Eastern Electric MiniMax

[Vicious Tyrant]

Has anyone here listened to it? I've read some reviews and it sounds like it would fit my needs fairly well for moveability and convenience. I also like what I read about its sound, but I'd be interested in other opinions.

[GoRedwings19]

You can tuberoll it. I heard the headphone section is quite good considering what you are paying. Elnero had one and had an indepth review of it.

Also I think Tyrion had one as well

[tkam]

The EE MiniMax from all accounts has the traditional "tubey" sound, so make sure that is what you want.

[Vicious Tyrant]

The EE MiniMax from all accounts has the traditional "tubey" sound, so make sure that is what you want.

Oh? Can you elaborate on what that means, or maybe point me in a direction to learn?

[elnero]

Just saw this thread and thought I should elaborate on some things. The MiniMax is a very good CD player with a competent headphone amplifier that I think has a nice synergistic relationship with the tube output stage. On an absolute basis, from memory, I think the regular PPX3-6CG7 is the better amp but the internal amp on the MiniMax is no slouch and overall the MiniMax on it's own worked better for my tastes than using it with the PPX3. My estimation has always been that the internal amp should compete well with amps in the under $500 category, if one were to prefer something else from that category it would likley be more personal preference than it being outright superior.

I actually would not characterize the MiniMax as particularly tubey sounding, with certain tubes it could have more aspects of that stereotypical tube sound but on a whole it just had a nice touch of warmth and dimension but combined with speed and overall PRaT that I'm yet to match and actually quite miss. It also had a way with making guitars sound awesome, just enough bite and warmth to them that made for an awesome pairing with the RS-1's. Where the MiniMax fell a bit short was was in an aspect I started to notice after I spent more time with it, some instruments and some vocals in particular sounded small, they still had plenty of body but they just seemed to come across as small, it's really hard to describe.

I never really intended on selling the MiniMax but last summer I got on portable kick and was thinking of selling some stuff off to gear things more towards a high-end portable setup. To that end I picked up the Dialogue II to audition because I had been curious about the NOS sound and it was dirt cheap. Paired with the RA-1 I borrowed from a friend it made for a fun pairing that had a fuller, richer more immediate sound but wasn't without faults, it had a graininess and bass was a bight bloated as well as lacking some definition and extension. I eventually veered away from the portable idea but the Dialogue II + RA-1 combo got me thinking, I had auditioned a GS-1 with the MiniMax and absolutely loved the amp then and I figured it would probably solve quite a few of the problems I was having with the RA-1. For the most part I was correct, the GS-1 cleaned up the treble, opened things up quite a bit and gave better definition to the bass but it didn't completely solve all the issues. Although I didn't feel this combo beat the MiniMax in every aspect I thought they were in the same league just a different set of compromises but I felt the Dialogue II + GS-1 gave me a more flexible solution that I could work with to build a better system. To that end I'm looking at a better DAC and hopefully a better transport solution in the near future.

Another thing to consider, I got in on special pricing for the MiniMax so I got it for even a bit cheaper than it's old $900 selling price which was a great deal at the time but over a year has passed, new products have been released and the selling price of the MiniMax is now $1099 new, $200 more than the old price. $200 might not seem like a lot but combined with some other products now on the market I now can't say the MiniMax is quite the incredible deal it once was. At the very least there are definately more options out there to consider, something like the Eastsound E5 might be a better overall CD player which would still leave approx. $400 for an amp or as a more simple almost all-in-one solution, the Lavry DA10 using either a computer or DVD player as a transport. There are also other DAC's like the Dialogue II DAC, Storm Digital D02, CI Audio VDA2, etc that could be paired with good amp for a similar $1100 budget that would easily compete with or beat out the MiniMax as an all-in-one.