Einstein The Tube users...help

audioquest4life:

Nice to hear from an audiophile from Germany. You are indeed lucky to have Einstein reps come to your home. As you already know, The Tube is a wonderful looking preamp. It's build quality seems top notce as well. I thought it was very clever that the tubes are all mounted on a spring loaded platform which helps to absorb vibration.

I cannot comment on the soundstaging and imaging as I am having some issues with this because of my room setup. I can comment on the sound however. And thus far, with The Tube, my system never sounded better. I listen to a lot of female vocals and jazz. To me, texture, realism and weight in the midrange is critical. With The Tube, voices sounded incredibly life like, as if I was in the same room with the singer. Instruments also had a sense of realism. I noticed things that I never heard before with my current preamp (Clase CP-700). Its not that The Tube reveled more detail, it just emphasized things that my current pre did not.

One of favorite cds to test midrange is Eva Cassidy's "American Tune". I was amazed at how rich and vibrant her voice sounded. There was a texture that allowed me to actually visualize and feel her vocal chords vibrating as she sang (I know that sounds weird but that is the best way i can describe it).

For bass and highs, I used Bliss' "Quiet Letters" cd. The opening track does a great job of testing the frequency extremes. The Tube handled this with ease. It reached as low as my speakers would go while also making highs sound natural, crisp, and immediate.

As a further test of the highs, I used Stan Getz and Charlie Byrd's "Jazz Samba" cd. I can honestly say, that i neve heard more realistic highs than with The Tube.

Overall, I think The Tube's strength is in its ability to reproduce music in a manner that is lifelike and natural. I did not get a sense of rolloff at either frequency extreme, nor did I hear too much midrange bloom.

Of course, The Tube is not without its issues. Even though the sound is great, it does lack any real features. There is no volume display or volume (gain) adjustment. The standard remote is a cheap looking plastic unit. Make sure you take a look at the optional remote. It really is a work of art but at $700 its way too much. I would prefer to have an output trigger. These may not mean a lot to people but to me, they are important in terms of day to day use.

I hope this helps. Good luck with your audition. I would be curious to know if you have the same volume issues that I did with my maps.

kind regards,

Tboooe,

Thanks for a thorough update in regards to the Einstein.

I spoke with the Einstein factory today and they are going to bring balanced XLR cables to try in my system as well.

It is funny that I am testing a device that costs less than my current preamp, however, is tested and rated as a high-end product in the states. Pricing of this type of equipment plays into our hands tremendously, however, the pricier stuff does not always equal better. I tried the reference preamp from Octave, and man it was nice, great detail, clarity and very quiet, notice something missing, soundstage and width. They were not as good as the HP500SE to my ears at least. The Octave Jubilee sells for about 27K in dollars, 22keuros, and it did not have the soundstage as that of its little brother, hmmm, almost 2 times the price of its little brother preamp, which is no slouch. Well my point, is through our own endeavors, sharing of information and research, we are eventually going to find the right mix of components, no matter what the costs are reasonably speaking. The Aesthetix Callisto is what really I should aim for as it is supposedly a great match with the IO, I will learn that out soon enough, after the Einstein demo next Friday.

Good luck in solving your problem, which BTW I can bring that to the attention of the rep from Einstein and see what his answer is. Hopefully this will not affect me; I currently have 2 gain settings on my preamp, high and low and a volume control with remote control capability. I use the low gain as it is what allows me to get the volume up to about 1030-1130 or so to get decent listening volume. I guess that is the sweet spot because it sounds good. I am also told that using low gain improves signal to noise ratio. Have you ever heard of that?

V/r
Audioquest4life

Hello all,

MR. Bjorn Mertz vom Einstein left my house a short while ago sadly packing the Einstein the Tube with him. I mean that in a good way. You all know we talk about synergy, well the Einstein synergized with my Octave tube amps, the Aesthetix IO Signature phono and the Krell SACD exceptionally well. We used RCA connections for testing from the phono stage and the SACD since I am using that right now at home, to base the comparison on. I use a subwoofer equalized with the Velodyne SMS-1 sub controller to add some sizzle to bass and equal out the room modes, etc.

We conducted the A/B comparison without the sub active to get a fair baseline sample of the character of each preamp. All audio cables stayed the same (mostly Audioquest Sky's) except we ran XLR from the preamp to the mono amps using some (I forgot the name) cable made in Switzerland.

