savoy014

Photo Essay Beautiful and classic workmanship. 18 watts of single ended power. Tube complement - 6SL7, 6SN7, 6C33C. 8 Ohm and 4 Ohm speaker taps, 3 inputs and an IEC inlet with user accessible fuse holder. Russian 6C33C double triode. From Soviet era missile and Mig Foxbat service to consumer audio. How the world has changed ! Volume control.  Carved logo on the front panel. Input selector. There are 3 inputs. The first indent is mute. RCA 6SN7 GTB and Sylvania JAN VT-229 tubes Power transformer is inside the chassis. The exposed center "transformer" in the first photo is in fact a power supply choke. Russian K42-Y2 coupling caps. A surprise, quite uncommon in commercial gear. Mini-Review The Almarro A-318B is quite an unusual beast. Single-ended triode and assembled by hand in Japan, the A-318B is affordable, beautiful and powerful - typically these words are not seen together in the same sentence. Being an integrated amplifier, you save quite a bit of useful money. Total up

Talk about quick shipping ! My order with Audio-Gd has been pending for quite some time now as I wanted some customised inputs done (gave up the USB input to convert to another coaxial input). It was shipped out on Saturday afternoon and arrived in Singapore at my doorstep on Monday evening. The order process was hassle free and the unit was well packed and arrived in good shape. The DAC19 is based on two Burr Brown PCM1704UK DAC chips paired with Audio-Gd's proprietary DSP filter. Audio-Gd's principal, Mr. He Qinghua has made an announcement that he is discontinuing his products based on the PCM1704UK due to difficulties in obtaining supply of the chip. That was enough reason for me to take the plunge. You can refer to http://www.audio-gd.com/Pro/dac/DAC19/DAC19EN.htm  for full technical details. The DAC-19 in finished in a shoe-box sized case that is rather utilitarian. The case is decently finished and will not win any prizes for either fit or finish. Given its asking price