The thing about tube amps…

…is that they are oh so expensive, the Fatman iTube amp shown above, costs SGD$900! Ask any discerning audiophile why the analogue based sound produced using vacuum tubes is better than the sound produced by modern digital methods using chips and, believe me, you’re in for a long night

Constructed from brushed aluminium, and consisting of a high quality CD player, a AM/FM radio tuner and a dedicated iPod docking station and packed with a four tube powered amplifier the Shanling MC-30 iPod Music Center offers a Philips VAM-12 pick up mechanism with a CD-7II servo system, for ‘low jitter tracking’, and a Burr-Brown PCM1738 chip for pristine digital to analogue conversion.

The Shanling MC-30 iPod Music Center retails for USD$995, so it’s not cheap but, as far as aesthetics are concerned you have gotta absolutely love it.

Apart from its beautifully minimalist styling and the fact that the vacuum tube cover can be removed to display the six vacuum tubes within (a sealed unit would, we are sure you’d agree, be nothing less than a travesty) the MT-1 Integrated Tube Amplifier offers 12.5 Watts per channel, a frequency response of 10Hz~40KHz, a signal to noise ratio of 83db and, as you would expect, offers a veritable array of connectivity comprising of non-balance signal inputs for up to three external devices as well as three sets of speaker connections at 0Ω, 4Ω and 8 Ω.

The Xindak Electronics MT-1 Vacuum Tube Amplifier retails at around USD$635.