Bottlehead Crack Headphones Amplifier (Part 4) More Review

It is been a while since I listen to this Bottlehead Crack Headphones amplifier.

You can follow this link when I received it at the first time here, then the cleaning process here, and when I replaced all the vacuum tube with the new old stock Tungsol 5998 and GE 5814 here.

This Bottlehead Crack amplifier is a very simple circuit with the output transformer-less design. I can say that I become a solid-state guy for a long time because building a vacuum tube amplifier is expensive for the vacuum tube itself. Then the good transformers is even more expensive to buy. But that is not the case with this Bottlehead Crack amplifier.

If you want to listen the music with better sound quality and definitely want your headphones to have a good amplifier to pair with, then you should consider to have this Bottlehead Crack amplifier.

Bottlehead Crack Headphones Amplifier (Part 3) Tube Upgrade Using Tungsol 5998 & GE 5814

Yesterday, I just finished the restoration process of this Bottlehead Crack amplifier. This is just like a new unit with few upgraded audio parts on it. I enjoy the music from it, especially when I paired with the Sennheiser HD600 headphone, it is sound so good.

After quite some time, there something bothering me. It is the hum idle noise. Although it is small noise but id I can going lower hum, then this would be better. This problem could be cause from those vacuum tube. I don't know how long this vacuum tube has been used previously and I guess replacing them to the new one is a good investments and upgrade to this amplifier.

Bottlehead Crack Headphones Amplifier (Part 2) Cleaning Process

On my previous post about this Bottlehead Crack amplifier that bought by my friend is in the very dirty condition.

The most scary things is the rust on top of the power transformer. The wooden box also break into 2 pieces when it comes to me. I think this is not quite common for the second hand condition like this.

That is why in this post, I will clean it up and make it like new.

Bottlehead Crack Headphones Amplifier (Part 1) Introduction

This Bottlehead Crack headphones amplifier is not a new news but still hot for sure.

For some reason, this amplifier is always praised by DIY'ers as the best headphones amplifier kit available so far. Not just because it is using vacuum tube, but it is sound good.

This Bottlehead Crack headphones amplifier is sell in a kit and luckily for you living in States, this kit can be obtain with the ease. But not for me living in Asia, the delivery cost for this amplifier will high and takes so much time. This Bottlehead Crack amplifier in this post here is lend by my friend. He bought it in used condition and he is willing to bring it to my house yesterday to let me check it first.

My quick inspection, this unit is all original component, nice layout, simple design, and quite dirty for sure.

I will cleaning it up in return and maybe some cosmetic upgrade later on.

Digital Source Sound Matters? Digital Output CD Player VS Smartphones

I grow up in the era from pure analog to digital music source.

The era when a portable cassette player is a holy grail for all kids and CD's is for some people with the deep pocket.

That time has passes and it moves so fast from the CD to all today music is in digital format, without any physical items anymore. While I am enjoying the simplicity of non-physical digital audio system, I still collecting CD's.

Recently I bought some CD's, it is in used condition and the reason I bought them is because I am very familiar to the artists. Then when I want to to playback that CD right away, it is not very convenient for me to convert the CD's to digital audio format in the first place. So the solution is quite complicated, I should pull out my old DVD player and connect to my home stereo system only to listen the music from those CD's. Later on, I found something interesting in sound quality when comparing both of them.

Apple iPhone 11 Sound Quality

You may know that the Apple create the iPhone and it is superior to the sound quality. Especially in that era of 2000's where the portable audio player are dominated by low quality MP3 and the coming of this iPod makes the high-resolution audio player with easy to use is floating to the surface again.

Today the iPod is replaced by the iPhone which focusing on the camera and display quality. Not a bad moves from Apple but for us, the music lover, it seems they put our needs behind. With so much today improvement in the music files, until right now, the Apple Music apps still cannot playing hi-resolution audio files. (later on they improved it with lossless and spatial audio, finally)

Not a big deal if you already subscribes the others streaming high resolution music apps like Tidal or Qobus, but the subscription fees is pricey and not all country available.

I am not a loyal person on some brand but sometimes I still want the Apple Music. The user experience is very intuitive and I love to using it. That is why recently I bought the iPhone 11. It is already on my hands for the last 2 month and I am happy with it. The reason I make a post about this iPhone is I want to share my thought about the sound quality out of the box.