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Bravo V2 Headphone Amplifier

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Bravo V2 Headphone Amplifier

Name: Bravo V2 Headphone Amplifier
Brand: Bravo
SKU: bravo-v2-headphone-amp
Price: 36 USD
Availability: OutOfStock
Rating: 4.15942 (69 reviews)

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Frequently bought together:

Massdrop x Sennheiser HD 6XX Headphones

Drop + HIFIMAN HE-X4 Planar Magnetic Headphones

Product Description

Producers of some of the most affordable tube amps around, Bravo Audio packs an absurd amount of power into their products for the price tags. One of their most popular models, the Bravo V2 Headphone Amplifier, features open air design and a high-quality tube, making for exquisite sound Read More

Customer Reviews

4.2

(69 reviews)

(34)

(21)

(7)

(5)

(2)

90% would recommend to a friend

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tomjack

May 16, 2018

Verified Buyer

Sounds Great ! Noiseles and clean. Lots of Extra clean gain. Very nice. Thank U

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AnnoyingSpore

Jul 24, 2018

Verified Buyer

Sounds a lot better, liver, and warmer than plugging straight into my phones headphone jack. Especially with great closed back headphones. full frequency response is good.

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CheckData1

Feb 17, 2021

I just got the Denon AH-D1200 too . Lots if potential, weird sound signature, a darker hp but I feel this weird pressure/pain in my ears. What do you think of it.

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jimhatesyou

Apr 3, 2021

my channel imbalance started today. hasn't existed for the past few weeks i've had this. very unfortunate. not sure how to fix this.

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Shenksy

Mar 15, 2021

Verified Buyer

Missing the upgraded tube - Made Right by Drop Support

Note the lack of a Gold Lion tube

Update: Drop has since provided a customer support credit and the option to return for a full refund. The initial experience was frustrating, but it appears that Drop was misled/lied-to by its supplier for this drop. Apparently the "Bravo" marked tube is actually a psvane ECC82 tube, which is still a slight upgrade over the default shuguang tube.

(Edited)

Recommends this product? Yes

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Autogenerated

Feb 9, 2021

Verified Buyer

Looks cool, sounds pretty good

The ascetic and sound quality seem worth the price, in my unsophisticated opinion

Recommends this product? Yes

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plactoid

Mar 20, 2021

Verified Buyer

Drop is quickly putting themselves out of business

I would like to preface this post with something that absolutely needs to be acknowledged before a review. I am no longer a "Drop" fan. Full preface: Initially, Massdrop would be a place I would go to to learn about new equipment, or get fairly decent deals on products, especially if I didn't mind the long fulfillment times. I loved the fact that Massdrop did what marketing was supposed to do: lead customers to products that they would like, that are of decent quality, that the customer would normally either not be able to find, would be niche, or would be previously unknown. It established a community of similarly interested customers to foster a core market base. it consistently delivered on claims and promises, and worked hard to do good by the community that supported it. All valid and helpful to the consumer. This has changed, and this drop is an exemplar of this change. On the day of delivery, I received a message from "Drop" - quoted below: "Shipped run. Prior to launching this run, the vendor confirmed that the tubes used in this amplifier are Gold Lion tubes. After following up, the vendor has stated these are SVANE ECC82, instead of the Gold Lion tubes that were advertised." Understandable on drops part, way to acknowledge the missing tube. The only reason I finally pulled the trigger on buying this particular amp was the fact that it shipped with the famed Golden Lion tube. I still wanted this amp... but I also wanted the tube. ...at least I have the amp, right? To quote further.... "As a token of thanks for supporting this run, we’ve added a $10 credit to your Drop account. It will remain active for a year and will automatically apply at checkout for the next run you join." ...while graciously accepting returns. At this point, I feel the need to state a few facts.

the bravo v2 amp is for sale on amazon right now with the tube it actually shipped with, for 60$.
The famed tube it was supposed to be shipped with is available on amazon right now for about 48$
The total price I paid for this drop was 60$, including shipping, but not tax.
Potentially having to take time out of my job to figure out how to return this merchandise (business days) would cost me both time and money, and I hate having to return things for this reason, and will only do so if it is worth my time... basically anything 3 digits or over.

In my mind, as a consumer, it would be fair, then, to issue an exclusive drop of that tube to those who bought the advertised items for the price of the store credit issued. Or to make available the amount of credit to the consumer that would suitably recompense the false advertisement continually issued by the company, as they asked you to submit pictures of the false advertisement consistently restated by the seller. Since I feel that this contention is in requirement of a legal justification, Some more facts:

Consumers were sent an email with the falsely advertised consumer products asking for pictures or review for in store credit, as is the case with other purchases made with this seller, after the rectification email was sent out
the issued store credit would not, could not, conceivably cover the cost it would require to rectify their falsely advertised product which they are asking for photographic evidence of
Since they do not sell the falsely claimed, and non-inconsequential price of, the part they advertised, as it makes a substantial percentage of the price of the initial product in the first place, it would be impossible for the consumer to have any recourse in the rectification of this advertisement claim via Drop
This drop has not been re-named in open acknowledgement of this issue to the community as a whole, and is still listed as the falsely advertised claim of shipping with specific merchandise.
and finally, as these criteria would likely meet the legal requirements of "Bait and switch" advertisement practices...

