Hello,
This is my first post. I was looking into buying a Bottlehead Crack kit and building it myself but then one came up locally, already built, with some extras such as some tubes and an uninstalled Speedball, so I grabbed it. With my HD600s the amp sounds quite good, but it just seems quiet. I like my music moderate to loud, and I apparently don’t have any hearing loss. I find I have to turn it up to 80 or 100% and still wish there was more. This is my first dedicated headphone preamp, and I don’t have a lot of other high end gear yet.
I’ve tried a few different sources which mostly seem to be the same. iPhone 6 plugged right in playing Spotify or Tidal and volume at max. Also tried Apple TV playing tidal plugged into my tv, optical out into a Gefen D to A, into the Crack. Volume is about the same. Best thing I can find is out of the headphone jack of my UAD Apollo recording interface into the Crack. I pretty much crank the Apollo and then I can get good volume at around 60-70% on the Crack. I don’t have TS-RCA cables or I would use the line-out on the Apollo.
I tried all the different tubes and they’re all close in volume.
When I search for this, most people have the opposite problem and are installing pads and attenuators. I wasn’t told of any mods to this build, except for the volume pot. My first thought was “maybe someone installed a bunch of padsâ€, but I don’t think so. I’m not exactly sure what to look for, but I don’t see any caps near the RCA inputs.
Anything I should be checking? I want to install the Speedball, and I hear this will add some dBs, but I want to make sure it’s working properly as is first.
I can take pics as needed.