PineappleFructos
New member
So I've bought both of these units recently and honestly, blown away.
The MC331 does a LOT with very little and the DAC is a really good one that punches way above it's price class.
Driving Sony bookshelf speakers it's strong and punchy with good bass and treble response. The soundstage is broad and the noise floor is imperceptible.
I will say it is a little bit anemic driving high impedance headphones, but some careful balancing between DAC level and amp gain will keep it out of clipping while getting loud *enough*
The inclusion of 5724W remote-cutoff tubes does result in a unique and bendy sound when saturated. When swapping in 6J1P-EV PLA tubes the behavior is a bit more punchy but the VU meter can jackhammer if you push them into bias collapse, and you can.
GE JAN 5654W sharp-cutoff tubes tame the bendy behavior a little bit and give you a bit more headroom before clipping which is a nice characteristic if you're trying to drive something like high impedance headphones.
Voshkod 6Ж1П-EB sharp-cutoff tubes really bring it to life, however. The vocals come forward, the guitars open up, and you can bring it all the way into saturation without hash on cymbals and hi hats.
I will say the line-out is confusing as I cannot seem to get ANY sound out of it to feed another amp, and it has ground loop gremlins when attempting to connect to a PC via analog.
Now, to the GR70.
Mine shipped with 6Ж4 tubes and GE JAN 5654W tubes.
Spoiler; I never installed the JAN tubes.
Given that the second stage was already soviet, and of a lovely 1960 vintage, I decided the only rational course of action I had was to assemble it with Voshkod 6Ж1П-EB's from the jump.
The first experience upon listening is immediate and dramatic. When being fed from a 24 bit 192khz DAC and lossless media it produces a level of time-domain precision I genuinely haven't experienced before. The mallet hitting the kick drum and the actual bass of the kick drum can be heard as distinct events, rather than blended or compressed together.
The GR70 in this configuration is not forgiving of a poor quality source, any defect or deviation in the input audio is going to get unforgivingly amplified. any hash on the highs is going to be obvious.
However, when fed from a high quality recording the soundstage is incredibly broad and the noise floor is, like the 331, non existent.
It also does not suffer from the same ground loop issue as the 331.
The MC331 does a LOT with very little and the DAC is a really good one that punches way above it's price class.
Driving Sony bookshelf speakers it's strong and punchy with good bass and treble response. The soundstage is broad and the noise floor is imperceptible.
I will say it is a little bit anemic driving high impedance headphones, but some careful balancing between DAC level and amp gain will keep it out of clipping while getting loud *enough*
The inclusion of 5724W remote-cutoff tubes does result in a unique and bendy sound when saturated. When swapping in 6J1P-EV PLA tubes the behavior is a bit more punchy but the VU meter can jackhammer if you push them into bias collapse, and you can.
GE JAN 5654W sharp-cutoff tubes tame the bendy behavior a little bit and give you a bit more headroom before clipping which is a nice characteristic if you're trying to drive something like high impedance headphones.
Voshkod 6Ж1П-EB sharp-cutoff tubes really bring it to life, however. The vocals come forward, the guitars open up, and you can bring it all the way into saturation without hash on cymbals and hi hats.
I will say the line-out is confusing as I cannot seem to get ANY sound out of it to feed another amp, and it has ground loop gremlins when attempting to connect to a PC via analog.
Now, to the GR70.
Mine shipped with 6Ж4 tubes and GE JAN 5654W tubes.
Spoiler; I never installed the JAN tubes.
Given that the second stage was already soviet, and of a lovely 1960 vintage, I decided the only rational course of action I had was to assemble it with Voshkod 6Ж1П-EB's from the jump.
The first experience upon listening is immediate and dramatic. When being fed from a 24 bit 192khz DAC and lossless media it produces a level of time-domain precision I genuinely haven't experienced before. The mallet hitting the kick drum and the actual bass of the kick drum can be heard as distinct events, rather than blended or compressed together.
The GR70 in this configuration is not forgiving of a poor quality source, any defect or deviation in the input audio is going to get unforgivingly amplified. any hash on the highs is going to be obvious.
However, when fed from a high quality recording the soundstage is incredibly broad and the noise floor is, like the 331, non existent.
It also does not suffer from the same ground loop issue as the 331.
