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Cheap Chinese hifi kit

JezmondTutu

pfm Member
Thanks to Raysablade of this parish, I took my first foray into the world of dirt cheap Chinese hifi via a Little Bear MC2 passive preamp.

I needed something that would allow me to switch sources whilst temporarily using my Epos ES14’s due to my other speakers needing a repair.

I have to say, I’ve been mightily impressed with it. I realise passive pre’s aren’t complex things. But even so, for just over £30, it’s amazing and if anything, my system seems to have benefited from running a passive preamp.

I was aware of Nobsound as a friend runs the little bluetooth amp in his kitchen.

Just wondering what others experience of cheap Chinese brands has been like? I realise build quality or possibly reliability isn’t going to be the best, although having said that, my little box seems well made enough.
 
I bought a £20 Nobsound. Not the last word in refinement but fine to power a couple of speakers in my bedroom for a while. My son now uses it with his PC and he enjoys it.
 
I've had a couple of bits of Nobsound/Little Bear kit - a valve headphone amp and a valve phono stage - plus a valve buffer stage thing from another manufacturer. All work but are quite noisy, with the phono stage being particularly bad. None of them remained in use for long.
 
I was not impressed with the passive pre referred to above. Found it degraded SQ and returned it without a problem. Subsequently bought a Dale resistor-based stepped attenuator from Ali Express. It's very good.
 
I was not impressed with the passive pre referred to above. Found it degraded SQ and returned it without a problem. Subsequently bought a Dale resistor-based stepped attenuator from Ali Express. It's very good.


Interesting - maybe that it’s a later one or just different in different systems.
 
I think some of these companies have moved on vastly in the last couple of years. especially with amplifier designs, good dacs they have been making for longer.
 
I love my B&W 702s2 speakers but on occasions the treble can be slightly harsh/hard and was spoiling things for me.I tried various rather expensive interconnects to calm it but without success.
Out of sheer curiosity I fitted a Nobsound buffer 6J2 with upgraded tubes (£65 total) between my Mytek Brooklyn Dac and my Tag PA20R preamp.My amps are Tag.250x2R monoblocks.
I have been astounded at the gorgeous warm,mellow sound quality I now achieve.I cannot get over how a piece of “Chinese rubbish” can make my system sound so well but it has just worked so perfectly with my equipment.A minority of owners have said that it reduces detail /collapses soundstage/too noisy etc.but not with my very detailed equipment. I have found it to be an absolute life saver.I bought a 2nd one as a back up.
 
Glad you’ve had a good experience too Brian!

For reference, mine is used to feed in from my Brinkmann Fein and Weiss DAC202 into an Avondale ZAP250. I need two input sources though so mine fits the bill perfectly. Huge soundstage from my Epos’s, no downsides.
 
I love my Little Dot mkIII tube headphone amp, although maybe not the ‘cheap’ option anymore. Build quality and sound (to these cloth ears) are good.
 
I have one of the Chinese ‘EAR 834’ phono preamps. Very well built but with a high level of hum that made it unusable. That was fixed by Jez - @Arkless Electronics - by moving the power supply to a separate box, and he also corrected a potentially lethal earthing issue. So overall a bit of a mixed experience, but now it’s fixed it sounds excellent.
 
I have one of the Chinese ‘EAR 834’ phono preamps. Very well built but with a high level of hum that made it unusable. That was fixed by Jez - @Arkless Electronics - by moving the power supply to a separate box, and he also corrected a potentially lethal earthing issue. So overall a bit of a mixed experience, but now it’s fixed it sounds excellent.

I've got the same one only mine has never hummed, even through my efficient big Tannoys. I did have to fix the same dangerous earthing issue though!

I've tweaked mine up with a stepped attenuator and better caps and diodes and valves. It sounds very decent.
 
I've got the same one only mine has never hummed, even through my efficient big Tannoys. I did have to fix the same dangerous earthing issue though!

I've tweaked mine up with a stepped attenuator and better caps and diodes and valves. It sounds very decent.

Thanks. I know Jez changed some of the components and I’ve changed the valves.
 
Strangely enough I have been looking at one of these to put between my dac and amp, my better half keeps going on about bluetooth. https://www.aliexpress.com/item/400...earchweb0_0,searchweb201602_,searchweb201603_
Which has of course led to me looking at interconnects, the usb cables and then power cables. :( Some of the stuff gets very good reviews, I tend to look for pure copper cables nowadays and for anyone interested this supplier seems to have good quality cables. https://yytcg.aliexpress.com/store/4049028?spm=a2g0o.detail.100005.1.5a3b14bfURHr5t
 
Different product (not sure its hifi tbh) but I am running an SMSL Q5 (pro?) chinese digital amp for my ceiling speakers in my kitchen which are monitor audio something or others.

For the money the features it has are brilliant. I wanted something with a little EQ on it because hey ... ceiling speakers ... they needed some EQ no matter how much I played with the cavity behind them. Originally I tried driving them with a Cyrus 3 and then a yamaha amp I had, at least one of those I would normally love to listen to, but both were way too flat for the acoustics going on there. It actually now sounds really quite impressive and listenable for a ceiling setup, plenty of depth and a nice clarity and neutrality to it that people notice & which would easily make you think it cost substantially more.

Problems I had were the DAC (or rather straight through DSP of some form in front of the PWM stage? I havent looked at the board to see how its set up) is super picky. You have to give it a gen1 airport express, G only (and so wire it in for faster networking). The N and higher have wonky clocks and it mutes them now and then as it re-aquires lock. I sent the SMSL back and the second sample was the same, the motto is never bin an airport express, especially a gen 1, and there are ways to fix them !

What else is great is it uses no power and its super tiny. Oh and it has a remote! Which I forwarded the IR for using a 433Mhz usb dongly thing so it can live upstairs and you can control it from the kitchen.

I think this is the sort of thing that I should gift the children (ahead of just giving them my old cyrus kit) if they need a stereo at university, in contrast to the boot load of Rotel kit I used to cart to and from home when I was younger. This thing could support a reasonable set of speakers and is smaller than your average paperback.

Oh and for bluetooth I added a BT receiver with digital out into the SMSL as the Q5 doesn't have this built in. But really BT is for android users, and we weren't using it vs. iOS streaming so its not there any more its doing something else somewhere in the house - think my son has it he has an android phone.
 


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