Wyred 4 Sound STP

LOL Tholt

I have their ST500 amp and I am very impressed by it. The preamp got an excellent review and a blue moon award from Sixmoons. Not that I usually put too much faith in reviews, but Srajan seems to feel it is in the same performance range as the $10,000 Esoteric pre

http://sixmoons.com/audioreviews/wyred2/preamp.html

Don't know if he meant it was the same performance range, more that the technologies were similar (passive/active). He also mentioned the McCormack VRE. Still, for about 1/5 the price, the performance is significantly different, and loads more transparent, then any active pre I've heard, including a Shindo Aurieges. This is a groundbreaking unit IMO.

I purchased the SE version of this wonderful preamp based on circuit description and photos only. I am glad I did. The controls work as described, almost totally silent mechanically and dead quiet sonically. Balance control on remote allows one to tweak the presentation and compensate for room acoustic loading and variation in recording balance. Perfect focus. Transparent yes, detailed yes, bass speed and slam yes, stage size extreme.. yet varies from recording to recording, still breaking in yes. Extreme value yes. Tom

Dead quiet for sure. First time I've ever experienced NOTHING coming out of the speakers. The thing is overbuilt and bullet proof. Moreover the parts and thought behind it is much more then what the selling price is. I've owned 5 active preamps and demo'd more. I've also compared it to a passive Promitheus TVC Ref 4. It's better then all of them. Throw in remote control, 5 inputs (two fully balanced), 4 outputs (two fully balanced) and HT bypass...did someone say value? Without the direct to consumer angle this would be a $4000 preamp.

I have taken note of my normal numeric listening setting as indicated on the front panel of this preamp...between 32 and 47. With 2 resistors at each setting and others on the output board I would only need to swap the supplied Dales which are very good for 32 Z foil Vishays at $10 each for what I believe would be a major upgrade in transparency and air flow. This would be for the single ended in/outs only the balanced side user would require many more. Tom