Gadgetory

what's up guys Lew here back with another unboxing video and on my left-hand side is some mysterious looking foam but before we get into that I do want to give a shout out to up wave who recently had me on their channel doing a special segment called what's in my fridge and pretty much exactly how it sounds I give you guys a tour of the different items food items beverages etc that exists in my fridge so if you're interested in checking that out please go ahead and follow the link down in the description show them some unbox therapy love leave a comment leave a thumbs up anyways so today's video is about something special this came to me from a company I think a new company called mass drop and this is called the darkboys now before we get inside the package I want to give a little bit more information on the place it came from so it came from this place called mash drop and they are a group buying type of website where individuals can get behind a particular product and get a lower price if they can get enough people to commit to purchasing it so it's a way of getting expensive high quality stuff at a lower price than you would usually get by using the purchasing power of a larger group so if you're interested in checking out what they've got I will link them down in the description as well they sent this out to me to take a closer look and show you guys some of the cool stuff that you can find on mass drop so this is called the dark voice and besides you have that little bit of text on the front you probably can't read anything else on maybe this down here unless you speak Chinese because this thing is completely in Chinese the manual so we're not going to get much information from there actually you can see the model name in there 3 3 6 s e that's the model of this device that's in front of us which as I said before goes by the name of dark voice great name by the way so I'm going to go ahead and remove some foam here and give you guys a better look at what's inside the package there's some stuff in there but I'll put that to the side for a moment this is the dark voice and it is a headphone amplifier for you know heavy-duty audio file type listeners that want to get more out of their headphones or maybe you've got a very special pair of headphones that needs a lot of power to drive them then you might be looking at a headphone amplifier as well also individuals who are looking for a warmer sound than is currently available on digital music amplifiers like this are really popular for bringing back some of that warmth that individuals used to get on analogue audio again this is a subjective thing it's not like there's one solution that's better than another this is just for individuals who are looking for a particular sound and in many listening scenarios this can improve the performance of your headphones Wow is this thing heavy I don't know how much this actually weighs but my goodness one of the heavier items I've ever featured here on unbox therapy so solid construction here these locations here I believe are for the actual tubes which are stored over there in the styrofoam for now if you've never seen a tube amplifier before it looks pretty crazy mad scientist-type design you will actually have these giant bulb looking tubes that stick out here I'll install those in a moment hopefully I know what I'm doing I am new to this as well just like you guys so bear with me okay so on the back of the device here you can see your audio inputs and outputs left channel input right channel input left channel output right channel output and there is of course support for your power cable you can also see the model name up here 3 3 6 s II on the front is where you're going to be able to control this amplifier so you have your headphone output as you can see it is a quarter-inch output for high-end headphones but if you've got you know a set of headphones with a mini jack connector you can get an adapter for that you have your volume knob here which is very very solid feeling once again and then your on/off switch so also included in the package here we have our power cable pretty self-explanatory we've also got our tube that's crazy ok let's open this up and see about installing this now I was reading in some of the forums online that you can actually replace these with different tubes if you're looking for a different sound you can actually really change the attributes of a tube amplifier just by swapping out this tube for a different one and of course eventually if you need to change it for any other reason it's nice to know that it's interchangeable so I believe there's two in here so it's a small one in a big one yet there we go there's the other one so let's go ahead and get this in here there we go I'm just going to try and be gentle with it it is glass after all so that's in so now that you guys have taken a closer look at this dark voice headphone amplifier I'm going to plug it in set it up and give it a listen and you guys will be able to catch my feedback as it happens my reaction I have a pair of headphones here these are the sennheiser HD 8 DJ headphones that i recently unbox if you haven't seen that video you should definitely go check it out and these have a cable that terminates in a mini jack connector but it has this quarter inch adapter so I can compare the sound from a standard smartphone as an audio source and then using this adapter I can input the smartphone's output into this dark voice and then use this adapter to connect to the front here and see what the improvements are if any now this is not the ideal listening scenario you want to start out with higher fidelity files and a better player if you can and trust me I've got more on the way regarding that but for the purpose of this video and test we'll just do an a/b my reactions to some music via the smart phone directly compared with some music that's going through