Little Dot Tube Headphone Tube Amplifier, Standard Hybrid Headphone Amp and Pre-ampplifier, Tubes GE5654*2 and Soviet 6H6PI*2 (MK III)

Packaging - excellent, the unit was so well packaged that it was bullet-proof - the tubes were mounted in the unit and packed so well that there was no chance for any damage. The Tube Amp - was as described and there was no damage, all cords, manuals and power/RCA cables were included. Now about the sound - my unit came with 6H6P-PI power tubes and JAN-GE-5654 driver tubes(small front tubes). I have Sennheiser HD-650 headphones which are superb and are a wonderful match-up with the Little-Dot - If you can get into a pair of Sennheiser cans, they are more than worth it, the sound is excellent. I also have a set of Audio-Technica M50X cans which are very good but not in the same league as the Sennheiser's. With the stock tubes, the sound was really very good and I had no complaints. But I knew that I would not be able to resist swapping tubes eventually. I first tried the 6ZH1P-EV Voskhod Rockets and found that the sound instantly became three dimensional and had much greater clarity. You get a much greater impression of space with these. The GE-5654 Jan(joint army/navy) tubes were quite good, but apparently almost all GE 5654 tubes are somewhat 2-dimensional and are kind of up-front and close feeling. I also got a similar set of 6ZH1P tubes from the Svetlana plant which were just slightly better than the Voskhods, but only very slightly - they are identical in appearance. I tried a set of Amperex 5654 tubes which were about the same as the GE's - nothing to write home about, but are ok. I then tried a set of Mullard M-8100's and they are great! So for me it is a toss-up between the Russian 6ZH1P-EV's and the Mullards which are warmer and fuller sounding but just slightly lacking in clarity compared to the Russian tubes. But I have to say that the Mullards are flat-out great -sounding tubes. I have not yet tried swapping out the larger power tubes as most reviewers state that they can't tell much difference after swapping them out (also known as tube-rolling). My experience with the Little Dot MK111 has been wonderful - I listen mostly to classical music and the sound from this tube-amp is about as real as it gets. Piano sonatas are breath-takingly good and so are string quartets, cello music, flute and classical guitar music. IMHO, solid-state is not on the same par as tube amps - tubes just sound better and are much closer to listening to a live performance. I really love my Little Dot and now couldn't imagine being without it - every time I turn it on and slip on my headphones it's like, oh yeah! - this is the sound I've always been looking for! I have had it now for about 4-5 months. I am now sold on tubes and will be looking at tube-amps for my main system in the future. I would like to point out that tubes need to warm up well before they sound their best - mine seem to really start sounding good after about 10-15 minutes and sound sublime at about the 30 minute mark. I highly recommend the Little Dot headphone amps - if you are considering one, I don't think you will be disappointed. I also recommend buying from Amazon as it is easy to return a unit to them in the event you wind up with a lemon. I think that is quite rare as the engineering on these units is excellent, but it can happen. The quality of the electrical components used in these units is also excellent, so the chance of getting a bad one is very slim. So if you are are looking for that just-right-sound, buy one!

The sound was better than my Topping VX1, sound stage was something I've never witnessed before and was great while I had it. These are with my HD 598. The bottom end is rather lacking and seems to be missing a lot of details there. The mids and highs though, pretty darn good.The design is uglier than sin. It doesn't look like a 300 dollar device by any means. It is built very well though. The coating they used just felt and looked meh. The whole front plate just felt cheap with ugly screws in it. Once you get it, it def looks cheap.The gain switches are irritating to use. They decided to put it in the inside of the amp on the bottom with a small hole cut out so you can use some tiny screw driver with a flashlight to see what you're doing. With as big as this unit is, putting it somewhere else would have been more preferable. To change the gain I have to unplug everything, turn it upside down to get some decent light into it then use a micro screwdriver to move the tiny little switches to where they need to go. I guess it's not a HUGE problem once you find the combo you like but when you're playing with it to find the settings you like, it's irritating.After a few weeks it developed a really high pitched problem so now I gotta go through the hassle of returning it.[edit] After getting a new amp (Schiit Asgard 2) I discovered it was a ground loop issue which I resolved. I'm going to up the stars to a 4 but now that I've heard another amp and how much better it sounds at a cheaper price, I don't miss it at all. I got the Schiit Asgard 2 as a replacement for 20 dollars less (with shipping too) from their website and the sound from it is superior in every way that I didn't think was possible, and that's on a solid state. I would urge anyone looking at this amp to look at the Asgard 2 or save another 100 bucks on top of the cost of the topping and get the Valhalla.