'OMG!!! What did I just hear.was my immediate reaction. When you want great sound without going over budget, use the 336SE as a headphone amplifier and speaker pre-amp to hit two birds If you’re still looking for more function, the DarkVoice 336SE OTL Headphone Amp is capable of powering headphones with up to 600 Ohms of magnetic resistance, as well as operating as a tube-based pre-amp for your speaker system. Rounded out with gold-plated RCA connectors, a metal name plate, a high quality potentiometer, and a power supply enclosure, this heavy duty piece of equipment- weighing in at 11 lbs- feels as solid as it sounds. By pairing together tube warmth and OTL circuit design, this amplifier produces the cleanest warmth we’ve come across.Īs solid as a rock, every visible surface on the DarkVoice 336SE is either glass or anodized black metal. To fill out the space, the 335SE puts out warm mids (courtesy of the tubes), analytically detailed highs, and fully transparent bass. With the DarkVoice, the deep blackness lets you notice every note like never before, adding a dimension of accuracy that’s usually cloaked in distortion. While you can’t very well drag your headphone rig into the middle of any empty NFL stadium or get air dropped onto a deserted island, music always sounds better surrounded by complete nothingness. Arriving with an OTL design, the DarkVoice 335SE OTL Headphone Amp gives you a blank backdrop to properly broadcast your favorite music. Without the Output Transformer, you get clearer sound, powered tubes, and overall better amplification. Credited with having the lowest possible distortion, Output Transformer-Less (OTL) headphone amps cut out a key part of conventional amplifier design to eliminate a major cause of audible distortion. Headphone amplifiers come in a variety of circuit designs, each with its own advantages and drawbacks, but there’s one main determining faction: distortion level. The drawbacks depend on the design with the most common one being high output impedance. The benefit is supposed to be getting rid of nonlinearities of the transformer. This is most often done with a transformer but in OTL designs, other methods are used. A tube amplifier needs to block high voltage DC from going out of the unit and also reduce the rather high output impedance of tubes. The configuration is Output-Transformer-Less (OTL). In DarkVoice 336SE, the signal path is all tube. That allows the output impedance to be as low as solid state amplifier yet give you the 'benefits' of tubes. One of the most sought after headphone tube amplifier! Hold on a sec, what is tube sound and why would you buy this for? Warmer sound (mid-range is fuller, bass or the low ends sound more expansive with added depth).įYI: Many hybrid tube headphone amplifiers use tubes as the first stage but drive the headphones using transistors. Highly recommended with high impedance headphones of 300 ohm and higher.

Darkvoice 336