the dark voice tube headphone amplifier so let's go ahead get this set up plug it in that's important and then I got to go find an adapter cable so I can put my mobile player into the standard RCA type audio jacks okay so I have the dark voice plugged in now I managed to track down the adapter cable so we have a mini Jack connector on one end and standard RCA s on the other this will go into the inputs on the back of this amplifier I'll just leave it there connected for now because the first thing I want to do is just use the standard headphone connection right into the iPhone here just just as a comparison I'll use the same song going straight into the headphones without the amplifier I'm going to test that out first and then second I'm going to plug it into the dark voice via this adapter on the front like I mentioned already but anyway so I'm going to do an a/b comparison and you're going to get to watch it in real time I guess I can turn this on now I'm just going to listen to some audio right now to myself unfortunately you can't hear this it's playing now you're going to watch me just zoned out a little bit here haha okay so pretty good these are good headphones and as I said before not a particularly difficult headphone to drive an audio player can drive these headphones that's why they include this adapter cable so next let's take the same track put this adapter on here put it into the dark voice adjust the volume I have no idea how loud this is going to be I'm going to rewind this exact same song here and you can see the tubes are starting to glow a little bit I'm not sure maybe under the light you can't see it but you can see some orange light if you come up real close I'll give you guys a closer image of that okay so here we go okay so I'm just adjusting the volume a little bit here to get the the right level comparative to what I had before again this is not a question of better or worse this is a question of the type of sound that you're looking for a question of subjectivity like I said okay so I have I have an immediate way to describe it just based on that little minor listening experiment obviously I haven't tried out my entire inventory of music and it's a really basic low fidelity song but there is definitely a difference an immediate difference to me the only reason I kept listening is because I just wanted to make sure I wasn't missing anything else this sounds a little bit more alive that's how I would describe it meaning is a little bit more resonance or it feels like there is I don't know if technically there is the space that the sound is filling feels a little bit larger a little bit more life I don't know if that's the right way to say it a little bit more live and a little bit less machine sort of produced if that makes any sense now I was listening to sort of what you would call maybe a classic hip-hop style beat and obviously this is going to vary depending on the type of music that you're into but with a classic hip-hop beat you're dealing with samples that come from some old-school recordings and as a result this kind of equipment here gives you a little bit more of that old-school vibe in the sound similar probably to the type of production equipment that may have been used to originally create that sound these things here these tubes that you're looking at how about have a long storied history in the music world and many many people prefer the type of sound reproduction that you're going to get out of an amplifier that does include tubes again I want to be very clear it depends on how you like to listen to your music but if you're like me and you feel that sometimes digital music is maybe lacking a little bit in the warmth area this is a great way to add some warmth for your home listening environment when you know you're chilling back and you're going to be listening to a ton of music then it's like oh listen let me go to my listening station let me relax let me sit on the couch let me plug into the dark voice and really pay attention to the instrumentation really pay attention to maybe some some little nuances in the music that you may not pick up on when you're using a crappy little built-in amplifier that exists on your device or even your computer computers don't have great built-in amps usually and you know this putting this in the middle of the chain can can be a great fix for that but ultimately the ultimate solution is to come into this device with a high fidelity song a high fidelity file to begin with or high fidelity player like a high-end CD player or a record player something come in with a really nice source to begin with and then let this do the rest of the work that's an awesome sort of set up if you're going for the ultimate this was a quick test this is the setup that I have here right now another very cool player actually a couple different cool players are going to be coming in very shortly and I will hook them up to this dark voice and give you guys some more feedback probably on Twitter and wherever else it is that I communicate with you so if you're not following me on Twitter go check me out there I'm at unbox therapy my links will be down in the description a link to this dark voice headphone amplifier will also be down in the description so check that out to show some support to mass drop big thanks to them for hooking this hooking me up with this so far very exciting stuff these tubes actually heat up it's really cool they're they're heating the space right now now anyways some old-school tech that is still very cool in the modern day if you haven't heard music through tubes you should definitely try it out and see if it's something you're into so far really cool I'm really excited gonna go listen to some more music now thanks for watching guys if you enjoyed this content please remember leave a thumbs up down below and I will catch you very shortly on the next episode later guys