Wonderful Woo Audio WA5 300B Single-ended Triode Class-A Speaker and Headphone Amp.

As I said in my last note. My 3 picks that I'm looking at are Devore (The lower end), Zu (Omen Def & Essence), and Audio Note (AN-E). I don't own either yet and I'm putting together a speaker system come tax time as the wife has decided we need good speakers. (So if I'm not mistaken the lowest they're be would be 94db)

I'll be auditioning Zus and Devores soon with a Leben amp and hopefully some sort of 300B amp. My local dealer has all that. If none of it strikes my fancy I might pick up an Audio Note AN-E Kit 3 and just build them. I of course am open to more suggestions but I'm pretty set on something fairly sensitive.

EDIT: As for the kind of music I listen to a lot of Ambient Electronic, and synths in general. Lots of Classic Rock (Zep, Boston, The Who, Rush, Floyd, etc). A bit of classical and a bit of stuff like Union Station. Bass is very important but with apartment living a sad reality for awhile a system with a sub isn't much of an option.

 

Any of those speakers would be fantastic with this amp, IMHO. I am personally considering upgrading to Audio Notes or Zus, myself. A lot of people will tell you that 300B amps are not a good choice for rock and are not the best for strong bass. I play a lot of classic rock on mine, and have no complaints, but I am not that concerned with heavy bass. I also have a sub, but had no problems prior to getting the sub. The speakers you're looking at, though, have better bass response than my Paradigms, so I think you'd be fine.

If you lived near NYC, I'd invite you over for an audition.

 

I'd gladly come over and give it a try. I'm getting conflicting answers on Head-fi from some of the speakers guys as well. One seems to like it. Good build, 300B sound, good support but another said it's just not up to snuff on either the headamp front or speaker amp front. Sort of a jack of all trades.

 

FWIW with respect to headphones, I have the WA5-LE, same amp, same tubes, but setup for headphones only. I use Sennheiser HD 800 headphones with a Cardas cable. IMHO, the sound through the WA5 leaves absolutely nothing to be desired.

 

Headphone wise I've been very spoiled (and still am). I've owned the Cavalli Liquid Fire with the LCD 2 & HD800, heard the Cavalli Liquid Glass (best HD800 amp I've heard), and currently own a Stax 009. You can understand why I don't really plan on using it as a headphone amp.

 

X2 on me with the Cavalli Liquid Fire+LCD2's. Incredible!

 

For Steve and anyone else that owns a Woo Audio, or any other amp that uses 6SN7 driver tubes, I have a recommendation.

I know there have been great improvement in the quality of new production tubes these days so I was curious to see if I could get a driver tube to replace my current ones so I started researching current production 6SN7s to go along with my new current production Western Electric 300Bs. I just replaced my NOS Raytheon VT-231 drivers with current production Shuguang Treasure CV-181-Zs last night, and they provided a noticable improvement. The soundstage, though already very good, grew a little, and the imaging was a little better. There also just seemed to be a little more weight to the presentation (for lack of a better word). Ella never sounded better. I would not characterize the change as dramatic, but it was noticable. It was more of a change than I expected, however, since I was pretty happy with the sound of the system as it was.

CV-181-Z tubes draw a little more current than 6SN7s, but are otherwise a direct replacement. At $230 for a matched pair, they are not cheap, but worth it IMHO. Before settling on the Raytheons, I did some rolling of the driver tubes, and the Raytheons were the best, so I was a lttle suprised that these bested them by the margin that they did. I did a lot of research before buying these, and they got very good reviews on the web.

Of course, the amount, if any, improvement they bring to another system would depend on what they are replacing and YMMV.

 

The extra filament current is a big reason why they have more body to the sound.

Don't try this at home but; Take any tube and over voltage the filament by 20% or so and it will give evactly what you have expierenced with your upgrade. Of course that over voltaging of the filament on a tube will shorten it's life. Your mileage won't vary on that one.

 

I bet it sounds good but I prefer my Coincident Audio Dynamo 34SE.8 watts of EL34 power and headphone jack it's perfect driving the high/ midrange units of my Von Schweikert VRjr mrk3s.I got mine when it was $999 but now it's gone up to $1300.Still a killer deal even at that price!

 

They sounded very good, but I had one go bad in two months, so there seems to be QC issues. Not a good thing for a pretty expensive new production tube.

 

Very intriguing, nice review Steve, thanks.

 

review: An oldie, but a goodie. Thank you Steve. Shared on our Facebook page.

https://www.facebook.com/WooAudioUSA

We will be at T.H.E. Show in Newport later this month. We hope you will stop by and hear our WA234 Mono amps.

 

I have a different opinion.

I have a WA5LE, too. I've had mine for about 18 months. The first drivers I ran in it (after the stock tubes) were the CV-181 Treasure IIs (not the Z, which came before). No matter how many tubes I tried, I always came back to a brown base Sylvania 6SN7.

Nothing wrong with the CV-181, the Sylvania just outmatched the Treasures in most areas, to my ears anyway-- a little deeper bass-- a little more spacious. I've rolled a few thousand in tubes through my WA5LE, best match for the HD-800 to date for me is the EML 5U4G Mesh rectifier (bested the United Audio 596, and Sophia Electric), Sylvania drivers (bested Treasure IIs, 6GT7, Tung Sol 6SN7) and the EML Mesh 300B (haven't had a lot of money to roll 3ooB tubes-- there's an Asian company Takatsuki which allegedly makes the best 3ooB short of an original WE-- but the EML consistently gets rated with the top 300Bs).

Great, solid amp. Too bad the WA5 won't drive my Genelecs-- or I'd have upgraded.

 

Brent Jessee has several videos online that help identify various 6SN7 tubes - looks like Sylvania made some brown base Micanol versions:
http://www.audiotubes.com/6sn7.htm