|
User Feedback for S.E.T.™ Music Baby Amplifier
|
Dear Richard:
On the day when I received the Baby Amp in September, I was so excited to try it immediately. The first thing I wanted to find out was, even before the Baby Amp was not fully burned in, if there is any hum and noise with the Baby Amp. To my surprise, I could only hear a very very little hum with my ear tightly leaned to the speaker when the volume was turned all the way up without input. I could not believe this. When I was a teenager, I made a few tube amplifiers. All I remembered was the annoying hum. As I understand, proper grounding is very important when making a tube amp. Apparently, the Baby Amp must have very good design and components.
I then had the Baby Amp turned on for couple of days in order to have it burned in. I have a pair of Klipsch RB-3 speakers which is rated 94db/1m/1w, Monster Cable Z series speaker cable, a self-made Asylum Power cable made from Marino hospital grade power plug, Wattgate IEC plug and shielded power cable. I've tried different types of interconnects like shielded and copper twisted pair.
On the third day, I pluged in an Onkyo DVD/CD changer directly into the Baby Amp using a pair of AR shielded interconnects. However, it did not sound right. The high was rolled off and not transparent. I tried other interconnects and could not solve the problem. The problem went away when I found out that I needed to change the Onkyo audio output setting to analog stereo mode. Even though there was signal from the analog output when the changer was set to digital mode, the sound came out from analog output was not right.
I tried a few classical, opera and instrumental music CDs. The Baby Amp gave out the best mid range sound I had ever heard. With the correct placement of the speakers, the bass was strong enough even with these Klipsch bookself speakers. The high was crisp but not irritating. Without any tone(bass & treble) control on the Baby Amp, no coloration would be added to the sound. The Baby Amp reproduced a very warm and sensational human vocal, which was what to expect from a tube amp. The Baby Amp sounded better and better after a few weeks of on and off playing. The Baby Amp would make you addicted to listening to music. I have to turn it on every day when I get home from work.
The only drawback I'd found on the Baby Amp was that it only had one input, since I would like to hook up a FM tuner without switching cables. I would either need an input selection box or a passive preamp with input selections. A line stage preamp with low gain and input selections would also do the job. Due to this, I'd made a tube 5670 buffer(no gain) preamp with 4 input selections. The buffer preamp worked well with the Baby Amp. However, the buffer added some hum to the sound when the volume was turned all the way up. That was not a big problem in exchange for input selection convenience. A ground loop might have created between the buffer preamp and Baby Amp that caused the hum. However, the buffer preamp worked very with other solid-state amplifiers with no hum.
The Baby Amp is a good product, which every music lover may want to own. Keep up with your good work.
Eric Yan