to the Kagura (211) on the emotional side, though the Kagura is great too.

Generally a 300b amp should sound better than a 845/211 provided both are well made, and the speaker does not require the higher drive factor of the bigger amp, which is often required. It is also seldom the tube alone. I have compared 3 GM70s, and all 3 sound totally different, I liked only one. And any of these triode amps/preamps you should roll tubes to understand it properly

The other thing is these companies use their own reference speakers so they are designing with their speakers in mind - they may or may not work well with other kinds of speakers - if you take what AN UK says for example their amplifiers are "mirror imaged" to the speaker which I take to me the frequency and dynamic envelope of that speaker in terms of impedance matching and the like.

There seem to be too many variables once we start adding in different tubes. There are people who absolutely love the 45 tube and nothing else will do - ditto the 2a3 which seems to have more love than 300B - I suspect the reason many dump on the 300B is that there are many more of them out there and many more middling sounding ones.

The Jinro/Meishu Tonmeister or P3 Tonmeister is a choice - I don't necessarily feel like one is superior to the other - my dealer and I agree though that Jinro sounds a lot better with an M6. Others vehemently disagree. Preferences abound. I'd happily live with a Kagura II - oh no what a pity to have to settle for that lol