Ray Tubes 6SN7 Reserve & 12AU7 Select Take 2 - They Scale Up!

[@seanyutzy-xz4xn]

Sir, Added the Mullard input tubes you recommended in earlier and these Apos Ray 6SN7 Reserve. Placed in the LTA preamp this tube combination fills out the mid Bass particularly on my Bryston /Magnapan LRS+. I needed assistance in the 60-90hz. Present but not emphasized. Truly excellent communication! I am a Patreon subscriber but decided to post here. Best! S

[@adsph]

Thanks for sharing. One heck of a dac.

[@Jerdy808]

Get 3 pairs of the exact same PS Vane tube the CV181-MKII for the same price. Having owned multiple sets of Apos along with the PSVane, they are 100% the exact same tube, just Apos is an expensive rebrand with a good warranty. Any number of NOS 6SN7 or usable alternatives with adapters is money far better spent. These tubes are fine, but nothing special. Came with one of my amps and I never bother using them.

[@blejzerosamigos6115]

Lampizator Bałtyk review coming up? Thank you

[@RosemarySoriano-n6v]

Nice, thank you so much!😊

[@marcoarispoli]

It would be interesting to understand what is the threshold (if any) below which these tubes are not really allowed to shine, hence probably not worth the extra cash … say a Schiit Valhalla 2 or an Xduoo TA-22 … so about 500$ mark . Would these tubes perform better enough than a pair of PSVANE (just random option out there) ?

[@wavetheorysound]

I'd say in general if the tubes cost as much as the piece of gear they're going into, their performance will be throttled down by that piece of gear. The cheapest item I've heard these Ray tubes with is the xDuoo TA-20Plus. The Ray tubes outperformed PSVane Art series on that xDuoo but not by very much. I'd say the PSVane Art (and now maybe Horizon) series is the better buy for something on that level. But above that it appears the Rays start to return more and more. And now the question I don't know is where is their ceiling? Does this help?

[@danielsamson9505]

👌👍

[@dentboxhero1717]

It is rather more of the gear/equipment than tubes itself as any good tube can and will scale

[@wavetheorysound]

You are correct that all tubes will scale to some degree with increasing gear quality. However, in this case the performance gap between the Ray tubes and other tubes is noticeably larger on the Baltic 3 than on something like the xDuoo TA-20+. Do all the tubes sound better on the better gear? Yes. But the Ray tubes increase their performance advantage on this higher end piece. Thus, they scale up more than the cheaper units I had on hand to compare.