Atma-sphere MP-1 vs Mark Levinson 32

Rushton,
Thanks for your reply. I printed your review, took it to bed, as it was 2 am, and half an hour later was sitting bolt-upright, staring at the blackness of night, my heart pounding and my mind filled with rue - how could I have thrown away 22 years of LPs and just listened to a shiny disc when Audio nirvana is clearly in the vinyl and can be brought out by what sounds to be a Houdini of craftmanship!
So not only did you answer my question, directly, about your preamp choice, but made me wonder about my insanity in my choice of source...........that's how compelling, reasoned and passionately articulate your review was. You wrote, IMHO, the best review I have ever read on Audiogon and furthermore gave pause to my misconception (clearly) that reality can be achieved closely by digital sources. I wait with baited breath until some A'goner takes the Walker turntable and in the same room, with the same electronics, compares it to a digital source. (But you need to be there....:) I doubt it will happen.
You are also extremely fortunate to have a partner who shares your passion so. Good luck to you and enjoy what you have indubitably earned - you sound closer to sonic happiness than anybody I have read about and that, after all, is what we are in this hobby/mania for..............

Springbok, thank you for your kind words about my comments on the Walker Proscenium turntable. Lloyd Walker has shared with us a stunning achievement.

As to the LP vs. CD (and SACD for that matter) comparison, this has been done by people whose ears I trust and who have made an investment in both high quality LP playback and high quality CD playback, among them our own Audiogon contributors Mike Levigne and Albert Porter. Here are just two comments they've posted recently on their experience. If you search the archives you'll find others.

Mike Lavigne - just yesterday in a thread about SACD versus vinyl:
http://www.audioasylum.com/audio/general/messages/331584.html

Albert Porter, who has the Walker Proscenium turntable and Aesthetix Io and Callisto - see his comment to my Walker turntable post:
"Your review should help people understand why I've raved about my Walker Proscenium so many times and why digital is so difficult for me."
http://forum.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/fr.pl?ranlg&1083208495

I continue to find vinyl playback more satisfying than the best CD systems I've heard (SACD gets closer). But, high quality vinly playback demands a commitment to get everything working well together and properly tuned, and the highest quality playback is not inexpensive (and neither is the highest quality digital playback). My tradeoff is that I don't buy some of the newer performances of works I would enjoy having because they are only available on CD and I choose to reserve that money for more LPs. :-)

Good luck in your search for a new line stage. I hope you will share with us what you decide on.

With kind regards,

Hi Rushton, Thanks for the kind words.

I thought I might point out FWIW that in the last four years or so since you heard an MP-1 a lot has changed (we got a Golden Ear Award too...), as you might expect. The Aesthetix gear continues to be fine equipment, but I recommend anyone considering such gear to do a proper comparison before making a purchase.

The regulator in the older preamps was a large variable in the sound of the unit. Despite my appreciation of tubes, we are now running a solid state regulator that has performance that is two orders of magnitude better then the older tube regulator, which could fail while the preamp would appear to be running normally. The result is that many of the older MP-1s out there (including the one you heard) may not have or may not be performing according to spec. The new regulator has eliminated that issue, and also sounds a lot better regardless. There are a host of other changes as well, in the phono section, line stage and the power supply.

Like you I find LPs to consistantly outperform SACDs and DVDAs. I am still hoping that the newer digital formats will finally bring home the bacon, but it seems that won't be happening anytime soon. Additionally the lack of new titles is hard to swallow. I have a white label promo press of Take Five (not that I listen to it much anyway), why would I want an SACD of the same recording, now 40 years old? I would be a little more convinced if the Thin Red Line soundtrack was on SACD, but far more likely to buy it if it was on LP instead. Just nothing for it!

Rushton, I was interested in Jonathan Valin's review of the Callisto in TAS in which he said that he >> ......cannot recommend either unit (Io + Callisto) as highly as I am now recommending it if you do go with a a fully balanced setup.You will get the sound I've described above when the 2 preamps and your amps are hooked together via Valhalla single-ended interconnects....... >...Switching to balanced ... makes the Callisto and Io substantially quieter, increases output, improves detail, lowers grain and brightness, enhances bass definition, but so darkens the overall sound and constricts bloom that I would no longer recommend either unit ahead of its competition (although together the Aesthetix pair would be on a par with it).<<
Any comments from you or anybody else who has used the Callisto line-stage in balanced set-up?
I am committed to a blanced set-up and certainly wont spend the kind of money a Callisto demands over an MP-1 for no benefit.......

Opinions vary. What you quote was, obviously, Jonathan's experience. I asked Jim White (the designer of Aesthetix) his opinion on the issue. He told me that results can be system dependent, but in every system he's heard a balanced configuration tested against a single-ended configuration, the balanced configuration has "won out" sonically.

This comes back to my original caution: don't buy a unit ONLY because it is has a balanced circuit design, whether Atma-Sphere, Aesthetix, BAT, conrad-johnson or other. I bought the Io because it has superlative sonics in any of its configurations.

I believe Albert Porter (who uses both the Io and the Callisto) uses the Aesthetix gear in fully balance configuration from input device (including from the cartridge) all the way through, and I believe he has said he prefers the balanced configuration. This is contray to Jonathan Valin's opinion, and I trust both of them to be very discriminating in their listening skills.

It may be a matter of the mix of other components, like interconnect and speaker cables, that influence one's reaction: the truism in this hobby, particularly at this level, is that everything affects everything. And remeber, at the time of this article, Jonathan's notion of "its competition" was a $25000 Messenger.

Albert - can you weigh in here with your experience??
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