MANLEY WAVE Recommendations

MATT'S FAN MAIL:

Hi You Guys,

Thanks for getting the preamp to me on Friday.
No other contemporary electronics I've heard has such a beautiful and tonefull sound.

This is one piece that will enjoy my entire life.

-------- and later......

EveAnna, I am blown away. After about 3 or 4 hours warmup this thing really lights up! The bass tightens and deepens with that beautiful tone becoming more pronounced. Everything else is so amazingly big, bright and open....how did you do it? I never heard anything so seductive before :) I just had to thank you again!

Yours,

Matt

-------- and later......

Hi Again EveAnna,

Yung Paik ( I think you know him?) was over yesterday. He's been a friend and fellow appreciator of quality audio stuff for a number of years. He is the guy that demonstrated to me the importance of gain structure and transformers and tubes.

Yung often laments the state of current hi-fi gear, but I will never forget him telling me once: "Manley's the only shit you don't have to fuck with to make sound right". I hope you can appreciate that colorful praise. ;) Perhaps a new ad campaign?

He brought over a 1950 Little Walter recording and stuck it in my CD player. "Whoa! Am I high? That sounds F'in good!". He runs out to his Escalade to get more discs. I never see him get excited about gear, but yesterday it felt good to see him kicked back listening to his favorite stuff and lovin' it. I could see the same surprised expression on his face that I get whenever I hear something from a familiar disc that I never heard before.

We did some A-B tests of the digital input versus the line input on the preamp. We both agree that the line-in has rounder, more authoritative bass and a bit smoother, clearer highs. Mind, you, the digital in does not sound bad (and certainly way better than my old McIntosh C2200), but the line in just sounded distinctly better.

We took into account the difference in gain (the line in plays louder) and attempted to trick each other with differant volume settings so I'm reasonably sure about our subjective test. D/A converter stuff is voodoo to me, but I might say that it's possible that a higher output D/A chip could bring it up to the level of the other inputs. Maybe the next rev? ;)