Aesthetix Question

Thank you all....I will email Albert on this thread and hopefully he can throw in his experiences here.
John

Thanks Tireguy for your input.

If there is one thing I have learned from preamp and phono stage auditions is that it's all about the power supply. The BAT units made this very clear to me over other tubed units like the ARC LS and Ref series and even more so like lesser models such as the Atmasphere MP3. This is also what interests me about the Aesthetix which can start with one power supply and then go with another if the listener feels it is a worthy improvement relative to the rest of the system.

I am a very happy owner of the Manley Ref DAC. I have heard so many DACs and nothing yet comes close to this unit. It has a bass authority and midrange richness like no other I have heard. I have no doubt the Steelhead, even though it is designed by someone other than the designer of the DAC, too is a great great product. I keep a close eye on the Manley product line. But what does the Steelhead do that makes it so superior to the IO? Is the IO really that much of a pain...and unreliable...and noisy? Surely the IO has to do something extraordinary to justify its incredibly high price. The Steelhead is just a tad over the half price point of a decked out IO. So please expand on the Steelhead's advantages.....tonal balance, resolution, 3D harmonic richness, frequency extreme extension, etc., or does the IO reign supreme here? Perhaps neither of these will be that significant over my much less expensive BAT 31SE/P10....but I want to try at least one to find out.

John

Jfrech: I hope you post your abservations here on the IO Sig vs the P10SE. The strengths of the BAT that you described are exactly those that I seek more than anything else, i.e, the harmonic richness, decay, 3D. Lower noise and thus resolution are also important to me, but secondary to these other issues. Also, did you compare the P10 vs the P10SE? and if so, what were the SE's strengths? I understand there is another tweak to the SE for its power supply. If it is anything like the power supply change from the 30SE to the 31SE, this could be one incredible phono stage.

Wow! Smiling here. Thank you so much Albert for sharing your knowledge and experiences. Your thoroughness to describe the details is of great value here. And I did have to smile with "DESTROYED". I have read many great things about the Steelhead so it would be interesting to learn what the Io does so significantly over the Steelhead....at least in the context of your system or your friend's system.

What does concern me here is that there appears to be much maintenance with the Io...all of its tubes, the necessity to change to NOS tubes to really have it play to the level you describe and that it still needs a line stage with most speakers to sound its best. I'm not sure all of these potential reliability/maintainability issues are worth the effort if only subtle improvements exist. But if it truly does "DESTROY" the Steelhead, then it might be worth it. Only one way to know and that is to hear these for myself. Your writings here have given me quite the itch to hear these very much.

Something here keeps telling me NO line stage has got to be "better" than using a line stage. So this too is something I will need to try. If the Io alone is incapable of driving an amp and speakers the same (dynamic) way as the Callisto, this sounds like a change/tweak needed to the Io. It just seems a bit odd to need another active stage to get things "right" if the output level is otherwise capable of taking the amp to full power.

Concerning those big ARC amps, I had to smile of this too. I have gone through many ARC amps over the years, the Classic 60, then the VT130 (oh such magical mids) and then back to the Classic 150s. And then I tried this little lowly Counterpoint NPS400 stereo amp with the basic Michael Elliot mod. This absolutely DESTROYED the huge ARC triode mono amps. Talk about a surprise I was unprepared for. The world of high-end audio always has a new surprise if we keep an open mind.

And thank you Jfrech for your comments on the P10SE. I like the BAT sound very much but somehow I get the feeling there is another level of phono enjoyment to be had with these other phono stages. Now if only I had a way to do a shootout with all of these!

Thank you again very much to all who contributed here.