Line Magnetic quality

@migueca

Your favorites are out of my budget, but I’ve been looking at the 88AI and wonder what the differences between 88AI and 34AI are. I can use KT88 in both, so what makes the 88AI a better choice if I wanna use KT88 tubes? The 34AI seems to be a better choice if I wanna tune the sound by tube rolling due to the many types of tubes I can use. But maybe there are only a few of the choices that really are interesting?

Do you know the brand of the stock tubes in 34IA?

I have a 216i and have changed out the LM tubes with Genelex Gold Lion reissue. Also for the preamp tubes I have found NOS military made USA General Electric and Sylvania tubes sound fantastic.

Simna,
Years ago, all Line Magnetic amplifiers were equipped with tubes from Shuguang and although these tubes were cheap and not the best thing in the market, the truth is they sounded really good right out of the box. Usually the advice was (and still is) to replace the input stage tubes first, because these are the ones that impact the most of the sound. 
I only replaced the small 12AU7 and 12AX7 for Gold Lions and the improvement was noticeable.
Nowadays I don't know if they still carry the Shuguangs from factory or if they use other brands. 

As as for the difference between those two amplifiers - 34 and 88 - I'm afraid I don't know. They belong to the new breed of amplifiers that I haven't experienced yet.  

OMG I have owned Lamm ML2.1, M1.1, M2.1, Music reference RM200/RM9, CJ and ARC tube amps.. the Line Magnetic  518IA i bought is amazing!!! built quality is crazy good, zero hum, and I'm still running stock tubes on my 37k speakers.  I am considering upgrading to the latest 30watt SET 2 chassis amp as my Rockports are pretty hard to drive.   The quality of the LM or Auralic are just amazing.. Huge value!

I’ll take my chances and buy the LM34IA and hope that new tubes, (gonna replace them all; EL34, ECC82 and ECC83) helps. If this don’t do the trick I’ll try other capacitors or... something else...😀