Shakeydeal

Good on ya for moving the tv out of the room. You’ll definitely notice an improvement on that for sure.

Granted my experience with a laptop was many years ago. At the time I thought it sounded pretty good. But as usual, better is the enemy of the good. I think sometimes in this hobby people expect improvements to be on the same scale as tuning a boosted car. You'll certainly notice 150 more hp at the wheel. Whereas with audio upgrades, differences are more subtle. So it comes down to whether or not you want to spend an extra 5K to get that next 5 or 10% improvement. Now in your case it's somewhat the reverse. You have a 5K laptop and find it hard to imagine something much cheaper could even be even as good, much less better. Only you can say if this could be the case or not. I just know my Lumin sounds better than any laptop I've experienced.

This.......

Because a raspberry pi has one job and only one job to do. Stream your music. No background processes or other programs running. It also has a better output stage with less jitter and noise. It’s not going to be a huge leap going from one to the other but it will be noticeable. Things get better when you move up the streamer chain.

Oh, ok. AK6 might work. I was thinking earlier versions.

Not with khorns. You will be locked into one position, for better or worse.

Kind of a narrow room for khorns. You will be sitting way off axis with the speakers crossing well in front of the listening position. Just my opinon.

Use a laptop into a DAC if sound quality is only marginally important. Use the DAC in a laptop if you really don't like music at all and just want some noise in the background. Choices, choices......

Streamers are so cheap these days so there's no reason not to use one and stream lossless content like Tidal or Qobuz.

That’s a shame because there are very few speakers that will be optimal with such amps. Notice I didn’t say “work with”. Because there are many that will sound good, but those aren’t an ideal pairing and won’t give you the best performance of amp or speaker. So what Steve thinks is acceptable levels of hum limits the use of his amps with speakers that would make them sound the best.

Will it work? Yes. Is it ideal? No. When you can buy a good streamer for a thousand dollars or less, it makes no sense. I streamed from my laptop years ago and the first one I bought (a raspberry pi) was a huge improvement. I now have a Lumin, but there are several less expensive choices. Just my two cents.

No, but I sure hope he’s ok.

Congrats on the new speakers!

You should email the scammer and tell him you’ll be there within the hour with cash in hand.

Maybe you should post this in the home theater forum. After all, this one is called “2 channel home audio”.

revealing system won't sound great on a shitty source. It will sound shitty. So true.

Don’t blame the tube amps. There are other things afoot…

Ditch the Mac and put some tubes in front of the cornwalls. Thank me later.....

That's a good suggestion. Also, you could take it to a friend's system. Even if they don't have high sens. speakers, if the amp has a hum, it'll still be present, just much lower in volume.

What is everyone saying in Steve's forum? If this is commonplace it surely is being discussed.

Maybe I missed it, but you have tried other amps in your system that do not hum? At all?

The problem is that if you have any level of inherent noise in your system, most tube amps will bring it to the surface with horns. Especially if you have excessive gain in your preamp. I used to think some level of noise in tube amps (especially in SET amps) was normal, especially with high efficiency speakers. After owning three Aric Audio amps, I have a different opinion. All of them are as dead quiet as 3 am. I mean "put your ear next to the speaker and think the amp is off" quiet. If Aric Kimball can make excellent sounding amplifiers with such a low noise floor, why can't others?

Yeah I wanted to get on the list for a new Torii a couple of years ago. Glad I didn't. My custom Aric Audio 300B amp only took five weeks from commission to receipt. And as good as Steve's work is, I think I made the right decision.

I had a Decware Torii II on a pair of klipschorns a few years ago. While it was not as quiet as my Aric amps, it was nothing like you describe. I think you have a system issue and not an amp issue.