Decware

08/28/2026

Greetings Steve -

We had a lovely afternoon trying the Sarah300B + the EL34 Decware amps out on the Watt/Puppy.

1. Genuinely: brilliant work, Steve. I've been in high end for 27 years, and heard an ocean of tube
amplification at a broad range of price points. Not only are yours among the best value for money
of any amps I've heard - they're among the best amps I've heard.

2. While it doesn't serve a dealer to say so, I love that you work directly with your people, and offer
such great support and response.

3. In a normal sized room, the Sarah plays at moderately loud levels without breakup. Could we have
used another watt or two? Sure - but 99% of the time, that never crossed my mind.

4. However, it turns out that Xavier secretly wants to party. Your EL34 design is a riot - and drive the
Watt/Puppy as well as any amplifier in the shop.

All this to say, I hope this is useful data for you going forward, and thanks for helping build passionate,
curious clients.

Best from all of Us

08/25/2026

Dear Steve, Sarah, and the entire Decware team,

I wanted to write to you not with a question, not with a request, and not about an order.

I simply wanted to say thank you.

Steve, thank you for creating Decware and for having the courage to follow your own philosophy of what reproduced music should be. Sarah, thank you for all the kindness, patience, and support you have given me. And most importantly, I want to thank every person in the Decware workshop whose hands touched, assembled, wired, tested, finished, and carefully prepared the amplifier that eventually found its way across the world to my home in Tbilisi, Georgia.

You should know what your work has accomplished.

I have been passionate about music and high-end audio for many years. I have owned and listened to a great deal of equipment — amplifiers from Luxman, Hegel, Denon, Marantz, D’Agostino and others, including components costing $15,000, $20,000 and more. I have owned different loudspeakers and spent countless hours searching for better sound.

I thought I knew fairly well what an excellent amplifier could do.

Decware surprised me.

This amplifier has exceeded my expectations in a way that specifications, measurements and price tags simply cannot explain.

There is something extraordinarily honest and alive about the way it reproduces music. The transparency, the depth, the intimacy of voices, the texture of instruments, the delicacy, the sense of space — and above all, the feeling that there is less equipment standing between me and the music.

Sometimes you spend years improving an audio system and eventually realize that what you were really searching for was not more detail, more power, or a more expensive component.

You were searching for that moment when you stop listening to the equipment and simply feel the music again.

Your amplifier has given me that.

And that is why this message is about more than sound quality.

Your work has genuinely brought more happiness into my life. Music has always been important to me, but Decware has made evenings spent listening to music something I look forward to again. Albums I have known for years have become interesting again. Familiar voices have become more human. Recordings I thought I knew have surprised me.

That is a remarkable gift for one group of people in a workshop in Illinois to give to someone thousands of miles away in Tbilisi.

There are countless audio companies in the world, and there will always be newer technologies, bigger specifications, heavier chassis and more expensive amplifiers.

But what Decware makes feels different.

It feels as though there are still human beings behind the product — people who care about what they build and who believe that music matters.

Please pass my gratitude to everyone who was involved in building my amplifier. The people winding, soldering, assembling, testing, finishing, inspecting and packing these amplifiers may not often hear directly from the person who eventually sits in front of one, late at night, listening to music on the other side of the world.

So I want them to hear it from me:

Your work matters.

You did not simply build another piece of audio equipment.

You built something that became part of my home, part of my music, and part of some genuinely happy moments in my life.

Steve, thank you for creating Decware.

Sarah, thank you for being there for your customers.

And to the entire Decware family — thank you for your craftsmanship, your patience, your philosophy, and for continuing to build things this way in a world where almost everything is becoming mass-produced and anonymous.

Please keep doing what you do.

There is someone in Tbilisi, Georgia, listening tonight and smiling because you did.

With my deepest gratitude and respect,

Levan Adamania

The DECWARE Zen Triode amplifier - 2.3 watts of SET Bliss since 1996!

08/20/2026

Hi Steve - hope you are doing good! 🙂

My speakers are ready since some time, and have played for about 100 hours or so now (but only 50 hours with normal listening level).

