IME (to my ears) the Bacch applies some very gentle PEQ (it has several target curves to select from), time and phase alignment, and crosstalk (etc.) processing.
Add warmth / smoothness to my system recommendations
- Thread starter Charles001
- Start date
ok hear me out.
Try the Fosi gr70 all tube headphone amp as a preamp. its $200 . Its surprisingly the best thing Fosi ever made. Its tuned very warm but no loss in detail or top end, just the lower register extends deep and wide, full. . I couldn't care less about Fosi and Aiyima , but the gr70 is something worth checking out....surprisingly fantastic as a preamp. Not even kidding. its that good.
Try the Fosi gr70 all tube headphone amp as a preamp. its $200 . Its surprisingly the best thing Fosi ever made. Its tuned very warm but no loss in detail or top end, just the lower register extends deep and wide, full. . I couldn't care less about Fosi and Aiyima , but the gr70 is something worth checking out....surprisingly fantastic as a preamp. Not even kidding. its that good.
Here is what I have researched: Fosi seems to have QC issue. A lot of complaint about it due to bad tubes although the sound might be good (as you have described.) One user feedback in particular "they’re dealing with “vintage” tubes which aren’t being matched across the channels / across the tubes and the tubes are old / not in ideal shape so the failure rate is higher." It seems an OTL that requires all tubes to do the jobs that a xformer used to handle, which may not like demanding speaker like 4 ohm rated S400 II I owned. What is your experience?
Not really. As I said, I’m still technically right on the –3 dB off-axis edge line. The Lintons have a –3 dB point at 30 degrees off-axis, and with 10 degrees of toe-in I was effectively at 20 degrees off-axis, so the result didn’t surprise me. I don’t want to increase the speaker separation because I would start losing image focus.
Here’s the thing: all three components in my chain are neutral, or even slightly on the brighter side of neutral. That’s why I’ve been exploring the idea of adding a tube preamp to synthesize some warmth. Your thoughts?
Currently, my Lintons are siting on its own stands (specifically designed for Lintons) and that comes with spike disks for tiles or hardwood surface like you have.
Tubes for sure but it's really about the mix. I have a higher power SET amp with a more neutral tube preamp and the warmth is right where it shoule be. But then if you have an analog front end, there's that preamp and stepup and cartridge to worry about. You really just need to experiment. We all hear differently and your warmth might be someone else's neutral.
for $200 IDK how they make some of these things, The GR70 I have is fantastic. it shoots way above its price way way above...I'm sure there probably is QC issues and maybe some of the tubes don't match, its $200, new tubes for this are cheap....its built better than a lot of gear twice its price....the build on the GR70 is really solid. ..
I'm gonna try upping the power supply because it seems like a obvious weak spot with the little wall wort...I picked out one on Amazon that should be a good upgrade and will order it today. I've only had it a few months.
but its $200 , for me the stock tubes it came ith sound great, but I'll look more into upgrades, I checked before but I'm happy with the sound.
its not an overly powerful unit....my Sennheiser HD660s and Koss proaa4 are about as hard to drive as you'll want to put on it...as a preamp maybe it only has 8v gain tops ,,,,,but its sounds rich, its lush. it sounds ZERO like all other fosi and aiyima products.
It amazed me hooked recently to my Laserdisc player playing Yusuko Agawa with Ron Carter quartet, absolutely sublime what it did with Ron Carters bass.
I think tube preamp is probably the right track for you.
The only thing I worry about is the sunk cost fallacy. Your system would probably sound better if you have an upgraded power supply for the volumio. And then you can change the DAC for another one that’s high performing but less bright. But then maybe you should just sell the Volumio and DAC and just upgrade to a DAC/streamer that sounds smoother and warmer and bypass the tube preamp. Sometimes when we are very attached to the gear that we own, we end up making patches to accommodate our pre-existing gear (like a tube preamp), rather than saying, if I were to do this all over again with the money that I have, I probably would have bought totally different gear instead. It’s just something to keep in mind before you make the leap to tube preamp. Which is still probably the right direction for you.
The thought process right now is that I try to make my source including DAC as neutral as possible and leave the coloration to the end over the chain to reduce unnecessary accumulation and cancellation to the tonal balance. That is why I compose my question to begin with. I prefer tube pre + SS amp over tube amp is to color the sound without comproming the bass control, even though sometimes I do feel the controlled bass in some recordings turn out to be 'artificial', not as natural as a bit softened bass from tube amp. How is the bass response character of your SET amp?
Similar threads
 | Steve Williams Site Founder | Site Owner | Administrator |  | Ron Resnick Site Owner | Administrator |  | Julian (The Fixer) Website Build | Marketing Managersing |