After a cup of coffee and some small talk, we went to the listening room and listened to the Octave preamp with SACD and vinyl source material, I had been running the equipment all morning in advance and in anticipation of the demo.

I told Mr. Merx, that I prefer natural overtones and not the tizzy sound that you get with some pure silver cables or solid state setups. That being said, Mr. Merx was quiet, and we switched the cables to the Einstein, and played the same sources, this time the last source and song played was the first, Chuck Mangione, 200gram Classic reissue, The Children of Sanchez. I look for three things in this song, one the opening lead in when he is singing and it is very melancholic, but the part of the verse he says "and the strength" and you hear a nice reverberation, well this time it was just amazing. It was like he was really in the studio. The next part, there is the lead in when the drums kick in and the flugel horn starts playing, well I just fell out of my seat as the bass was a lot deeper than my other preamp and I thought I had the subwoofer plugged in, remembering that it was not, I was amazed, I looked at Bjorn and said, Nice. So the bass is gut wrenching deep and the holographic effects of a studio are recreated, now the last thing I listen to on this track is the top hat or triangle, there is a triangle solo about 1/2 way into that song and the triangles resonate as it is being hit. I thought before I had it pretty much nailed, but NO, the Einstein grasped the triangle and made it sparkle, making my preamp sound thinner and lacking energy in that frequency spectrum. The energy of the triangles, cymbals and bass were most definitely pronounced. One other thing I noticed that the background noise was even quieter than before, especially with the phono input, the IO does create low level tube rush, and Bjorn stated that the phono was a little noisy, I said, NO, that is quiet compared to what it was, and that there is an adherent amount of tube rush noise in the IO phono stage, however, I can live with it as long as it goes away at normal listening levels and it does and my music sounds good, and it does.

Finally, I was pulling album after album putting the Tube to the test, Muddy Waters (in which we listened to a master recorded version on vinyl recorded by Herr Einstein from the master tapes- don’t ask, but he had the masters to do the recording), the Doobie Brothers, The Eagles, Bill Evans, Sonny Rollins, John Coltrane and each time, the timber was excellent. Additionally, the soundstage gained a tremendous amount of width, clearly the advantage of the true dual mono design. Normally pinpoint and far reaching instruments played through my other preamp, suddenly occupied the whole stage and in a lifelike presentation whereas before, it was more pinpoint, also good mind you, however the Einstein seemed to capture the whole performance on the stage and the presentation was a lot closer and near to you in comparison, my preamp, portrayed the same staging effects and had pinpoint accuracy but with limited spatial cues.

Overall, a very satisfying listening experience in which case it “DID” bring me closer to the musician, literally.

You have to ask yourself, how do they do that? The Einstein sounded very natural used in my system and was neither adding or detracting from the music, it just sounded like great music. I know we all hear the same thing whenever someone gets rolled over by such an experience, but this was my experience and I thought I would share it with you. BTW, heat was never an issue.

Next on the list, is to demo the Callisto. So far, the Einstein has brought me the best joy in music playback than any other preamp I demoed to date. I wonder if anyone has had a chance to demo the Callisto against the Einstein yet?

The volume control and remote worked fine with my amps, however, the remote volume's control seem to be about 1db stepped increase and decreases per click on the remote. Mr. Merz, said he thought it was a normal poti. That is all.

V/r
Audioquest4life

thank you for the detailed review. The Tube really is a great preamp. I hope I can figure out why both of my sources still had issues with the volume.

Tboooe,

You are quite welcome. You still have The Tube? I did not have any gain or volume problems at all hooked up to my system. The IO is set at 62db gain and that worked perfectly with The Tube. Also, my SACD player mated very well with no issues either. The output impedence of The Tube is 84ohms, whereas the output impedence of my current preamp is 100ohms. This is probably why I noted some more top end sparkle with The Tube. My amps are rated at 210ohms input impedence.

My only issue or concern is there is only one set of line level outs, prohibiting me from using the 2nd line out to the subwoofer controller or doing something crazy like bi-amping! The way it is configured I will have to use the tape out to run the subwoofer. Other than that, I am pretty sure I could live with The Tube for a very very long time as it was assimilated into my system with ease.

Ciao,
Audioquest4life