@drbond
Yes.
The washed out sound at higher volume settings suggest the Manley is either unable to drive the Atmasphere power amp adequately, or the quality of the sound is deteriorating at higher volume settings due to the circuit topology in the Manley.
Adding an active line stage will fix that issue and may even benefit your other power amplifiers as well. I would encourage you to try some out if you can.
In terms of options Atmasphere preamps should work well and have balanced outputs as well as single ended to suit their amps.
Conrad Johnson linestages at the upper levels are excellent but only have single ended outputs available.
I would be wary of the Lamm preamps without trialling them becuase they tend to work best with their own gear - the LAMM phono/preamps have unusual gain structures and in real use tend to work best together.
So, when you say the Manley linestage is just a "buffer", you mean that it's not amplifying the signal by adding gain, but just transmitting the signal unadulterated?
Yes.
The washed out sound at higher volume settings suggest the Manley is either unable to drive the Atmasphere power amp adequately, or the quality of the sound is deteriorating at higher volume settings due to the circuit topology in the Manley.
Adding an active line stage will fix that issue and may even benefit your other power amplifiers as well. I would encourage you to try some out if you can.
In terms of options Atmasphere preamps should work well and have balanced outputs as well as single ended to suit their amps.
Conrad Johnson linestages at the upper levels are excellent but only have single ended outputs available.
I would be wary of the Lamm preamps without trialling them becuase they tend to work best with their own gear - the LAMM phono/preamps have unusual gain structures and in real use tend to work best together.