Friends, as a newbie I need to ask an obvious question! Sorry.
I recently bought a pre-amp and some tubes to test.
I started with a pair of PSVANE UK-6SN7. I found the sound extremely low.
To give you an idea, the pre-amp is connected to a Cambridge ARX100 amp with 100W per channel pushing a pair of Monitor Audio 300 towers (150W). In this configuration I needed to use more than 90% of the Cambridge's power to obtain a sound at a volume that is, let's say, acceptable for night listening.
Obviously the blame for the bad quality of the Chinese pre-amps had already been decreed! I was already resigned that I had thrown money away. I had already asked to speak with the engineer at the store I bought to find out which parts need to be replaced to increase the output power of the pre-amp...
Behold, on Saturday I decided to put a pair of Linlai E-6SN7 to roll. Without the slightest faith that one last category pre-amp would be able to push tubes even bigger than the ones I had tried...
My friends... It just exploded a loud, clean, smooth, deep sound that I am here enjoying as I write to you. I'm using less than 50% of the Cambridge's power and less than 50% of the pre-amp's power (which I don't realize has ruined the sound quality of the system, quite the contrary without any noise) and I'm getting an amazing sonic response!
Newbie Question: Of course, but I have to ask LOL... Is there a problem with the pair of PSVANE I tested?
They don't overheat, but they play with some errors that I didn't notice in Linlai's pair. I figured it was because of the burning process.
But overall the sound is very good. Only the volume is very, very low.
Another thing I noticed was that the Linlai took a lot of work to connect to the preamp. Really tight. The PSVANE, on the other hand, didn't need as much work to connect to the preamp.