Quick Summary
Headphone brand Écoute has launched a pair of headphones with a vacuum tube and amplification built-in.
The headphones are £652 / $799 / AU$1,303.
When it comes to listening on the best headphones, many hi-fi fans swear by the power of tubes. Amplifiers that use vacuum tubes instead of – or alongside – solid-state electronics are marketed on the basis of their warmer, more inviting sound.
Now Écoute has come up with a very unusual way to include tube amplification in your audio experience – it's stuck a Korg Nutube 6P1 tube in a pair of luxury headphones.
The Nutube has been around for a few years now, and it's used in some headphone amps thanks to its small size and low power consumption. But to the best of my knowledge this is the first time it's been put inside a pair of headphones rather than just connected to them.
According to Écoute, "the wide soundstage and realistic rendition of vocals and instruments sounds less like your music is being reproduced on a piece of audio equipment and more like it is being performed in front of you."
Écoute vacuum tube headphones: key specs and pricing
The tube may be retro tech but the rest of the specification is very modern. There's active hybrid noise cancellation with transparency mode, Siri and Google Assistant compatibility, high-bias Class A/B dual mono amplification and built-in DACs.
In addition to the 3.5mm jack for analogue listening there's also USB-C with support for up to 32-bit/384kHz hi-res audio, and there's also Bluetooth 5.3 with LDAC support.
Battery life is a claimed 20 hours at maximum volume, and standby is 30 hours. A full charge takes 3.5 hours.
If you're familiar with tube amps you'll want to know the expected lifespan of that integrated vacuum tube. According to Écoute the expected service life is over 30,000 hours and the likelihood of it burning out and requiring replacement "is highly unlikely to the point of no".
The headphones have sold out their current batch but more are on their way, with shipping expected to resume in February 2025. The headphones are £652 / $799 / AU$1,303.
