- Joined
- Sep 29, 2004
I recently purchased a Chinese made Yaqin 10L MC-10T tube amp off of eBay. Every year I'd go back to looking at tube amps despite having a perfectly good Denon AVR-1312 solid state reciever at home.
After recieving the amp I set it up at home using a 3 way speaker/amp switch box designed to allow the use of 3 speakers with 1x amp. I simply wired it in reverse to use 2x amps and 1 set of speakers.
The speakers are nothing spectactular, some mid range current model Sony's. I'd replaced my Steinman THR2 speakers after getting into vinyls and noticing a crackle on higher notes. Unfortuantely changing speakers made little difference, the crackle was still present with high notes using my Denon reciever
After installing the Yaqin and burning in for about 30 hours I've found the following:
Bass seems much smoother and more balanced than through my Denon. With the Denon the bass seems to be a bit overpowered.
Instrumentation is far more detailed and more noticable with better separation between individual instruments and vocals. Especially noticable are cymbols, snare drums, accoustic guitars etc. Wind instruments like trumpets etc are noticably more details and brassy I guess is probably the word to describe it.
Vocals seem a little warmer and more natural and a real sense of the recording space comes through as you can more easily hear an echo from the walls of the recording rooms itself. Kind of cool when you can hear the breathing of the singer between verses.
Using the stock tubes I fail to hear the whole warm sound people rave about with tubes though I've heard this changes with swapping the tubes for other. Things do seem more natural, detailed and easy to listen to however CD's sound pretty much as good as vinyls throguh this thing which leads me to believe the difference is all in the tubes and that the inoput device difference is minimal. Vinyls are better, just not by the same proprtion that going to a tube amp makes.
I had gone to a turntable + Yaqin MS-12B tube pre and been amazed at how much better it sounded on my Denon amp. A little disappointed to find the difference was primarily in the Tube pre. Using CD's through the Yaqin 10L MC-10T sound almost as good and you can only tell the difference when litterally listening for differences rather than just enjoying the music.
It's incredible how good this little amp is considering the price paid. Now to convince dad to loan me his late 1970's vintage Bowers & Wilkins speakers
After recieving the amp I set it up at home using a 3 way speaker/amp switch box designed to allow the use of 3 speakers with 1x amp. I simply wired it in reverse to use 2x amps and 1 set of speakers.
The speakers are nothing spectactular, some mid range current model Sony's. I'd replaced my Steinman THR2 speakers after getting into vinyls and noticing a crackle on higher notes. Unfortuantely changing speakers made little difference, the crackle was still present with high notes using my Denon reciever
After installing the Yaqin and burning in for about 30 hours I've found the following:
Bass seems much smoother and more balanced than through my Denon. With the Denon the bass seems to be a bit overpowered.
Instrumentation is far more detailed and more noticable with better separation between individual instruments and vocals. Especially noticable are cymbols, snare drums, accoustic guitars etc. Wind instruments like trumpets etc are noticably more details and brassy I guess is probably the word to describe it.
Vocals seem a little warmer and more natural and a real sense of the recording space comes through as you can more easily hear an echo from the walls of the recording rooms itself. Kind of cool when you can hear the breathing of the singer between verses.
Using the stock tubes I fail to hear the whole warm sound people rave about with tubes though I've heard this changes with swapping the tubes for other. Things do seem more natural, detailed and easy to listen to however CD's sound pretty much as good as vinyls throguh this thing which leads me to believe the difference is all in the tubes and that the inoput device difference is minimal. Vinyls are better, just not by the same proprtion that going to a tube amp makes.
I had gone to a turntable + Yaqin MS-12B tube pre and been amazed at how much better it sounded on my Denon amp. A little disappointed to find the difference was primarily in the Tube pre. Using CD's through the Yaqin 10L MC-10T sound almost as good and you can only tell the difference when litterally listening for differences rather than just enjoying the music.
It's incredible how good this little amp is considering the price paid. Now to convince dad to loan me his late 1970's vintage Bowers & Wilkins speakers
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