Further update: My T-amp has clocked approximately 20 hours at 22.00 on Sunday, still a long way to go before it is fully run-in though. It now sings much better and sounds more beautiful than yesterday and by right I should let it alone to continue to sing. However, the curiosity to tweak got the better of me and armed with my soldering iron, I removed the 4 capacitors on board. I replaced the input caps with a pair of Vishay 2.2uF 63V polypropylene capacitors and as for PSU caps, with a pair of Panasonic FM series 1000uF 16V electrolytics.

How did the changes in caps affect the sound of my T-amp? I will come back to this shortly after describing the pair of bookshelf speakers I have paired with my T-amp. Q-Acoustics 1010, to me, have almost perfect highs and midrange which are seamlessly integrated and at its selling price, second to none. Their setback though, is they do not have ‘any’ bass to speak of and they do not throw a big soundstage like many other loudspeakers. Being a midrange guy, I could easily accept their shortcomings and live with them.

I had initially placed the pair of loudspeakers sitting directly on the wooden flooring in my bedroom. After a couple of hours of listening to music through them on Saturday afternoon, my ears could no longer tolerate the hardness and ‘overpowering’ bass I was getting from them. I had also mentioned with normal recordings, bass definition of T-amp is a little vague.

After the capacitors change, I only hear subtle differences and not those between day and night. First, the hardness and ‘overpowering’ bass I was hearing through the stocked caps are now gone. Bass is now softer with bass lines more well defined (less of the mini-compo effect in bass I thought I was hearing at times earlier). I thought this is how my Q-Acoustics 1010 should actually sound.

I also thought the highs now sounded more refined and slightly airier and midrange especially in vocals sounded slightly less forceful than before. Is it better? Hmmm, ……
Gabanyayaya, welcome to TAFC