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Experience with Musical Fidelity X-10v3?

I have gotten the urge to tinker with my system, and was thinking about trying the Musical Fidelity X-10v3 tube buffer unit. The unit is supposedly in its final production run, and will be hard to find when current supplies are gone.

Since it's unclear to me why a tube buffer unit would lead to an improvement in one's system (the claims for it include more dynamic transients and greater musicality), I was wondering if any of our members have used this unit, and if so, how did the X-10v3 change the overall sound of the system.

Any observations, pro or con, are welcome. Your remarks will help me decide whether to proceed with this $400 experiment.
sdcampbell
bnrlaw
130 posts
 
I believe it's worth trying if you have an all ss system to inject a little tube warmth/holographics/liquidity into the mix without losing any detail.
It's a fun experiment. You can always resell without losing a lot of your investment as I just did when I moved to a tube integrated and didn't need the buffer anymore.
kenn39
75 posts
 
If you also use headphones, an appealing alternative is a tube headphone amp with pre-amp function like Woo Audio 3.
jbsljbsl
12 posts
 
I use it with a NAD C542 cd player and it is not a huge difference in sound but it does take the slight edge
,harshness,brightness out of the sound. I have Klipsch La Scala speakers and if you use the wrong equipment they can be bright or harsh.

I had the power supply also but when I used both the buffer and power supply I did not hear any difference. So I sold the power supply and tried the buffer and then I noticed a difference. Probably my imagination but it sounds better to me.

If you have the extra money to spend on this then give it a try but if not save your money and get a tube cd player later.
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