Little Dot MKII Tube Headphone Amp Discussions | Drop

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Little Dot MKII Tube Headphone Amp

Audiophile

FULL DISCUSSION

Pauleh

Nov 11, 2016

Just got mine from the last drop last evening. The packaging was HORRIBLE. It arrived in a beat up box wrapped with a mile of tape. I Lightly shook the box and a could hear a rattle that sounded like hollow glass. Uh oh. I opened up the box and found a manual with poor English and a massdrop packing slip.The amp was surrounded by cheap feeling (but surprisingly fluffy) foam. I sound that one of the GE JAN tubes I ordered had came loose from its cut out inside the foam. I put it to the side disappointing, and not confident that the tube would be ok, but I continued. The rest of the tubes were in their respective cut outs, put loosely taped in by cheap packing tape. I took off the tape to find that the top of all the tubes had been covered with the glue from the tape. Annoying. The amp had some tape glue and marks from the packing material (which I was luckily able to buff out with a slightly damp towel after a couple of minuets). I looked at the bottom of the tubes and they were coated with a film of dirt ( I know that these are not new, but I expected them to be clean) . I plugged in all the tubes and the power cord (preparing myself for one of the tubes to be broken), but to my surprise, the tubes had amazingly survived the journey.
I tested the amp on K7XX, DT990 pro (250ohm), MDR V6, and my 1989 K240m (600ohm) all being fed lossless files through my Dacport slim on the low impedance setting with the volume wheel all the way up (the recommended setting for line output). The amp was dull sounding at first, but as it broke in and warmed up, the tubes came to life and sound quite good (I'm not gonna give my opinion on these quite yet though, I want to do some more testing). On first impressions, I don't think that this amp is enough to drive the highest impedance headphones on the market. I found that with my K240m's, It lacked major low end (and that's coming from a guy who isn't that fond of low end, using headphones that don't produce alot). They sounded tinny and nasty, and didn't quite get up to the ear blasting volume that one might expect (although it brings the headphones up to a reasonable volume). I have not tried the DT series 600ohm headphones, but I suspect that the story might be the same. The positive for this amp outweighs the negatives though. I'll go into this more when I update this with a sound review.
Tl;DR Shitty packaging, great amp.

Nov 11, 2016