At €526.34/pr incl. shipping from Germany to Ireland, the Czech-made EML 2A3 meshies are quite dear though nothing like the $2'000/pr Japanese Takatsuki 300B. They're based on the original RCA mono-plate specs and sport 4 mesh windows inside their hard plates (not punched holes but woven wire which is said to be mechanically less resonant hence better damped than solid plates). The two getters are oversized and like all EML, the grid wire is gold-plated. The glue between hand-blown bottle and base is a special rubber compound and the maker claims special efforts were made to minimize microphonics. These valves are mechanically robust with thick heavy glass; far more substantial than the thin-glass lighter Western Electric 300B I owned way back when. If registered with EML online within 4 weeks of receipt, they guarantee their tubes for 18 months. For special failures like gas, a bad getter/vacuum or a loose base, they warranty 5 years. Again, in the Lio where these DHT see an amp's fixed high input impedance, not a speaker's variable low impedance, one should anticipate an unusually long life to compensate a bit for the cost of upscale bottles. With four other Czech options from just KR Audio—300B, 2A3, PX4 and PX25—plus EAT's 300B plus EML's solid-plate 2A3, 300B and 45 in solid-plate and mesh flavours, the Czech Republic alone could keep one very busy; and seriously cash-strapped.

Senior contributors Marja & Henk refer to their tube collection as the resident aural spice rack. It hits the nail on the head. By swapping just one pair of tubes in a single-ended deck, one may suit a mood without tripping the buy/sell routine of component changes. Unless one rolled opamps—some gear allows for this—transistors don't really roll. That's part of the tubular appeal. Assembling a valve spice rack obviously makes most sense if one's options span a reasonable gamut. Instead of narrow variations on chocolate, one might like to have strawberry and vanilla on hand. By sticking to another 2A3 with my first experiment, I didn't know how much of a change to expect. Would I stay in the cocoa zone? Remember that question. It'll get answered at the very end.

As to visual romance, neither the EH or EML 2A3 have it. To see the orange ribbons in the Czech requires a good close-up in the right lighting. In the photo above, the bottles are live but you wouldn't know it from any normal distance. No glow. These aren't thoriated tungsten bulbs that double as lamps. For my tube swap sessions, I used the Mark & Daniel Maximus Monitor MkII augmented below 35Hz by our monaural Zu Submission subwoofer. PureMusic set to power of-two upsampling on the iMac fed the Lio USB DAC with its volume control bypassed (fully open). This fed an Esoteric C-03 transistor preamp set to zero gain to act as an actively buffered passive. That made Lio a pure fixed-gain DHT converter à la LampizatOr. I'd experimented to find that with the Esoteric in the loop, I regained a bit more musical tension and speed. I suspect that the Esoteric's far lower output Ω was the reason.

Playing fair without taking away from the strong showing of the EH, the EML bottles were superior on a few points to kowtow to their deeper wallet grab. First and foremost was the treble. Be it right-handed piano passages where the Russians played it glassier or more tinkly; power vocals hitting more expansive high notes; or drum kit exploits where the Czechs had greater finesse and illumination for spiderwebby decays on cymbals, rain trees, singing bowls and triangles... the mesh plates were more suave, teased out and developed on top. They painted with a finer brush at higher magnification. Whilst on these counts neither tube competed with my transistor equivalents nor did they on bass impact and grip—a single "Loop" on the Gurtu_Miles ambient quasi drum'n'bass album settled that conclusively—the Emission Labs did exert somewhat better control over LF transients. The electroharmonix were a bit duller and less punchy. Finally, spatial organization aka soundstage mapping was more explicit with Jac's bigger bottles. Audiophile terms that cover this terrain are image specificity and contrast. These items move more into the foreground or become more relevant as music grows convoluted and complex. There's less cat-litter clumping. Things remain more separated out and individualistic. If I were allowed just one adjective to distinguish one tube from the other, I'd call the EH coarser. By inference, that'd make the EML the more sophisticated. However, these two sat closer than expected. Having bought the EML, I'll stick to them but I'd not feel disenfranchised if I returned to the electroharmonix. Vinnie's choice of stock tube is very solid.

I concur with Thomas. On my end too, the insertion of Lio's DHT reduced speed, resolution and slam. Those were the exact qualities Esoteric's transistor preamp or COS Engineering's one-box D1 DAC/preamp emphasized and injected. The DHT aroma instead championed soundstage scale, billowiness and texturing. It created stuff between the notes which I call connective tissue. It was denser and far wetter. In trade it was clearly less transparent. Music's sense of charge, tension and propulsion mellowed. Then there was a tacit perspective which radiated out from the midrange by way of central emphasis. Swapping in the transistor DAC/preamp shifted it very noticeably to a vocal band that was bracketed by the bass and treble. The extremes pointed at the centre, not the other way around. There's no doubt in my mind that this DHT action is a very powerful and specific colouration. It exerted itself no matter the ancillaries. Rather than call it triode magic which suggests a populist 'something for nothing' expectation, I'd just call it the triode aroma. By moving towards and emphasizing certain values, it must, by definition, move away from and deemphasize others. Whilst I've heard some truly brilliant systems of mostly very expensive SET with very specialized speakers, I've heard and experimented with far more where the so-called magic in the valve amp was rather less in quality and quantity than the same aroma in this preamp. That's because then it was accompanied by bandwidth, drive, control, resolution and noise limitations which, to my ears, had nothing to do with magic.


Stumbling upon a perfectly matched low-power direct-heated triode amp and speaker is certainly possible if one has the time, aptitude and money to stay the course; or is lucky to hit upon a winning combo right off. Mostly, it can be more miss than hit. Contrast that with relocating the aroma's creator up one stage - from amp into preamp (or DAC or DAC/preamp). Finding a transistor amp that does a proper job on regular not special speakers is far easier. Preceding that with a Lio DHT is perfectly predictable in how it will affect, influence, steer and change the sound. Of course if despite the promissory note in the 'triode magic' envelope, that's not the flavour you want - don't pursue it. Not everyone likes Chanel N°5. If you do want this aroma, I've not come across anything that guarantees it at this potency and predictability. Here my above tube rolling exercise remained squarely in the chocolate zone. For me, moving over to solid-state represented a far greater change of gestalt. Vanilla? Strawberry? Take your pick. Whether different tube types would rewrite that assessment remains for others to report on...

Vinnie Rossi website