The New York Times has a roundup of three vacuum tube amplifiers for the iPod:
BOTH the Cocoon and the Fatman come with a pair of white cotton gloves, to be worn to protect the high-gloss metal surfaces from fingerprints during handling. To assemble and try out both machines, I donned a set of the gloves, as did a friend who helped me.
Daily round-ups or a weekly refresher, straight from Cult of Mac to your inbox.
Our daily roundup of Apple news, reviews and how-tos. Plus the best Apple tweets, fun polls and inspiring Steve Jobs bons mots. Our readers say: "Love what you do" -- Christi Cardenas. "Absolutely love the content!" -- Harshita Arora. "Genuinely one of the highlights of my inbox" -- Lee Barnett.
The week's best Apple news, reviews and how-tos from Cult of Mac, every Saturday morning. Our readers say: "Thank you guys for always posting cool stuff" -- Vaughn Nevins. "Very informative" -- Kenly Xavier.
4 responses to “Tube Amps for iPod”
It continues to amaze me that these amplifiers as so electrically bad, yet they sell for premium prices. Total Harmonic Distortion of 0.5%, when the cheapest of solid-state amplifiers is rated less than 0.08% THD, and premium products are substantially better.
Save your money for better speakers.
The only “drug-addled nutjobs” are the people buying these Amplifiers.
Of course tube amplifiers are electrically imprecise, that’s the whole point of buying them instead of solid-state amps. Using tubes in the preamp changes the sound in a distinct way, which is desirable, even if “wrong”.
And the reason why tube amps are so expensive is both manufacturing costs and supply and demand.