CrunchGear

This is stupid. Anyone expecting audiophile-caliber fidelity from an iPod deserves to be taken for $700.

I’ve posted this elsewhere, but figured that some of you might be intersted in my impressions of this unit. Warning: Long post.

I went to the store on the weekend with a couple of disks in hand (Neil Young’s Tonight’s the Night and Richard Strauss’ Alpine Symphony (Naxos)). The unit sounded great in the store with the headphones. London Drugs has a 14 day return/exchange policy. So I bought the unit and have been listening to it now for 5 days. As a headphone amp, it is superior to my Musical Fidelity X-Can V3 (stock). When I bought my X-Cans two years ago for $450.00, I expected a fantastic headphone amp. Although it sounded good, I felt it actually sounded worse than the headphone outlet of my Yamaha AX-596 integrated, which had better and cleaner bass and, in my opinion, greater resolution. What disturbed me most about the X-Cans was their hard edge in the upper registers. I often experienced the cringe factor when listening to music. My source is a Cambridge Audio D-500 CD player and my headphones are Sennheiser HD-580’s and Grado SR-60’s.

When I brought the Vuum home, I set it up beside my X-Cans and, after a bit of level matching, A/B tested them. Within half an hour my X-Cans were boxed up and now I’m listening to the Vuum/Fatman/Dared exclusively.

What I like about the Vuum:

1) Although I’ve often heard that the “warmth” that tubes impart to music are the result of distortion, when I listen to music with this amp it sounds extremely clear and well-detailed. The bass is good and in strong orchestral passages, powerful. In good recordings, the music sounds non-fatiguing and three-dimmensional. Although I don’t usually buy into audiophile terms like “air” and “tansparancy”, there actually is a sense of space between the instruments that I don’t often encounter (the X-Cans did this as well but, as mentioned, with a bit too much upper register bite). In short, I love the way this amp makes my music sound. It’s warm, but not the type of warmth you get when you press in the loudness button in an old receiver. The warmth is more like reading under an incandescent lamp as opposed to a flourescent lamp–you can read with both, but one simply feels better.

2) I like that I can use the amp as both a headphone and as a speaker amp. I have it in my office and I no longer need to use my NAD 3020 as my speaker amp and X-Cans as my headphone amp. Now I have one amp that does both.

3) The build is excellent. The sides, which I initially thought were bakalite plastic or something, are actually enamaled wood. There is a very solid feel to this amp and the fit and finish are all excellent.

4) It’s beautiful to look at. I love the nostalgia associated with tubes and, when I get around to remove the protective cage, I know I’ll like this amp even more. The “Magic Eye” is fun and funky. I really don’t know if it helps (or hinders?) the sound, but as an ornament, it enchants.

What I don’t like about the Vuum:

1) The blue LED light is bright enough to read by. It completely detracts from the warm glow of the tubes. I’m going to have to figure out a way to cover it up or something.

2) There is a slight hum when I put my ear close (2″ or less) to the speakers. I don’t notice the hum with either my high-impedance Sennheisers of my low-impedance Grados. However, the hum is way quiter than my heavily modified valve Foreplay Pre-Amp (my nod to Paul Joppa and all the excellent folks at the Bottlehead forum). Also, from my experience, whenever I did eliminate the hum in my Foreplay while modifying it, I also took off something from the “magic” of that little amp. So, I got used to a bit of hum and the Vuum has so little as to be almost negligable. BTW I certainly don’t get any of the “buzz” associated with the Dared MP-5 amps. Maybe because the amp no longer contains an internal DAC, etc., some of the sonically offending technology has been removed. Just a suggestion not a fact.

3) Lack of information. There is virtually no information about this amp on the web or on the Vuum website. On the other hand, how much information is necessary?

A couple of other comments:

The speakers are actually quite good. The tweeters look like they’re metal and while listening to Shubert’s Winterreise (Russell Braun, etc.), some of the baritone was a bit edgy and sibilent. Maybe it’s just a matter of some break-in? I’m not sure. But with only 4″ woofers (?), they actually sounded excellent with anything else I played–certainly better than my Mission M-71’s which they replaced. The finish on the speakers is the same black enamel as on the sides of the Vuum amp. The speakers are rear-ported as well.

I don’t listen to an iPod, so the docking station is going to my daughter as an X-Mas present.

There are a lot of critics who will knock this amp as having a lot of useless features and poorly designed circuitry. They may be right, but who cares if it sounds so good? And what’s wrong with something being pretty to look at?

Price paid for the kit: $800.00. Yes, a bit steep, but I think a good value for all that I got. When I think of as the price of 8 really nice dinners with my wife for 16 hours or so (depending on what we do afterwards…) of pleasure, and then I think of the hundreds of hours I’m going to be listening to this amp, well, I’m quite content with the value of my purchase.

And if, for some reason, I do change my mind, I’ve still got over a week to get a full refund.

Keep it lit!

A small word of warning to others. I don’t know who the original manufacturer of the system is but i’ve seen several of this same system across the internet with different branding and prices attached to it. I’ve even seen it up to $1000 under one brand name. I actually purchased this exact same system under a different name in a military px for $250.00. The one I purchased is from a Korean company called HCT http://www.hctkorea.co.kr/. I think this system uses cheaper quality tubes and some companies are trying to take advantage of some people not realizing that all tubes are not created equal and charging much more than the manufacturing cost. Overall though, I felt it was a good buy for the price I paid. I wouldn’t pay $700 for it though.