See my signature for a scope of gear I use :-) And bear in mind I am more of a tone/timbre guy lately. I actually tuned Stratus (with aftermarket tubes) according to Kenzie (with stock tubes). Kenzie has an awesome tone out of the box. 8-ohm out adds a very satisfying subbass rumble with planars... making Kenzie a perfect companion for my listening needs.
Haha, was mostly a joke about the gear (I remember the thread you started soon after joining :P), but I was hoping to get more details, and hey, you delivered!
Timbre is way harder to wrangle than tonality, I think. I have close to zero experience with tubes so I'll not comment lest I drop noise, but even with headphones you don't ever get the full story up front without listening impressions
Full tube amps are very natural sounding but the great ones ( = versatile, without large cons) are unfortunately also very expensive. The same can be said about NOS DACs. And now you pretty much know my story aka why I moved to high end even though I didnt really want to. :)
Looking forward to see how your audio journey is going to turn out!
Thankfully the journey itself is fun, save for dropping more cash than one expects on a regular basis. I've already got my eye on some nice SET amps that are on the reasonable side of "absurdly expensive", the only problem left being demoing at home. As for DACs, I'm happy with what I have for now, so I'll focus elsewhere before going deep-end which I remember was also your advice from some time ago :)
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