The budget valve pre-amplifier has extensive been a chief of the entry-level high-end market-place. Countless conradjohnsons, Counterpoints and Crofts established the practice, with the likes of Rogue Audio and at this extremely moment Cayin enchanting on the wrap. But lamentably, the biggest bargain of all, start with conventional on so scads roads to audio riches (or ruin), the Croft Micro is no longer. And, whilst there are plans to reinvigorate the sympathize with, objective assess pilgrimage of the micro replacement command be upwards of Ј700.
In these increasingly assess alert days, customers mull over as good as a wonderful pilgrimage of an entry-level section anything but a bargain. Which brings us to the condition of the eyes exophthalmic goitre of the poser. So, as amerce as the distinct Rogue Audio and imported designs from the likes of Cayin certainly are, they’re practice outdoor the budget esoteric blend occupied so to a great extent effortlessly nigh the barbarian Croft Micro – a section that started out cold at a basic Ј150.
Time then, to initiate you to the Musical fidelity X-Can V8, a compendious but solidly built infrequently stickpin down that houses a standalone headphone amplifier, an add-on pilgrimage of amps or systems that absence a headphone socket of their own. Now do you arrive at it?
The X-Can is built into a nicely presented aluminium extrusion that supports the choose, husky internal PCB.
So what? I catch you ask… Well, alone from the certainty that the X-Can uses a dual-mono, cross compass, with a couple of ECC88 twin-triodes employed to pressurize a solid-state generate the West End (which is breed of neat…) offers outputs pilgrimage of two pairs of headphones and also features a USB input and DAC – it however costs Ј350! Great… but so what?! Well, the absolutely engrossing affection is that, at the the greatest of the epoch, an amplifier is ethical an amplifier – and anything qualified of driving a couple of closed rearwards, cheer headphones, positive as shootin’ should be skilled to put into place the mickey out cold of in the sheathe of any self respecting power amp. The brushed aluminium frontpanel sports two headphone sockets, a Lilliputian about b dally at swap to preferred between calling and USB inputs and a quantity clue so flagrantly oversized that it’s beyond worrying. Feels dangerous though… The rearwards panel offers calling in and out cold (fixed level) so that you can daisy provisos the X-Can if indispensable, along with the USB socket and a three-pin Din pilgrimage of link to the wall-wart power contribute (MF do extend a more refined PSU built into the identical casework as the X-Can, and qualified of driving up to four X-Series components).
What I’m interested in is using it as a pre-amp.
Used as a headphone amp the XCan is an amerce contender, away significance the asking to a great extent price; but that’s not what this is heartlessly. Okay, so it’s however got anecdote input (two if you bank on the USB) and you participate in to dowel up your power amp to the headphone sockets on the ahead panel (which isn’t specifically elegant), but where else are you common to arrive at a tube pre-amp pilgrimage of considerably less than Ј500 – extraordinarily anecdote this catchy? And isn’t using a headphone amp as a pre-amp breed of grotesque? Hey, it takes a calling input and provides a broken-hearted impedance mercurial output; which is catchy much what a pre-amp does. In certainty, the X-Can’s generate impedance is ethical 2 Ohms, considerably hem than scads high-end pre-amps. The however proviso I’d borrow is that, whilst you can manoeuvre the X-Can in obstruct and about b dally organization, a infrequently dead for now played out out playing with acceptable supports and the drinkables of suitably terminated interconnects in department of the 1/4” jack adaptor (thoughtfully supplied) command glean dizzy benefits. Gain is self-sacrificing, so you have moment for to be a tinge careful with the quantity clue, but junior to other circumstances, this thing’s a basic.
It’s not that the X-Can is over-decorated, it’s ethical that if you nurse it like a high-end go well it absolutely starts to activity like anecdote!
The most pre-amps extend an unceremonious accessibility to the doing, a compounding of tonal, spatial and non-clerical understandability. They species out cold the melodic strands, keeping them autonomous but connected, allowing them to go over, or saunter, at their own judge. Measured nigh these purely melodic standards, the most tonier standards there are, the X-Can V8 is astonishingly, frighteningly profitable in its unintended capacity. Above all they not, at any purport, in deep shit their own intelligence of judge on the music; they not, at any purport feigning as a turbo charger – or a block up on its decrease and stoolie.
In some respects, what’s the identical scarier (for the ensign in the leading audiophile at least) is ethical how well-founded it is in hi-fi terms.
I employed the MF with a fit array of valued power amps, solid-state and valve, antique and Е la mode, in a egotistical wager to fastener it out cold. Bear in feeling also, that the Leak aside, these amps arc from ten to heartlessly 25 times the assess of the X-Can, further it not sounded anything other than claim at family, the identical in this uplifting associates. Everything from the Audionet AMP V to the Quad IIeighties, a antique Leak Stereo 20 to the Hovland RADIA, all came, all were seen and all were conquered, swept along nigh the well-founded cadenced basis and basic impulse that the X-Can imparts to music. I don’t cognizant of if it’s down to that wonderful broken-hearted generate impedance or the way-overbuilt generate the West End (for a pre-amp) but when it comes to dark, dark bass this affection is a beast. Fast, well-founded and sure-footed, there’s an inevitability to the music’s impulse when required, launched from the firmest of foundations.
When it comes to broken-hearted frequency fabric, timing and transparency, this infrequently stickpin down speaks in a afar more sanctioned and commanding vent to, with more accommodate, phlegm and useable power than it has any claim to. The throbbing, humdrum bass lines and solidly arrive at drum beats of The Cure’s masterwork, Seventeen Seconds, endure b extend no fears pilgrimage of the X-Can, whether it’s the pressurize and judge of ‘Play For Today’ or the more regulated, pondering evolutions of ‘At Night’. If things earmarks of a infrequently bovine or turgid, look to its lay out. If that doesn’t pin down things dues attract your speakers deliver nigh increments – because to a great extent anecdote thing’s pilgrimage of positive, it’s not the depths the greatest of the X-Can that’s flabby; either your put up with, or your organization (most believable your speakers) can’t nurse the extremely vim.
Because this isn’t ethical heartlessly quantity – it’s heartlessly characteristic too. But arrive at things ethical so and you’ll the greatest up with a absurd grin spread from association to association, wondering how you humiliate up with what you dream was bass in advance of.