Tubes & Polks in the bedroom
jhoak
Posts: 6
So late last week I snagged one of the cheap Chinese integrated tube amps off of Epay from a trusted US seller for a bit over $200. The intent was to use it in the bedroom fed by the PC and driving a pair of Polk Monitor-30s.
Right out of the box it had a couple of issues that I was able to work through. Once I swapped out the output tubes for a quad of Electro Harmonix EL84s and a pair of JAN GE 5670W for drivers it?s sounding fairly decent.
It?s pretty cool. It has two pairs of RCA inputs plus the ability to play from USB flash drives or SD cards. It also built in is a FM tuner which surprised me at how well it picked up somewhat local stations without the benefit of an outside antenna.
Here?s a picture of it singing with a pair of Monitor 30s:
Please no comments about the dust. Housekeeping is NOT my forte'. :eek:
Right out of the box it had a couple of issues that I was able to work through. Once I swapped out the output tubes for a quad of Electro Harmonix EL84s and a pair of JAN GE 5670W for drivers it?s sounding fairly decent.
It?s pretty cool. It has two pairs of RCA inputs plus the ability to play from USB flash drives or SD cards. It also built in is a FM tuner which surprised me at how well it picked up somewhat local stations without the benefit of an outside antenna.
Here?s a picture of it singing with a pair of Monitor 30s:
Please no comments about the dust. Housekeeping is NOT my forte'. :eek:
Post edited by jhoak on
Comments
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That's a nice little setup. Are you feeding the amp with analog out from the PC sound card, or a DAC?2.1: PC>Schiit Gungnir MB>Schiit Freya Noval>NAD C-270>Ascend Acoustics Sierra-1, HSU STF-2 5.1: HDMI Bitstream>Denon AVR-1910>polkaudio RTE55, CS350-LS, RT3, HSU STF-2, Visio M55-F0
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At the moment the audio out from the PC. If I find myself flush with $$ at some point in the future I'll pick up one of the HRT Music Streamers. I had one in the HTPC for a while and they're pretty nice.
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Yeah, I think you're going to notice a HUGE improvement with the USB DAC. I like my HRT Music Streamer II, but if I were to do it again I would probably take the advice of the local Polkies and get a Musical Fidelity V-DAC.
As you can see from my sig, I'm running the HRT direct to an Onkyo receiver now, and it sounds good, but I plan to add a tube buffer in-between in the near future. Maybe I can get some of that tube love that you're enjoying!2.1: PC>Schiit Gungnir MB>Schiit Freya Noval>NAD C-270>Ascend Acoustics Sierra-1, HSU STF-2 5.1: HDMI Bitstream>Denon AVR-1910>polkaudio RTE55, CS350-LS, RT3, HSU STF-2, Visio M55-F0 -
cool, I dig those small simple rigs.
Tubes Rule.
RT1