Photos here below. As you can see, I changed the design a bit and had a cabinetmaker do them for me with good finish. Internals follow your instructions 100% (except that I put a brace between the magnet cage and the backside of the wall of the 1st chamber).

The rest of the system:
NOS R2R DAC being fed PCM from HQPlayer (running on a fully optimized computer, galvanic isolation on the USB output + USB regeneration, master clock synchronization of source & DAC, etc.)
ANK L5 Mentor Signature preamp
ANK 300B PSET Interstage Monoblocks
Martin Logan 1100X subwoofer (just giving a bit of support < 35 Hz)
Fyne S-Trax supertweeter (it is 360° radiating and integrates very well with no/little comb filtering and phase cancellations)

Internally in the speaker, and as speaker cables, I use Duelund DCA 12GA. This is intentional, a cable that helps with tonal color and fullness, "real" voice/instrument sound, while retaining resolution. I definitely don't want silver-plated copper or anything like that with these speakers!!

As you reported, there is considerably more energy and forwardness in the 800-2200 Hz zone, peaking around 1400 Hz. I believe such forwardness simply cannot be avoided with fullrange drivers, they all exhibit this to some extent; and is even more true with such strong magnet system and high efficiency as in the PT-10. Beaming, efficiency, cone break-up (?) - all is coming together in that zone. Without correction, the sound can feel way too aggressive on many tracks. With that energy corrected properly (using lossless EQ in HQPlayer), I find that the sound actually becomes very sweet, forgiving and non-fatiguing. In this regard every bit as sweet as the 2-way Doxa speakers that I had earlier (best drivers from SEAS & Scan-Speak, sound resembles Spendor/Harbeth). It is a full-bodied, dense and rich sound, not cold, analytical or aggressive.

NB! On purpose, I am using digital reconstruction filters in HQPlayer that avoid pre-ringing in the time domain, while doing perfect reconstruction in the frequency domain. This is a job that HQPlayer does better than any internal filter in an oversampling DAC (regardless of price) due to the immense computing power, while also avoiding the flaws of NOS DACs (IMD, aliasing, rolled-off treble, loss of detail). The filter used for 1x files (44/48K) also is apodizing, to remove pre-ringing from the AD done in the studio, a typical problem with redbook content. This approach results in very, very clean and natural leading edges. There is attack and fast transients, but fully natural and 'analog like'. Not the unnatural sharp sound and glare that we often associate with digital. This is very important, as these speakers are sensitive to such digital artifacts. Avoiding those, and the sound is sweet, dense, full, natural - and also extremely immediate, fast, dynamic, transparent. The soundstage is big and deep (the supertweeters help further with that).

There is much extra energy around 65 Hz and 130 Hz in my room, regardless of distance from the front wall. I guess this comes from the horn that is tuned for roughly 30 Hz. Is easy to fix with some EQ in HQPlayer.

The bass was not that impressive in the beginning. Now after roughly 50 hours of normal listening levels, the suspension of the driver has become more flexible and the acoustic behavior of the driver matches better with the horn. The bass is full and powerful now, matches the size of the speaker. I expect it to get even better when I reach 100-200 hours of playing at normal listening levels.

When comparing with the "ultra high-end" speakers that I've heard, the DFH-10's are different, and in a good way. Immediacy, nerve, micro-dynamics, transparency, coherence, realism is better than all of those costly speakers. No comparison even! Much more of a live feeling, the musicians are there in the room with you. Also, the paper cones are much better for tone colors/decay than the graphite/aluminum/graphene typically used by the others. They wake up with just 0,5 watt. Can absolute resolution, detail, refinement and measured performance be better in speakers costing > $ 100K? Possibly and probably. And some of them do offer room-shaking bass and full composure even at rock concert SPL. That's not my thing, though. I never play louder than 95 dB average SPL, and for that these speakers are perfectly adequate.

