Fatman iTube 452: It's a series of tubes!
Tags: fatman, whopping, valve, integration
When you hear the word 'iTube', you're probably more likely to assume it's the name of a grossly self-obsessed version of YouTube. But you'd be wrong, as fans of Fatman -- the company, not the game -- would tell you. The iTube 452 is in fact Fatman's uber-stylish new valve amplifier and it comes with the ValveDock for seamless integration with iPods.
Valve amps claim to offer a warmer, more natural musical sound than that from today's common transistor-based amplifiers, and they're often favoured by audiophiles. With the iPod's arguably good sound quality and support for lossless audio formats, combining them with a valve amp makes a lot of sense.
This iteration of the Fatman iTube incorporates nine valves, 45W of power per channel and weighs a whopping 23kg. It also costs an equally humungous £1,499.
There are heaps of inputs around the back, so if you want to jack in that turntable, it won't be a problem. In fact, doing so will win you serious brownie points with the audiophile elitists, who would congratulate you for being so high-fiveably analogue.
We'll have a review for you as soon as Fatman gives us an iTube 452 to play with. You can check out some extra specifications on the product's Web site, or if you're looking for a much more affordable door to the valve world, take a look at the attractive Philips MCD908. Watch this space, transistor haters. -Nate Lanxon
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Christopher John BridgmanMon 21 April, 2008 7:04am
Yes, tube amplifiers rule here and in the US and Jdapan where my Audio Note gear is comissioned (although it's designed by one Peter Qvortrup who is based at Audio Note UK). If you're going alve then you need a decent record playing system, CD pllayer and loudspeakers. These new-fangled slim tower speaker units so beloved of surround sound and home cinema buffs are entirely unsuitable (what sort of tone do you get out of a thinline violin, cello or guitar?). You need 'fat' speakers that don't have standing wave distortion and these can be VERY expensive because they use a lot of prescious materians (like real wood - a premium prduct that now costs musical instrument makers a fortune because of the clean cutting of forests that does not regenerate the trees that suit musical instrument and loudspeaker manufacturers).
Tkube amps are expensive because they use high quality materials throughout that are often hand-built or at least made in short runs (oxygen free copper and silver for wiring, top quality close tolerance capacitors and resistors, transformers that may be hand-wound and dipped for a long time in something like yacht varnish just like they did in the good old days of the '30s, '40s and 50s etc) and of course the chasis for a valve amp is a big chunk of metal.
Incidentally, I don't see the Fatman mentioning whether it actually has a phono imput with RIAA converter for a turntable cartridgte. If you have to buy a separate one, it is going to cost you.
It's good to see an amplifier with an iPod dock though, the first valve one to have th8s I believe. What we need now, although I can't persuade any tube manufactiere to make one, is a box with an RIAA converter that plugs into your record player and has a USB connector on the other end to interface a turntable with a PC.