Good question. I still have about two dozen pair of mixed 6922's and equivalents and 12AU7's and equivalents left over from the Mantissa and my advice is to use Upscale Audio, Jim McShane or Bob Hamme and simply ask them what they have at the moment that are good and reasonably priced. My experience with tube rolling in the Mantissa is that solid quiet tubes, particularly in the 6922's are far more important than any small character differences among current production and NOS. I splurged on some very expensive Amperex once and they were relatively noisy and not worth the price. The 12AU7's are cathode follower buffer tubes and have far less impact on SQ. The Mantissa came with JAN Philips tubes-both for the 6922 and 12AU7 and IIRC they were among my favorites for overall clean, dynamic, uncolored sound. I recall having long discussions with Victor Tiscarino on the subject-he recommended I stick with the stock tubes but had no objection to tube rolling. This might be helpful to you; http://raptorelectronics.com/subpage3.html
Theta Casa Nova vs Audio Prism Mantissa
Currently demoing these two preamps and having a very hard time on which one is better overall. My set up is strictly 2 channel They both perform very well in my system with the following observations:
Casa Nova seems to squeeze every bit of detail out the recordings and then sum. Very good sound in two channel stereo mode. Voices and midrange is exceptionally good for a pre pro
Mantissa is like wise very detailed maybe one or two very small steps behind the Casa Nova. The Mantissa seems to be just slightly better than the Casa Nova in overall musical presentation maybe due to what I precive to be a wider soundstage or blacker background(if there is such a thing) the Mantissa is all factory original
does anyone have experience with both or either of these units? Looking to get some opinions and thoughts from the community.
Casa Nova seems to squeeze every bit of detail out the recordings and then sum. Very good sound in two channel stereo mode. Voices and midrange is exceptionally good for a pre pro
Mantissa is like wise very detailed maybe one or two very small steps behind the Casa Nova. The Mantissa seems to be just slightly better than the Casa Nova in overall musical presentation maybe due to what I precive to be a wider soundstage or blacker background(if there is such a thing) the Mantissa is all factory original
does anyone have experience with both or either of these units? Looking to get some opinions and thoughts from the community.
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- 7 posts total
- 7 posts total