Ampapa A1 Vacuum Tube Phono Preamp - Headphone Amp

First of all this is NOT a true tube pre-amp. Let's get that out of the way. This unit uses transistor op-amp chips for the amplification. It would be my guess that this is due to the high voltage requirements of tubes for amplification and the manufacturer chose to use a small 12 volts external power supply. The tubes operate at a lower voltage and are inserted into the signal path for their sound "coloring" and harmonics which do sound nice. This is not necessarily a bad thing since you will most likely be feeding this into a class AB or Class D power amp anyway. I would say if you have a tube power amp and are looking for an all tube system than this pre-amp isn't for you. I'm running mine from my turntable into my Denon receiver so it's not an issue for me and sounds pretty good. The one issue I did have was with noise interference from my wireless router. I thought I had a bad unit until I realized it was coming from my router. This pre-amp is highly susceptible to interference. They should address this with extra shielding or grounding. I moved my router to another room across the house so it minimized the distortion to an acceptable level.

I bought this because I was in the process of trying to upgrade my McIntosh C22 to a C70 that I'll pair with my MC462 amp. I needed a vacuum tube phono stage/preamp to handle my record player and a bluetooth receiver, so after watching a bunch of YouTube videos I made this choice. When I got it I initially thought the tubes were a little stale sounding? However, I didn't give them time to burn in, so who knows. I ordered some Voshkod tubes from eBay and a 3amp power source (not necessary I just wanted to test if it helped) and the Ampapa sounds FANTASTIC. It's one very very small notch below my $4500 McIntosh C22 for a fraction of the price. I truly could not be happier with this unit. The controls seems to be high quality and I like that you can change the tube LED color from orange to green, or you can just leave the LED off and look at the tube glow (great at night). The unit has a low noise floor and I literally don't hear noise even when at high volume with nothing playing. Truly can't recommend this enough!

I just started my Turntable journey this year and I chose my first purchase to be the Fluance RT85 based on many positive feedback reviews and competitive price point. When selecting a preamp, I figured I might as well get the Fluance PA10 model that also has great reviews. Upon receiving the products, I was impressed with the quality and look of the RT85 but not actually blown away by the sound output. So I went back and starting digging deeper into similar price preamps and I stumbled past this bad boy. It had everything I needed with the volume, treble and bass controls, and I loved the tube look with the LED backlights so I decided to give it a try and boy am I glad that I did! I immediately noticed the sound difference coming from the RT85 after hooking this up. The volume output was louder, the sound was more vibrant, and the ability to control the bass was really the game changer for me. I love the fact that you get more freedom to tweak the sound settings more to your individual preference instead of settling for defaults of the PA10. To me this amp is better hands down and I'm glad that I did a little more research before settling based on Brand name. My advice is to not hesitate and buy this! The ability to customize your sound is great and the LED's make it even nice to put on display. Night and day difference and I look forward to many years of great use and quality turntable sound when listening to my vinyl collection.

The item died and stopped working correctly after one use. Avoid.

I purchased the Fluance RT83 turntable that I used this hooked up to. I have an Onkyo TX-NR5060 AVR and the phono input just doesn't do a good job so I used line and CD and it sounds great! I like having control over the Bass and Treble it really helps the sound stage.

Making my old turntable play into my new HomePod 2’s has been quite the project. I did a lot of experimenting and ended up getting the audio in through the HDMI eARC on my TV using a cheap Pyle preamp and RCA to HDMI adapter. The concept worked and it sounded good, but not great. It didn’t take long before I knew I needed a better preamp and figured I’d try the Ampapa. I wanted something affordable with some basic tone controls and vacuum tubes and it fit the bill. The HomePods have no way to shape the tone at all and that’s a little frustrating. They sound amazing, but sometimes they need just a little tweak to my ear. With the ampapa I’ve greatly improved my vinyl’s sound and can do my little tweak with the bass and treble to get it as near perfection as I require. My vinyl now sounds as good/better than my digital lossless versions. Both versions are great, but the tubes do add a little magic. It now makes my records compete with the Atmos Apple Music versions and I love hearing the difference in the mixes. It’s built solid and looks great in my media console. For me, it was the right product at a great price. Makes me happy to listen to my vinyl with such good sound.