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Australia, Canberra
1 Level
468 Review
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Review on 🎧 Sensational Sound: Explore the SMSL T2 Vacuum Tube Headphone Amplifier for Unmatched Audio Quality by Candice Lopez

Revainrating 4 out of 5

Time will tell, but it's worth it.

This is my first tube amp other than the one I had for the mic, but it was intended to record vocals, not play them through speakers. My setup and purpose is very different from most buyers as I am using it to match the aux port of my car's DSP amp. Yes, you read that right, an audio device is a tube amp - a DSP car amp. I turned on the RTA and set my aftermarket speakers to time-align with the driver's seat, but I couldn't get rid of this "cold" noise. Thanks to that, I've finally understood some of what you're saying when you listen to a tube amp and stamp your foot to the beat of the music. Let me briefly describe my setup. The front stage consists of a three-way configuration with tweeters. MF and mid-bass under the seat. The subwoofer in the trunk, as well as the rear tweeters and mid-range drivers are tuned to eliminate center channel sound and provide only left and right information. They're just there for minimal ambience in the sense of slightly expanding the stereo field. Anyway, back to the tubes, I've only had about 30 minutes so far and they haven't burned out yet, but they sound good. A slight increase in treble definition causes no fatigue, the mids are hilariously detailed and vocals on some songs have more depth, while the basses have a punchy, warm tone. The match amp pp82dsp has nice channel separation which has tricks when tuned right so you could swear there was a center speaker at work in the center, mine is off but sometimes I think the center speaker is on . With a lamp plugged into the aux, it's so dead and accurate it's intimidating. Is that thing for headphones?! The hissing doesn't exist either, I cranked it halfway and it's muted even when connected to another amp boosting its signal. I have to say that my current testing was done using high quality MP3s from Google Music and Flac files from the HD Tracks website. Beautiful and worth buying. Oh I almost forgot, I use an AC/DC converter to power it in the car. UPDATE ***** 10/26/17. amazing and a little warm. I found a cheap Sony portable DVD player with a line out and the tubes work much better. Before that I was using a Samsung s8+ and it had problems with the charger causing a ground loop in the audio. It only happened when you charged it, but it didn't happen any less. I suggest devices with line out capability to reduce noise from different amplifiers on the output line.

Pros
  • Free for educational purposes
Cons
  • Some cons