Budget preamp with quality volume control

@tyray Thank you.  I also like what I see from this review. How do you like its DAC?  In particular, how are the soundstage width and depth?

https://positive-feedback.com/Issue72/wyred_mpre.htm

One night while glancing through the Wyred4Sound website, the proverbial "Duh" hit me like a hammer. Why not the mPre?

This is exactly what happened to me. I first wanted the Wyred 4 Sound STP-SE Stage 2 preamp. I didn’t even know the mPRE existed until about 2 years after trying to save up money for a used or new Wyred 4 Sound STP-SE Stage 2!

Funny you should ask about the dac even though my main way of playing music is old school needle dropping! Not streaming nor playing cd’s, I still wanted an inexpensive transport of the best quality sound and (low) price ratio I could find, I narrowed it down to the Audiolab 6000CDT transport. Do you see a recurring theme here? Keep in mind I have not run/burned in the dac as of yet but I do know it responds to what you have going into it. So the better quality of interconnects and transport it responds well to.

Sound stage, width, depth and holographics are there as well. It’s as if this little mighty mite is responding to the gear you connect it up to just like a higher priced preamp would.

The toslink connection to some may sound overly warm but I have separate Power Sound Audio (PSA) subwoofers and I can turn down the gain on them. But my cd transport connector of choice is the 聖HIJIRI Million HDG - RCA Digital cable. Again, what I’ve found is the mPRE does respond to what you put into it.

I think I’ve been lucky with selecting components with outstanding symmetry but I’ve also ’paid the upgrade price’ over the years for it too.

There’s one little thing I need to share with you here. I did splurge a bit on my most recent acquisition and that was a Puritan 156 power conditioner and after hooking everything up to it - Wow! I’m hearing things I didn’t even know were on the cd/record/vinyl! As we say here on audiogon, ’I hope this helps.’

That’s supposed to be outstanding synergy not ’outstanding symmetry’. ’Duh’.

I actually enjoy to read about the hardship that Steve Huffman went through when he heard the transformer buzz/hum from his over $10k Luxman and then found the Puritan 156 to finally tame it down. My Parasound amps have a bit transformer hum as well that I need to 2 ft close to hear it but is enough to trigger my irritation.  I was doing the similar things, i.e., DC offset and Monster power conditioner, trying to get rid of it but without success. It is tempting but I could not justify spending $2k to cure the hum of $1k amp.

I found a used mPre selling for $700.  Is it a fair price? It is such a pity that its DAC section only supports up to 24/96 (usb) and 24/192 and no DSD. Well, let me sleep on it.  

Yes, $700 is fair used. You would probably just have to update the firmware through a USB download. Make sure the seller has the original box, packing materials and manual so if you wanted to sell it at a later date.

With mine I don't intend to keep it as Wyred 4 Sound let's you trade in or should I say trade up when bought directly from them. I agree with you that the dac is the weakest link, but it's built like a tank with shielding and other positives and at the time I just needed a reliable head unit on the cheap and usually in those circumstances the dac is what it is.

Even though I have thousands of cd's and hundreds of 'albums', as I said in an earlier post I am a crate digging needle dropper and I mostly use my turntable and can always upgrade and invest in a separate dac at a later date since I already own a cd transport. And that's exactly why Wyred 4 Sound made the mPRE the way it is cause it is essentially a head unit/pre amp 'starter kit'.