On 12th June 2010 saturday morning, I started fixing it up. Upon turning on the amp, I noticed the 6418 tubes started to grow a little. The dim light of the filaments cannot be seen clearly; it has to be in a very dark room inorder to see the grow of the filaments.

Excited moment came…I plugged in the headphone. But, to my disappointment, I noticed pretty loud ‘hiss’ noise. I thought it was due to my soldering faults or connection faults. But, after some query from the forum and understand that it seem to be normal for this amp. Anyway, for me, I noticed that by changing the headphone to a higher impedance does help to ‘reduce’ the hiss noise. So now, I am using the 60 ohms headphone to reduce the hiss nosie. The hiss does not actually disappear; it is still there but the impedance of the headphone just covered the noise up.

Anyway, beside the hiss noise, this can be considered as a fine sounding amp in my opinion. For just about AU30. I think it is a good buy. At the mean time, I am not going to let the hiss problem bother me. I just enjoy the music for now. Cheers!

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Test using fan…

Actual test flight…

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Remember that time before 1995, I do not have any interest in DIY audio. But, after witnessed a shop displaying an internal layout of a tube amplifier change all that. I became very keen in the layout of such tube amp. Not long after that, around 1996, I decided to build one for myself. After some shopping, I chose Audio Note Kit4 as a starter. Till today, I am very glad that I had picked up this Audio Note’s tube amp as it really sounded good and musical. Until now, it still in my bed room. This amp will be always in my mind as we had very great moment together as a family listening to this amp in our bed room every night before we go to sleep. I really enjoys every moment with it. Thus, I will keep it forever. Cheers!

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For this amp, I had put in a lot of efforts and time. To date, this is the only amp which I had spend the most time and efforts. The time I spend most was the troubleshooting of the humming noise. I had redo the wiring and re-soldered few times just to get it right. Components had changed from the initial designed. I planned to use the toroidal transformer but due to the “magnetic interference”; which cause noise to the surrounding circuits, I was forced to drop the idea of using the toroidal. I guess I trusted the toroidal so much that I believe it will not cause interference even my circuit is very near to it. Thus, I never take extra precaution while planning the components layout. I was wrong; therefore, I had to replace the toroidal with a Switch Mode Power Supply (SMPS). I know, in the audio world, SMPS is not very popular. Well, I had no choice for now unless I want to redo everything again; such as getting another bigger chassis, change the components layout or solder on PCB … etc. For now, I choose to leave everything as it is and enjoys. Cheers!

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Before I finialised my decision on getting this AKG headphone, I like Sennheiser. I had tried their HD 600 model at the shop and I find it has a little punchy bass. Pretty clear sound overall. But the price is too high as my first headphone. I think, getting a headphone more than $400 is not so worth as the ratio between price and performance may not justify.

Another headphones I had tried were the famous Beyerdynamic the DT 770 and th DT880 series. The bass is very smooth and not as punchy as Sennheiser HD600. I like how is sound for the bass for the Beyer’s DT series. But, I find the treble is too sharp for my liking. Anyway, this headphone need amplifier to drive as it has high impedence of 250 ohms. Normal earphone only 32 – 55 ohms on average and only require the source to drive it well.

All in all, which ever headphone we choose, it has to match with the whole chain of system we use; such as the source, the amplifier etc. For now, AKG K242HD is good enough and for the first time, the headphone is challenging my hearing rather than the other way around. Cheers!

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