The Gearhead: Decware's Midas Touch

I chanced upon the Decware website more than half my lifetime ago, back when the internet ran on phone lines and featured slow speeds and weird annoying sounds as it fired up. I was hooked immediately on the alluring photos of Decware owner Steve Deckert's glowing tube amplifiers, stunning images which were set off by undulating mirror-reflections below them.

Once drawn in, I discovered a plethora of out-of-the-ordinary audio products, a vibrant discussion community and also a large section of the site devoted to DIY audio. And, I stumbled upon the articles and plenty of informative and often opinionated papers and posts on this hobby called hifi.

I had found my thing. Way back then, Steve’s products, approach and words convinced me that I too could make some audio devices and peripherals that would bring joy and satisfy my budding interests in the audiophile pursuit. In short order, I hacked together one of his subwoofer designs via the DIY plans on his website, and afterward took off on a search for knowledge that continues to this day.

And to this day, two things are still true for me about Decware audio products. First, as a testing technician at The Music Room who gets to hear and absorb the best that the audiophile industry has to offer, I know that Decware products are indeed truly special. And second, even today Steve and his vision remain unchanged and as enthusiastic as ever about trying to bring the finest sound reproduction in the industry down to an attainable price point for the average guy.

OK, Ok. Perhaps a $4,000 amplifier isn’t in the budget for every audiophile, I know. But given the nature of the sound quality of Steve’s amplifiers and the things that they do, which are the exact things that some of the most expensive amplifiers that money can buy, Decware products remain as remarkable for me as they’ve ever been.

Notice I said “some” of the most expensive amplifiers money can buy. In my position I can talk about the sonic characteristics of many ultra-fi, mega-buck products from all over the world. And it’s a fact that not all of them can cast a vivid 3-D soundstage like a Decware tube amplifier.

These days I’m lucky enough to own a Decware amplifier, my personal amp being a Mini Torii 3.9-watt single ended pentode beauty. But as satisfied and continually amazed as I am with that thing and its strengths and abilities, I still leap at the chance to test another Decware product any time I can in my job at The Music Room.

Which brings me to this stunner of a tube integrated you see above, a glorious full-fledged, full tubed Zen Torii Mk III integrated with the expensive V-Cap upgrade and some sweet NOS tubes on the front end. Speaking of NOS tubes, we have a small stash of tubes for various uses and we see some interesting ones added to the pile from time to time. I took the opportunity today to try a few different input tubes on this amp, and quickly settled on an NOS pair of Matsushita (International) 6DJ8 tubes to cement the liquid 3-D sonic landscape of this jaw-dropping torii Mk III. It sounded to me like the tubes originally included with the amp were on their last legs, and the Matsushitas were an easy winner among the options available.

To anyone out there beginning this hobby or trying to gain more understanding about how this stuff works, I advise you to head over to Steve’s world at www.decware.com and do some extended reading in the “articles” section.

To anyone who wants to experience the creation of a master, who wants to bathe in this 3-D sound field each day and hear deeply into the layers of well recorded music I can’t be more emphatic with my next suggestion. Without delay, click “add to cart” and snatch up this beauty before someone else does. This is the good stuff.