Wyred 4 Sound STP

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

Two owners reporting, this is a start. Can either of you contribute any additional comments, comparing and contrasting, defining your other components what you have run before, likes and dislikes of other preamps and target listening types. There is very little info. on this interesting preamp and the 6Moons review is basically useless other than as a regurgitation of the website addressing build and concept - but little to no actual reviewing of the performance of the piece.

Fortunately or not, I think that others may be interested in this preamp, but due to lack of credible and detailed additional information on performance, few are making the leap.

Additional comments from other owners/auditioners and you two would be greatly appreciated.

I'm still breaking mine in, will report soon.

I had a chance to hear the SE version in my system against a Plinius M8 and Parasound JC 2, as well as a non-SE version in a different system compared to a Modwright 2 box, Audio Valve Eclipse, and Esoteric C-03.

In both scenarios, the STP preamp did a great job and in no way was outclassed by the other preamps (even though the other preamps cost between $4-10k each).

As others have noted, the STP's strengths include a very dark and quiet background, very good dynamics, deep bass, good transparency, and a nice set of inputs/outputs.

That being said, in my system, I found the STP not to be as engaging as the JC 2 or Plinius M8. It simply didn't pull me into the music in the same manner that the other two preamps did. It also didn't extract any more information from the music than the other two preamps.

Great value, but not quite the dragon slayer in my system.

George