comzee

Lel, I've had Spritzers Carbon + 009 with a yggy, guess I'm a noob tho.

I'm a huge tube fan, have multiple amps in that realm, with 100s of tubes =O I used to be SS only, (even had Carbon + 009), but slowly transitioned away from all that. Anyway, I needed a beater amp, I found it used for $1450 couldn't pass that up. I previously had the loaner, so I wasn't completely in the dark. I'm not great at reviews, so I'll give my own interpenetration in simple words. Why did I buy this since it's technically SS (hybrid)? Well it doesn't sound like tubes, it does sound like an SS amp, BUT... Although it's more similar to an SS sound signature than tubes, the nutubes fix enough of the SS annoyances I generally have. For me, all my SS amps have a bit of grain, glare. The nutubes take that edge off, without sacrifices detail or exactness. It's what I would consider the battle between tubes musical liquid sound v.s. SS sterile exacting sound. The Sangaku fits inbetween those tonal signatures, making it a great general purpose amp (imo).

What would be a ballpark MTBF for a KGXXXX amp ? 10,000 hours of powered on operation?

If you're not purifying your signal at a quantum level, you might not be getting the full breadth of ambience, soundstage, timbre, dynamics, and color fidelity. You might even be losing the vividness and life of the music itself

Is this when buying from your countries STAX dealer? Like if I bought from Stax USA? I bought my 009 few months ago off Price Japan, seems like they had more then enough in stock, got it in 6 business days.. Same for the 007, they show it in stock?

I keep reading everywhere (here/head-fi/random reviews) that the 007>009. I moved from HD800 to 009. It did, in the very essence of the word, everything better. Bass: More of it, more accurate (tight) Mids: Ethereally magical, not only more details by far, but has an intangible essence that makes it sound alive Treble: Far less harsh, more articulated, accurate I really couldn't be happier with my 009/Carbon coming from the HD800. For those that own both 007/009, would you say it's worth it to sell the 009 and buy the 007? I wouldn't be asking, but this thread + everywhere just shits on the 009 =/

@skullguise Interesting idea. I definitely would like more physical knob movement for volume control. Literally moving the knob millimeters to get the exact volume I want is... less then ideal. Although it's extremely accurate and capable of such things, it feels like I'm performing surgery every time I want to switch volumes. Not sure if it's just me, but I also do hear a recess is clarity when I use software volume control. Most likely the reason is because I use Tidal, better programs like jriver etc.. might digitally control the volume much better. I found these that appear to have good reviews, but if it decreases the SQ at all.... idk?

Registered just to ask this question I've posted on Head-FI here and there, but upon lurking, the people here seem... more articulated. I have Master 7 DAC from Kingwa, unfortunately his website failed to mention anything about controlling the preamp volume / add-ons you could get. The M7 preamp is stuck at max power, unless I send it back to Kingwa to get volume integrated inline (thinking total cost around $350 because of shipping). The crux of my issue is preamp volume control wouldn't effect SQ (but I don't have that option...yet) and software volume control does, so I'm at an impasse. I've never had a big problem with this because I was using the 2.5v stereo output for my previous rig, now I'm using the 5v balanced out with my amp (I got a Carbon from Spritzer). To break down the first 4 volume notches on the Carbon, .75 into the first notch the right cup spins up, another .75 (at notch 1.5 now) the left comes into full balance. To me, comfortable listening is notch 2.5 - 3. What's disconcerting to me is that the volume has 21 notches. The point is I'm working within an extremely narrow band to control comfortable listening levels. Between notch 2-4 for a maximum range of volume. This leads to my ultimate question. I know there's a difference between headphone volume, and how "driven" the headphones are. I guess I don't particularly mind being contained within a narrow band of volume control, but I'm worried that maybe the amp isn't giving it's maximum potential? To make this more clear, on a scale of 1-100. Preamp is 100, making me put my amp at 15. Would I get better SQ if my preamp was set at 50 and my amp set at 50? If what I'm experiencing is a problem, I'm going to bite the bullet and send my M7 to get volume control.