Project Ember

i am ready to purchase the Ember. does it come with the same " Russian EH6922" as was in the trial unit?
i do already have 2 jan 6922 tubes (which i think are ok, but as i know nothing about tubes,who knows!) so was wondering whether to order without a tube, or an alternative?
i am a fan of the "warm" sound sig so any recommendations would be good.

Simon, the Jan Philips tubes are quite nice, so they are a good starting point, although Jeremy supplies quite a good tube with it. I also quite like the 'eb' Russian tubes that supply a slightly more weighty sound than the Jans but the one I feel really at home with at the moment, is one that is referred to an 'orange label'. (I'm really bad at remembering their numbers and really don't mind what they are tbh.) Differences can be pretty small to say the least.

I do like the Jan Philips though. They are good and I have quite a few of them as well, from the X-Cans.

I wouldn't get too hung up about valves. With some people it becomes an obsession - I haven't hear a bad sounding tube yet unless there was something wrong with it!!

These guys sell valves to guitarists but personally, I wouldn't spend too much on them.

The amp, as it came knocked me out!!

Yes, that's the one ...... Amperex! Perhaps I'll have a look for a Telefunken then......

Hey, finally have the time to go through my built again and find the culprit that was giving me the noise issue.
Did as per solderdude advice and redid each joint and reflow some solder and as I was doing so found that R14 was loose!
It was not a cold solder but the copper pad was actually broken from the board on the ground end of R14.
Lucky for me it was the ground joint that was broken so just connected it to R13 ground and so far no issues yet.
So thanks you Frans for the advice and Jeremy thanks for the offer to troubleshoot!

On another note I also decided to integrate my ODAC to the chassis of the ember for ease of use since I will be pairing
those together. Got myself a longer standoff for more clearance and drilled 3 holes to the bottom plate to secure the ODAC board plus more holes
to tie up the RCA line out cables of the ODAC with cable ties. I guess picture would be better .

Glad you found the culprit.

If it is of any conciliation, this also happens to me sometimes, even a cold solderjoint acting up now and then occasionally.

Thanks itsalive. I like to save up for a good high end DAC one day but seeing as hi res music material is still in it's infancy or rather still lacking in content and as more better tech stuff comes out my best bet would still to stick with the good and cheap stuff(small in size to boot). Anyway DACs nowadays are so good that it's hard to justify getting an expensive one and big bulky one are getting smaller and smaller by the day.


Frans I'm all consoled now by that admission of yours .I guess it happens to the best of us.

This afternoon with my friends we had a listening session on my project Ember ( I chose a great tube, a HOGES ECC82 even better than a Telefunken ) I think soon you'll have more Ember to send to France !

This little amp is incredible, we had test it with various headphones :
- AKG Q701
- Shure SRH1840
- Denon AH-D600

And with various sources : (Hifimediy SABRE USB DAC, Audio-Gd NFB-5 on the pre-amp output), all the different configuration were great, the Audio-Gd was very detailed and with deeeeep Bass, and even the Denon was perfect, although it's very picky on the source and amplifier (The Denon AH-D600 can be hard to make sound good even with an Audio-Gd DAC19 DSP + C2).