VOGONS


First post, by ratfink

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I was recently reminded of motherboards that used vaccuum tubes as amplifiers. AOpen made a few such as "tube" variants of AX4PE, AXGE, AX4 533.

Anybody have experience of these? Here's one on ebay atm:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewIt … e=STRK:MEWAX:IT

Reply 4 of 7, by 386DX40

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An audiophile friend of mine built a system around one of these boards back in the day. The ALC650 just wasn't a good enough codec to be used with something like this, and the output quality was still mediocre. Looks great though! 😁

Reply 6 of 7, by swaaye

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Hey I remember when these debuted. 😁 Certainly seemed like a goofy idea. I'm pretty sure you would get better sound out of just about any decent sound card. Having audio circuitry on the mobo never seems to go well for signal quality.... I'm not even sure I'd blame ALC650.