"The plaintiff must show that the defendant made false or misleading statements about a service or product;
-obvious fact, even if unknown at the time of shipping...(something Drop could use on their vendor)
That the defendant engaged in actual deception or at least intended to deceive the majority of targeted consumers;
more debatable, but the paltry sum of store credit only would legally constitute knowledge of misdeeds, but not exemplify full corrective measures, as there is no actual corrective measure able to be taken by the consumer to fulfill this claim
The deception itself is substantial enough that it is more than likely that it will influence a consumer to purchase the service or product;
as stated in this post previously, would not have bought except for the tube sold with it...
The advertised service or product being offered are items that are sold in interstate commerce; and
...on amazon...
A probability that the defendant’s conduct will likely result in harm to the plaintiff.
Financial harm in footing the bill to get the tube advertised, or the emotional/logistical hassle of figuring out returns to a corporation (including potential time expended to place said return), which usually engage in lengthy and intricate procedures on consumers to deal with the return of said merchandise, and being out of said money for yet even more time, after 2 weeks of waiting for order fulfillment.

This may sound like a legal case, but it isn't, and drop is betting on that. the amount of issue I have here is only coupled with the little alternative I have in its course correction, which is to no longer shop here, and to suggest to others to do the same. As many reviewers noticed, and have stated, Drop no longer offers any real discount of any kind anymore, only longer fulfillment times and more logistical frailty. They even went over to Amazon for their EDC, which I can only believe is because they simply want the money as middlemen. While some of their in-house collabs are interesting, they can't seem to keep up with competition, as most of their products can be represented on amazon or other retailers with little issue. I was willing to give them one final try, and this happened, and they responded abysmally. if they rectify this appropriately, I'd be more than happy to eat my crow and edit this review, but I don't see this happening, and see this post potentially getting deleted. That being said, buying here was always some kind of gamble. I bought an xduoo 2 tiny mp3 player here, and it blew itself up after 2 months. I bought a pair of Bluetooth earbuds, and they came with 1 of the 4 drivers blown (Don't worry, they aren't the ADV Jr's). I never blamed Drop for any of that though, as this was usually the product, and not them. This time, it wasn't on them totally, but their response has genuinely pissed me off, and it takes usually fairly good amounts of injustice to do so. /preface Bravo v2 with stock tube: The only other tube headphone amp I have is a s.m.s.l. sp100, so there isn't much I can say, except that this little amp does sound good, even with my h400i's (that sp100 couldn't really drive these properly). And yes, I know that you really shouldn't mix tube amps and planars, but I do it anyway to really test how good the amp is. I genuinely thought people were walking into my room on occasion, as the spatial sensitivities on this were so good. For 60$ I can see why this is such a highly regarded entry level tube headphone amp. The soundstage was good and responsive of the cans, the range and space of the instruments was clear, or at least sounded so, on most my cans, and I actually like the look of bare PCB. I will say that the heatsinks are there for a reason, do not touch them while the amp is on. It pairs well with the ifi ZenDac, and sounds really good right from source, though I don't know that I'd suggest it. If you are thinking about this amp, and you don't have a tube amp, definitely pull the trigger... ...on Amazon.

Recommends this product? Yes

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The_Hipster_Cow

Mar 17, 2021

Verified Buyer

Missing the Gold Lion Tubes

It is a cute looking tube amp, but the primary reason why I purchased it was because it came with the gold Lion tubes (as they are 50$ tubes so it felt like I was just getting an amp for $10), however my product was missing them. I have heard this is a common problem people have been having.

Recommends this product? No

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Siamak

May 22, 2018

Verified Buyer

Not a great sound quality. Build quality is average and doesn't look like a pro amp. However for the price that i paid it is reasonable

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sleepybear83

Jun 23, 2018

Verified Buyer

Great tube sound. Warms up mid range as vocals and guitars tend to sing really well. Running a USB DAC from the computer into the amp and playing Spotify or Tidal Master tracks through. Some of my more sensitive headphones don't need to be pushed with this amp otherwise there can be some distortion/noise. The power hungry headphones (like the newly received HD6xx) work pretty well.

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tzfx

Jun 24, 2021

Verified Buyer

Great desk amplifier for the price with a few caveats

This amplifier is my first, so I can't really speak in comparison to others, but it works! So that's great. I can see myself upgrading the stock tube in the near future. The price-point seems very good. Good stuff:

Definitely brings my Sennheiser HD595s to life in ways that I couldn't imagine. I think it would be even better with some higher impedance headphones.
Volume dial and inputs/outputs are easy to access.
Because of the open design, making DIY upgrades to the internal components appears to be very straightforward.

There are a few issues:

The amplifier gets crazy hot. Not that you should be actively touching it, but it does give me some reliability/longevity concerns.
Random buzzing - For whatever reason, every now and then I get random buzzing through the amp in one channel or the other. Re-seating the tube, organizing all of the cables so they don't interfere with each other, and going from a 3.5mm jack to using separate RCA plugs for input seems to have helped.
The LEDs are so bright. The pictures did not quite do them justice. There's no reason at all for there to be one LED, much less two super bright ones (red, right infront of the large capacitor, and blue under the tube). Next step will be trying to short/remove these.

Recommends this product? Yes

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