Antonio's 'back home' system

My Quad 57's have now been repaired, collected and are back in the system and sounding great. I did try them at first without the sub, but sounded bass light compared to the Tuolihao's that had replaced them in the system while they were away. Putting the sub back in really does bring the 57's to life and will be staying for the foreseeable future.

I recently noticed I had the wrong pre-amp valves in my Yaqin. optical recommended a pair of 12AT7's which would have been in his version, but Yaqin have made this amp auto biasing and have changed to 12AU7's. Luckily I have a few pairs of these I can try, at the moment a pair of Phillips 6189's are in place and it has definitely improved the sound, giving a smoother sound signature.

I have also purchased an EverSolo DMP-A6 streamer, yes the one that has been hyped on YT. It has been purchased to take with me when I go back to Cambodia, I still have my RFTLYS amp and a pair of JBL Control 1's over there and can use the in built dac in the EverSolo. I'll put it simply, the A6 is a great streamer, on par with my Lumin in sound quality. The dac was certainly bettered by my Soekris, no surprise there, but it is still well listenable. This left me with a spare XiangSheng dac which has now been sold, although with a heavy heart since I always enjoyed it.

@bigman80 Andrew at A Quad Thing repaired them, and what a nice gent he is. He had them set up at his home with a small valve pre and mono Quad 606's made up by his brother, sounded fantastic, even my brother was impressed.

I sold my Lumin U2 mini when returning to the uk after I read of some ones interest in buying a Lumin streamer.

As luck would have (or bad luck) I immediately saw a Eversolo A8 for sale from the same supplier I purchased my A6, this was a returned item on bids and I was the winner. 
It's a little larger than the A6 and quite a bit heavier, don't think I risk taking it with me when I go away again due to the weight.

I've been fairly busy since returning and have only recently inserted the A8 into my system and it is now happily streaming away and producing great sounds from the internal dac.
I will be comparing the internal dac with my Soekris, should be interesting, in due course.

Really interesting…

(Posted in another thread too but seemed appropriate for here also)


Have to agree, the A8 is excellent, the DAC section is very, very good.

Only thing that stopped me swapping 3 boxes for it was that I made the mistake of trying the aqvox with it via it's digital output.....

I'd love to have it just for the streaming aspect but couldn't quite justify the outlay using it with an additional outboard DAC.

A really nice product.

Hi Bruce,

Yes, in my system at least, the aqvox was slightly better than the internal AKM DAC, but that's a very high watermark set by the aqvox, plus the A8 was brand new and may have benefitted from some burning in, it was close though and if I didn't have the aqvox on hand I would have lived with it and been very happy.

I did try the preamp section, knowing I wouldn't be utilising it even if I'd kept the A8. It wasn't up to the standard of the rest of the machine in my opinion.


I maintain, as a complete package however, it was superb overall.


Actually, it would have replaced 4 boxes as I also wanted to replace the mutec and it's power supply, if possible. I had assumed it wouldn't be displacing the BT2 for preamp duties though (and I was right) but that would have gotten rid of 5 boxes for 1!!

In many systems I'm sure it could have done, comfortably.

Actually Dave, it is 'gotten', if like me, your dad is Canadian. We're not all little Englanders.....😉

As for the streamer and Pontus being replaced by the Eversolo, I could well understand that being the case.

Let em turn 🤣🤣

Well it didn't take me long to compare the A8 and Soekris dac's, there really wasn't much in it. Maybe the Soekris has slightly more body, changing the filters may have made a slight difference for those with discerning ears, but I'm happy to continue using the A8 on it's own as streamer and dac. For anyone interested the filter settings were:-

Eversolo = Low Dispersion Short Delay

Soekris 2541 = Minimum Phase Filter.

I can strongly recommend the A8 for anyone wanting to reduce their box count.

Thank you Dave. That says a lot for the quality of the A8.

stevew. The A8 a great all in one, also the A6 is really great vfm, especially like me wanting to use it as an all in one in a cheaper system. The streamer section is on par with those costing £2k, but the A8 moves you a rung or two up the ladder.

stevew   Might be worth trying to get one on loan, you could keep the Aqvox to see how the two dacs compare, if not 6 boxes then 5. Keeping things simple is good for me now, and of course I do have my brother's system to listen to as well, and he's lost one box, not counting going from monos to integrated.

I don't mind a few boxes as long as they behave themselves and there aren't too many cables to dress them properly. Back when I had a microRendu and a UA Ultracap, they were fiddly little boxes that would move if you breathed on them, sound wrong when you weighted them down, and begged for add-on doodads that made for a precarious chain that was going to break some chassis connector.

stevew I play Qobuz direct from the Eversolo app, from what I've read it is not Roon ready but will be shortly. I think the A6 is Roon ready.
One of the main reasons for buying the A6 in the first place was the internal storage, with the Lumin I had external SSD storage connected via usb which was ok, but this is tidier. I was reading a little about the Briscati M5, a streamer costing £2.5k and you have to have your music on a NAS or some such thing which would be a no no for me.
Oh, and while I remember, the Eversolo's connect to the internet with wifi, no ethernet copper/fibre cables, switches and whatever else you need to secure the best sound.