Primare A30.1 or Odyssey/Rogue

i would strongly recommend a melos preamp for the same, or less money than the rogue. i auditioned the rogue 99 & the melos ma333/music director, & there was absolutely no comparison - the melos is far nicer, in all areas, imho.

there are currently 2 ma33's f/s on a-gon - one, recently updated by melos audio restorations, the guy is asking $1995. while i tink this unit would compete w/*any* preamp at *any* price, it's still f/s after 19 days, so the guy mite negotiate! ;~) another older model w/o remote was yust listed @ $1295. an absolute steal for the sound, but i wood no longer suffer w/o a remote! :>) for ~95% of the goodness of the ma333, there's a melos sha-gold recently listed for $700 - w/remote. again, a sonic bargain, imho. re: amps, i like my electrocompaniet, but i've heard good tings about the odyssey amps - may be a good deal if buying brand-gnu is important...

doug s.

hi bob,

i had the rogue in my home for ~2 months, & no, it wasn't hooked-up incorrectly. re: its inwerting polarity, this is a wery minor diference that many people cannot even hear; many recordings inwert polarity back-n-forth on several tracks on the same disc, so ya really don't know what polarity yure listening to anyways. the only time yule run into a problem is if polarity is reversed from the left channel to the right channel. my melos m-d has a polarity-reversal switch on the front-panel, & i'd be hard-pressed to tell the difference between one & the other.

in my system, the rogue was quite coloured (this was enjoyable, ackshully, yust not accurate!), & there was no bass response whatsoever. i'm not referring to yust electronic/synth-bass, but, acoustic upright bass was m.i.a. i attribute this to an impedence mismatch; rogue sez the 99's output impedence is 100 ohms, but my real-world tests, crossing the outputs w/resistors, indicates 2-2.4k-ohms is more likely. this, combined w/18' i/c's from my pre to my 25k-ohm input x-over, is what i believe was causing my loss of bass response.

prior to buying the melos, i also auditioned the cary slp98 (rated output impedence of 800 ohms), and this was slightly better than the rogue in all areas, except accuracy & low-end response, where it was significantly better than the rogue, in my system. (also, testing impedence w/resistors in the same manner as w/the rogue, indicated the resistance is as claimed by the mfr.) still, the melos m-d is in another league altogether, imho... ( i was kinda hoping it woodn't be, ackshully - i *love* the looks of that cary!)

re: your friends' (dealers'?) melos sha-gold, i'd say it definitely is due for a toob-replacement, or perhaps somsthing else altogether different is wrong w/it? i've heard this unit, & it's anything but slow & muddy, imho - if it weren't for the soundstage depth & bloom, yude tink it was solid-state! ;~) i'd be innerested in your comments listening to it w/some gnu toobs...

regards, doug s.

hi bob,

i'd have no concern w/melos' current operation, melos audio restorations. talk w/brant nordlund 702.248.6754. melosaudio@aol.com. i sent him my m-d due to a couple issues i had w/it when i 1st got it - due to the problems the *old* melos had! ;~) my unit was an updated older unit that, it turned out, dint have all the updates as melos represented to the seller, & the seller had represented to me. brant, at the new operation, was more than fair, and the work was good, & turn-around was also good.

brant also offers mods to the preamps that improve the units beyond the last iterations the factory had. i will prolly send my pre back to him for these, after he finishes developing an updated photentiometer wolume-pot, which i want installed in my pre. the photentiometers, i tink, are the most transparent pots out there, but melos *did* have reliability issues w/these, cuz they were so sensitive to proper alignment - brant sez they had about a 25% failure-rate yust due to shipping! due to that, their last products - the *maestro* wersion of the sha-gold, & the music-director wersion of the ma333 - used conwentional hi-quality alps analog pots. still excellent pots, but i want a photentiometer in my melos! ;~)

hope this helps, doug s.