Rockville BluTube WD 70W Tube Amplifier/Home Stereo Receiver, Bluetooth, HDMI, Optical, for Audiophiles and Home Theater Enthusiasts

Not my first of this kind of device. I'm amazed by the size, and general design. Its one of the better looking vacuum tube amps I've used. I like all the controls, it feels amazing. Only time will tell if its built to last, but frankly best feeling device of this style I've owned. And I have some 60-70 year old stereo equipment that is pretty excellent.The sound is clean and solid.But the ambient hum on this unit is Particularly loud in my opinion.I have a 60 plus year old unit that has a more enjoyable hum to it, more of a low thrum. If you plan on using this to listen to quiet music you will certainly grow annoyed with the hum its just too upper mid in its sound.The VU meter on mine is not working the way you'd expect, I run this primarily on optical audio. Optical and Blu tooth are what I got it for... if its supposed to work with those what you need to do is MAX the output of the device sending signal to this and turn to volume on this amp WAY DOWN.The more I putz with it the more I like it. It has the output of a much larger vacuum amp... I guess if I was to complain about features, I'd have liked this to be capable of driving a center channel without any wire fu... but for a 2.1 it is glorious. Running it on a 2 left 2 right setup as I right this driving some vintage 50 year old pioneers and Sony throw back units from 20 ears ago. The hum will not endear it to you, at least the hum of my unit... if you want to listen to music below middle volume, its overpowering. Unless you place the unit far removed from where you'll be listening to the music, and with a unit like this you want to be near it. The hum should add to the ambiance not detract. If you plan to be more than 6 ft from the unit when listening it sounds MUCH better, the tone lowers as the higher frequency sound from it is washed out. If you want to use this with a PC stereo system... its gonna be less than optimal.I like to blend white noise, so maybe I'll find this meshes well with running water, etc. I will have it in a room with at a few aquariums.Testing it on salsa, 80's rock, metal, country, classical, 90's pop.This is not the final placement for my unit. Just how I have my PC setup currently, building a bigger work bench it will reside on and will be about 1-2 ft further from my head and likely improve my enthusiasm for it. A darn perfect and pure offering. How rare is it to see something without too much feature creep these days? Very essentially what it is.EDIT:After messing with this thing for last couple weeks I found leaving it on (not playing anything, just on with no input) brought down the tone of the hum from the tubes, making it much more enjoyable. If I turn it off and then back on a day later it is a higher pitched hum again. It is actually a very pleasant ambient thrum IMHO, and now is easily masked by low volume classical music.Given how much I like this in all other regards discerning this in a way to manage the amp has been great.I'd say I'm now 110% satisfied as I can absolutely get the experience I desired, and far exceed my expectations for the price tag.If you want a 2.1 vacuum tube amp that is modern in all the ways that matter and classic in all the ways that matter look no further. Particularly for the sticker price. Just need to see how these tubes hold up over time. I'm running OG tubes on my Magnavox amp that are 20 years older than me.EDIT:I've found that if you don't mind leaving this thing on the sound of the vacum tubes deminishes to nothing. I leave it on non stop, I've not done a kilawat draw evaluation. I may and return to update this.But as it stands, unless this thing dies prematurely (and this is being measured against some 60 year old tube amps still going strong... ) Its kind of a no brainer recommendation, everyone should have one.

I was really impressed with the sound. I ordered two other amplifiers from different companies and when you turn them up loud they got distorted. This one does not. You can turn it all the way up and it still sounds really good and clear. You can even parallel wire speakers together and have four of them and the commercial. When they say that the amplifier doesn't hard clip, they're telling the truth it doesn't. I turned the full blast for about 10 minutes and it sounded really good and clear for $180. I'm really impressed. I ordered another tube amp for $400 and it was a class a b amplifier and the volume was Spike out of nowhere for no reason and then I ordered another amplifier. There was AB amplifiers and I spent $240 on it and the volume would get distorted when you turned it up. Not this one. This one's a class d amplifier and it does not get distorted and the volumes up really good and clear and the treble blows my mind just how loud that treble can make it and the base is really good too. I got my hook TV hooked up to the optical Cable and it works great through the sound. The Bluetooth was great. Now my dislikes is. I wish that it was made out of better material. It's definitely made with the cheapest material I believe on the market. It's a plastic. It's up some kind of cheap aluminum or metal on the top of the tubes are and then that little box on top with the air. Ventilates is just cheap plastic too. It's basically 50% plastic and 50% metal or aluminum, but as it the blue shining through the tubes, it shines bright. I will give it that it shines very bright and the blue shines bright through the front of it. I don't really care about that but my wife loves it so I definitely highly recommend it but I'm going to be up front. I've only had it for about 48 hours and I'll give another update after about 30 days. But thus far, yeah it sounds better with most amplifiers sound to $500. I promise you that so far it's not the loudest in the world at eight ohms it's only 25 watts and at 4 ohms is 35 Watts and I'm going to say it's every bit of it. I don't think they're exaggerating