With the DFH-10 cabinet that you designed, the lack of bass typical for fullrange drivers has been fully overcome. In fact, bass performance is world-class in speed and quality, while the PT-10 retains all of the other advantages of the best fullrange drivers on the market (Cube, AER, Voxativ). The Fyne S-Trax enhances the treble extension. Overall, I am very happy and don't know how to improve further upon this (except for my room, of course). Think this is end-game for me.

Very happy indeed!!!

https://www.decwareproducts.com/dfh

08/16/2026

I got my basic ufo84 last November, after waiting for 3 years. I was listening thorugh my RP600M's and it sounded good, but i did not feel they lived up to the hype. I finally bit the bullet and bought Heresy IV's as an early 55th birthday present to myself HOLY $41t. Thanks a lot Steve! now I will never be able to go back to regular amps. When I first got the Heresys, they just sound weird and different, but going back and forth with placement and a/b ing other amps, the ufo84/Heresy combo has life like nothing else ive listened to. Its not really about volume, or added treble, the deware amp gives good bass, and the seperation between high and low frequencies is second only to a live performance. Im not 16, i dont need the people down the block to share my listening experience, but i will say in a 15x18 room the combo gets loud enough to be uncomfortable to listen to...you frequently hear people complaining the ufo84 doesnt get loud enough, blah blah blah, do you want quality, or quantity. This combo is truly everything I could have hoped for. Now i gotta get rid of all the junk I bought before getting to this combo.

Join the conversation: https://www.decware.com/cgi-bin/yabb22/YaBB.pl?num=1786296588/1 #1

The DECWARE Zen Triode amplifier - 2.3 watts of SET Bliss since 1996!

08/05/2026

We have T-Shirts, Sweatshirts and Hoodies available here: https://www.decwareproducts.com/merchandise

07/20/2026

Hi Steve,

I would like to share with you that I recently purchased a ZRock 2 from someone who upgrade to a 3. Using the Rachael with Lii15s it has transformed my system, using your interconnects and power cords I am now listening to my music in such an engaging manner. It has been quite the journey to move in this direction, with great satisfaction. My next addition will the Pills.

All the best,

David

The DECWARE Zen Triode amplifier - 2.3 watts of SET Bliss since 1996!

07/17/2026

Hey Steve,
I am writing to thank you for the tremendous amount of pleasure your products have given me. My system is relatively simple: WiiM Pro to Chord Qutest to SE341.6 with 6DJ8R input, NOS Phillips rectifier, and TAD EL34s to Klipsch Forte IVs on rubber and cork isolation blocks in my 13 x 23 foot living room. I have been to Axpona several times, and even the $1.7 million giant Wilson speaker system did not make me dissatisfied. Your amplifier is truly a steal and well worth the 18 month wait. I am tremendously grateful for your brilliant dedication to ultimate quality and consider myself beyond lucky to have your work delivering me spectacular music every day. Very best wishes to you and your family.😊

The DECWARE Zen Triode amplifier - 2.3 watts of SET Bliss since 1996!

06/06/2026

June AI is now online 24/7 for DECWARE questions: https://decwaresupport.replit.app

"OK, I've had a look at your amplifier... you might consider cleaning it once in awhile." -June

05/22/2026

Zen Cartridge Amplifier
https://www.decwareproducts.com/zca

The owner's manual for this new product has been completed and can be found on the web page.

The DECWARE Zen Phono Cartridge Amplifier

05/21/2026

Dear Steve:
I am so enjoying-and learning-from your
YouTube videos. Please keep developing them.
With the end in mind, the process of working with Lii Song has been great!
If the characteristics of trust are accuracy, honesty and thoroughness-Lii Song built trust with me at every step of the process.

A special note of thanks to Mr.Zhang.
His professionalism is noteworthy throughout our communications. Excellent customer service. Told him I would submit impressions on the speakers in a couple of weeks.

Up and running now. Alan Eaton 2a3 mono blocks, Icon Audio preamp.

Just wanted you to know I am a very happy customer.

-Ed

https://www.decwareproducts.com/lii-song