Line Magnetic quality

Well, your friend seem not to be up to date, or in other words, he or she is full of crap.
I have bought chinese single ended tube amp that is:

1. Superbly well built, of first class materials
2. Sound fantastic
3. Is super affordable
4. Don't seem to suffer from any bad quality

And I am not alone to have this experience with chinese built tube amps of today.....

I listened to the latest LM 845 integrated driving a pair of O/93s. Truly great sound. I had a chance to purchase a LM-211 from a fellow audiogoner just to play with it driving my Tannoy Sterlings. It delivers 15wpc triode and 30wpc ultralinear. Seems to drive the Tannoys well in either mode. Still playing with it however. 

One thing I am wondering about is the sensitivity. Manual lists it at 200mV which seems very highly sensitive. I am also wondering if the 12au7s are input tubes and the 12ax7s are driver tubes for the amplifier stage and that this integrated has a passive preamp. There is no mention of the gain for either preamp or amp stages. Am I wrong on this?

There is no doubt that these amplifiers are well built and offer great sound at their price point.

@mesch


You might want to reach out to Jonathan Halpern at Tone Audio, he is the US distributor to see if he can quickly answer your questions. He is easy to converse with  - shindo.usa@mac.com.
I will tell you that my LM 518IA has the same stated sensitivity; and in it's case the preamp circuit stays in play even if I use the LM as a power amp with a separate preamp. Not sure why the circuit was designed that way but it is.

@facten Thanks, I will reach out to Tone. Is it possible that the 518 also has a passive preamp stage with all tubes part of the amplifier section? I am interested n the LM brand and will continue to explore this.

Just seems to me if the amplifier portion of an integrated has a sensitivity of 200mV there is no need for a preamp stage providing gain. This would be especially true if using digital sources.