Sue and I spent yesterday evening with Neil listening to some A/B comparisons. We had two unsurprising experiences and one extraordinary one.
At our house I have bought a 10 year old 52/PS for my Dad. I got it fully warmed up and compared it to a 72/hicap in a system with CDS1, 140 and Dali Meneut speakers. Unsurprisngly it sounded a lot, lot better, but I was pleased to feel it was an improvement I could live without given the £2.3K cost.
Then we tried a Mana Stealth lead between the CDS1 and the 72, and again no surprise, a useful improvement well worth the outlay (similar size improvement to when I put the hicap with the 72). Will buy one of those.
After an excellent chinese takeaway it was off to Neils. There he demoed his CDX (XPS, 52, supercap, 135s, SBLs) on a phase 4 Mana vs his newly upgraded phase 6 Mana (a £400 upgrade between the phase 4 and phase 6).
Thud! - that was my jaw hitting the ground. The difference was phenomenal. My brain found it difficult to believe my ears - the improvement in clarity and lack of fuzz when comparing phase 6 to phase 4 was of a completely different order to the change when we replaced the 72 with the 52 at our home.
I can tell you how great the difference was ... Sue hates the look of Mana. After hearing the demo, she wandered over to Neil's racks of Mana and said "it doesn't look that bad you know".
I find it impossible to like JW (he has been pretty offensive to me). I have just about managed to maintain my tolerance of Mana-enthusiasts on this forum. If you too find them hard to take, then take my advice - do not let that stop you trying this product, it is as good as they say. I have never heard a Hi-Fi system sound as good as Neil's on the Phase 6.
Nic P
Posted on: 06 September 2000 by Andrew Randle
Oh no, I can start to feel the earthquakes already!
An interesting recount of the phase 4/6 comparison. Looks like a bargain to me, a good pointer to the future.
Andrew
Andrew Randle
2B || !2B;
4 ^ = ?;
Posted on: 06 September 2000 by Paul Stephenson
"bought a 10 year old 52/PS for my Dad"
You do not say how long the warm up but I take it was a couple of days. Even so I would think cold should be night and day improvement on a massive scale from the 52. Did you send the unit back for service, 10 years old! I think something, somwhere is wrong.
No problem with your stand story. Just thought the above info may be useful for your Dad. Why not send the unit back, have a service if it does not blow the 72 away,I will do the service for free!
Posted on: 06 September 2000 by Arthur Bye
It seems to me that the suggested upgrade path for Mana is from Stage 2 to Stage 4 to Stage 7. So you still may have something missing here.
At least this is what the posts in the Mana Forum seem to suggest.
I would also recommend Paul Stephenson's suggestion of having your 52/52PS serviced if it has never been done. 10 years is about the upper limit as I recollect
Arthur Bye
Posted on: 07 September 2000 by Nic Peeling
Paul says:
quote:
"bought a 10 year old 52/PS for my Dad"
You do not say how long the warm up but I take it was a couple of days. Even so I would think cold should be night and day improvement on a massive scale from the 52. Did you send the unit back for service, 10 years old! I think something, somwhere is wrong.
No problem with your stand story. Just thought the above info may be useful for your Dad. Why not send the unit back, have a service if it does not blow the 72 away,I will do the service for free!
I warmed it up for ten days.
I bought the 52/PS from a dealer and it has a years warranty, so I was going to advise my Dad to send it back to be serviced when the warranty expired.
Don't get me wrong, I said it was much much better than the 72. In fact we used the phrase "blew it away" when listening to the 52 for the first time. It was also in a pretty ill-matched system (how many CDS1, 52's feed into a 140 and £400 bookshelf speakers). Unbalancing the system by putting in the CDS1 in place of the original Rega Planet was pretty extravagant of me, but excessive spending on sources does seem to work OK. In this system's context I felt that the system without the 52 was good enough (I only tried it for fun 'cos I had it in the house). I would be very interested to try it after the service, but it will then be on the Isle of Wight, so will have no chance of taking up Paul's kind offer.
Arthur says:
quote:
It seems to me that the suggested upgrade path for Mana is from Stage 2 to Stage 4 to Stage 7. So you still may have something missing here.
Are these the so-called magic numbers - I am afraid I am not a Mana afficionado. Maybe Neil can comment. I think Neil had phase 4 and saw 2 extra levels secondhand at Midland Audio Exchange so bought them. Because he had his Linn on a phase 4 (which was out of action following a burglary) he was able to move the CDX very easily from the new Phase 6 to the Phase 4 for a very simple A/B dem (he also has all his amps etc. on a separate phase 4). I think your comment about phase 7 may indicate this was from the Mana perspective a highly sub-optimal dem - in which case I shudder to think what an extra level will do. Given I think it is only a matter ot time before I buy some black angle iron myself I wonder if I can persuade Neil to help me set it up!
Nic
Posted on: 07 September 2000 by Simon Jenkins
I was just wandering, looking at this thread, if anybody's tried the following.
Apart from the usual isolation and solid support, most of the benefit from Mana supports (and a lot of others for that matter) seems to come from the sound resonating in/on the stand. Bearing in mind that a sound base costs about 200 pounds, has anybody tried getting a similar amount of steel tubing from a buillders merchant (would probably cost about 20 pounds) and putting it in the same room as their system ?
I'm not Mana bashing, as I'm currently looking at getting an amp stand, and possibly a reference table as well, it just strikes me that it may be possible to get the same effect as a stage 9 with say a stage 3 and 100 pounds worth of steel tubing (which of course you could paint any colour you want, so no more black stands).
Simon
