Gadgetory

we have a very special review today this is a monster a beast of an amp the wooh audio waa thirty-three skaia is not cheap the standard the base model is right around eight thousand dollars so this is for those guys that have a little bit of extra scratch in the pocket really love the Hobby and want a state-of-the-art high-end high falutin 2 headphone amplifier with a bonus option of a preamp for a full sized stereo or a pair of desktop speakers this headphone amp comes in two sections you can see here this is the main power amp and this is a connected power supply these two do not separate they're connected together by a little piece of tube here in the middle that puts the cord in between the two units this is a change from some other the amplifiers where there's like an umbilical cord it goes through the back just like all the other cords connecting the two it's a little bit cleaner now also though they don't separate they are connected together this amplifier is very heavy it is like 50 pounds both pieces move together it's not something you want to throw around definitely can't put it in your backpack but it's solidly built 50 pounds of metal Anna dies aluminum and it's feels solid the knobs click good the volume knob has a good resistance and it's just a solid piece of American built gear for audio as you can see there are tubes on the top that drive most of the juice and they take a little bit while to boot up so I'm gonna show you here what happens if you click this button flashes while it warms up and you should always give a tube amplifier a little bit of time to really get everything going before you start listening to it so for those of you aren't as familiar with the analog kind of old-school technologies it takes a while for it to warm up to sound its best so I always give it plenty of time before you listen you can see on the front it's a lot of inputs and outputs we have two separate Excel ours because this is a 100% balanced throughput so you can put these stuff of Excel ours into the back on the top here and also straight out the front to headphone the one that I have plugged in here is actually a four pin stereo XLR for headphones and then of course your standard three sorry your standard quarter-inch headphone jack yes the headphone jack will work this headphone jack will work with the balanced input so it will take a balanced input to there on the back side we have two balanced inputs and a pair of single ended inputs and a pair of balanced XLR outputs for pre no single-ended for the pre so it's a balanced idea here a balanced all the way through it's something if you're spending $8,000 on you're probably going to want to also invest the time to make your system to make your listening rig balanced which is not you know the case of every amplifier it's not the case of every system but this one definitely really pumps into that idea and delivers on it I think from a sound perspective it is the number one concern I think a lot of times if things get to to be too warm as some people use that term the bass gets a little flabby the bass gets a little it's not the case with this amplifier or really any wood stuff that I've heard it has a nice firm bass tight bass but what really brings is a nice full feeling around the mids and really easy listening trouble that's not to say it's not sharp or articulate I'm just saying it sounds relaxing you can fade right into the music and it feels full it feels rich it has a really nice robust not overly analytical but still detailed sound which if you ask me is a pretty good sweet spot you can push the analytical detail idea to the max but then it doesn't sound as organic it doesn't sound as real and it's not sometimes it's not as easy to listen to this amp is very easy to listen to also very powerful perhaps the most powerful amplifier I've ever had in the lab by a long shot the total output is actually a whopping 10 watts per channel that is a lot not a ton for a loudspeaker but that is a ton for a headphone amplifier it is a push-pull class-a amplification topology and it uses six c-45 two for the driver to a three tubes for power and all direct heated triodes it's a heck of a setup and it's quite powerful as I said as you turn this dial there's high low gain settings but you really don't need you never gets it never even goes halfway with most headphones which is very nice because one of my favorite headphones right now is the odyssey LCD 4 and it has about 200 ohms of resistance on the headphone side and it some of the game it takes to go is I'm like near the top of the of the knob on some of the other full performance headphone amps it's not even close on this one it's perfectly right here in this part right here that's with a high gain to stage gain to stage impedance options inputs and then of course pre or headphone amplification so when you're looking at this as a whole you're looking to go big this is big this is big but graceful smooth but refined also very expensive but if you're looking at something that's eight thousand dollars that's basically a big man's toy you know this is kind of the area you're looking at it's fun it looks pretty cool just sitting out it's a conversation piece and it's really kind of a nice holistic package if you're looking for flagship stuff super fun option I hope everybody in their life who loves headphones gets a chance to listen to this and own it it make the world a better place thanks for watching