Tag: 201A

ER801a Driver Stage

ER801a as Driver in my system

Received the ER801a today back from Thomas. They were working fine, it was a faulty UX-4 socket pin of my tracer which annoyingly made the grid to appear faulty and open at certain voltage level. I need to replace it.

Either way, they are now in my system and I can only say how much I was surprised with the sound of these. They take the detail and timbre of the VT-25 to a next level. Amazing result, happy to have these as part of my driver stage. The preamp is the 201a feeding the ER801a into the 4P1L PSE. 

Highly recommended valves, worth the price indeed.

DHT Audio Shootout @ London

Here’s the summary of the shootout day we had yesterday at my place with  Tony Rees and Andy Evans

Test Music

For testing the pre-amps Andy suggested the following 2 tracks:

  1.  Ravel Feria (Cleveland/Boulez)
  2. Janacek The Cunning Little Vixen Act 3 Scene 7 “A vixen’s running through the woods” Prague Theatre/Gregor


The Ravel is orchestrated for a large orchestra and percussion, and listening was particularly for the timbre of strings, brass and woodwind and the clarity of the percussion. The Janacek is for several different voices and chorus, and listening was for the tone and character of the voices and how well they were differentiated from each other. In both cases the overall clarity, life and crispness was considered.

Andy Evans

Although I wasn’t familiarised enough with these 2 tracks myself, I found them to be an excellent choice and a reflection of Andy’s musical experience and knowledge as musician. 

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