Octave Audio integrated amplifiers

Black box or SBB for Octave v110 powering focus 260 speakers?

To all participants of this discussion. (If you are still here :). I switched to Octave V70 SE from a very good solid state integrated and I wish Octave had the same deep and punchy bass! I feel lack of bass especially when I listen to vinyl. I have Linn Sondek LP 12 with Adikt MM cartridge. While V70 ES has outstandingly detailed and crisp highes and great mids, bottom part needs more weight IMO. My question: does V70 needs more burn in time to show all it's force or may be Black Box can fix it? Or solution in subwoofer?

The black box or super black box will lower the noise floor and yield a bit more headroom (depends on how many drivers per speaker). But if you are trying to get more punch in the bass at high listening levels that would be a characteristic of tubes in general. They sound a lot more powerful at low to very high mid levels of listening. Approaching the highest levels the lows are the first stop gaining but the mids and highs go a little further. I experienced that with both the V70SE and the V110.

That said what tubes are in your V70SE now? How many hours do you have on the amp? Most tubes need a good 100hrs of burn in. Some are as high as 400 hrs. Watch the bias for drifting. I always saw when driving the tubes hard the bias drifted the most upwards. I personally kept the bias all green with 6550's - KT88's - KT90's and KT120's. BTW the V70SE will have no problem with KT120's or KT150's. You won't get any more power per Andreas. You'll just hear the sonic differences. You might like the KT120 or the Ei KT90 type 2 or 3.