Fed Ex left the the new little piece of Schiit on the doorstep. I have been wanting a phono preamp back in my main system since moving out a McIntosh C39 to run my Bedroom full McIntosh system.
I had been running turntable A to D through the Lyngdorf TDAI2200 I use as a Preamp that has Room Perfect room correction and feed digital signal into my DAC hich has fully balance outputs to McIntosh MC1000s feeding my XR290 speakers. However imput sensitivity adjustments was unable to make up gain differences need for the old SL-D2 technichs linear track turntable. volume constraints made a phono stage with more gain a necessity. I refurbished the table from my college days. The table having replaced belts to tonearm drive and replaced elliptical stylus to the Audio Technica MM cartridge it is a chep tried and true carefree set up with easy selectable cueing. I have been longing to dust off some nostalgia albums and see if I could meet or exceed sound from C39 or the digital sources.
I had read this article.
https://www.stereophile.com/content/gramophone-dreams-6
and was intrigued by Mike Moffats skills in Analog before his Theta and Yggdrasil DAC achievement. I have been on the fence on Yggy purchase so this is a way to get the sole of my shoe wet with a small step into Schiit before jumping knee deep.
The Mani was an easy set up and took three albums to get the gain structure optimized using 47k Ohm loading. Every increas in gain was better and I found using maximum gain on the Mani preferable to using increased sensitivity on Lyndorf combined with Mani The Mani so far has been revealing, transparent and throws a great 3D wide and deep soundstage even with my limited vinyl rig TT and MM cartridge.
One is definitely able to hear into the recording and distinguish separate mixing tracks and different equalization schemes on albums where the sound engineer mixed later. I was dumbfounded this little 129 dollar box is so tremendous. I literally can’t wait to spin a single miked live recording. Even though my rig is not straight analog with A to D room correction and D to A going on it is great experience.
I will be finding a Yggdrasil in the New Year after sampling Mike Moffat’s skill as a circuit designer.