Not my first of this kind of device. I'm amazed by the size, and general design. Its one of the better looking vacuum tube amps I've used. I like all the controls, it feels amazing. Only time will tell if its built to last, but frankly best feeling device of this style I've owned. And I have some 60-70 year old stereo equipment that is pretty excellent.The sound is clean and solid.But the ambient hum on this unit is Particularly loud in my opinion.I have a 60 plus year old unit that has a more enjoyable hum to it, more of a low thrum. If you plan on using this to listen to quiet music you will certainly grow annoyed with the hum its just too upper mid in its sound.The VU meter on mine is not working the way you'd expect, I run this primarily on optical audio. Optical and Blu tooth are what I got it for... if its supposed to work with those what you need to do is MAX the output of the device sending signal to this and turn to volume on this amp WAY DOWN.The more I putz with it the more I like it. It has the output of a much larger vacuum amp... I guess if I was to complain about features, I'd have liked this to be capable of driving a center channel without any wire fu... but for a 2.1 it is glorious. Running it on a 2 left 2 right setup as I right this driving some vintage 50 year old pioneers and Sony throw back units from 20 ears ago. The hum will not endear it to you, at least the hum of my unit... if you want to listen to music below middle volume, its overpowering. Unless you place the unit far removed from where you'll be listening to the music, and with a unit like this you want to be near it. The hum should add to the ambiance not detract. If you plan to be more than 6 ft from the unit when listening it sounds MUCH better, the tone lowers as the higher frequency sound from it is washed out. If you want to use this with a PC stereo system... its gonna be less than optimal.I like to blend white noise, so maybe I'll find this meshes well with running water, etc. I will have it in a room with at a few aquariums.Testing it on salsa, 80's rock, metal, country, classical, 90's pop.This is not the final placement for my unit. Just how I have my PC setup currently, building a bigger work bench it will reside on and will be about 1-2 ft further from my head and likely improve my enthusiasm for it. A darn perfect and pure offering. How rare is it to see something without too much feature creep these days? Very essentially what it is.EDIT:After messing with this thing for last couple weeks I found leaving it on (not playing anything, just on with no input) brought down the tone of the hum from the tubes, making it much more enjoyable. If I turn it off and then back on a day later it is a higher pitched hum again. It is actually a very pleasant ambient thrum IMHO, and now is easily masked by low volume classical music.Given how much I like this in all other regards discerning this in a way to manage the amp has been great.I'd say I'm now 110% satisfied as I can absolutely get the experience I desired, and far exceed my expectations for the price tag.If you want a 2.1 vacuum tube amp that is modern in all the ways that matter and classic in all the ways that matter look no further. Particularly for the sticker price. Just need to see how these tubes hold up over time. I'm running OG tubes on my Magnavox amp that are 20 years older than me.EDIT:I've found that if you don't mind leaving this thing on the sound of the vacum tubes deminishes to nothing. I leave it on non stop, I've not done a kilawat draw evaluation. I may and return to update this.But as it stands, unless this thing dies prematurely (and this is being measured against some 60 year old tube amps still going strong... ) Its kind of a no brainer recommendation, everyone should have one.