In the spirit of full disclosure, I picked up a Wyred4Sound STP-SE this past summer and I couldn’t be happier with its performance. $2,000 for a preamplifier is by no means inexpensive, but on the scale of audio’s high-end, this isn’t even a blip. I’ve also had a lot of fun positioning this activated-passive (thanks to 6moons for that phrase) against all manner of other brands’ offerings, and as long as you don’t actually need additional gain, you’re done. Great pre!
Which brings us to the newest, miniaturized, offerings from Wyred.
mAMP ($1,798/pair) mono amplifiers. 100k ohms input impedance and 250 watts into 8Ω and 430w into 4Ω. Availability is set for December.
mPRE ($1,099) preamplifier. This one is pretty amazing. The volume control is similar to that used in my STP SE; 80 FETs are leveraged, in parallel, to lower the noise floor and increase current output. The mPRE is fully balanced, dual mono, and uses a dual differential circuit design “unheard of at this price point.” And more good news:
This state-of-the-art pre-amp has a built-in DAC with three inputs which includes toslink, coaxial and USB. All of which support 24 bit 192kHz streaming. The ESS Sabre DAC utilizes Hyperstream™ and Jitter Elimination Architecture rendering it immune to jitter. The USB interface is derived from the latest asynchronous XMOS design which is certified USB 2.0 High Speed and Audio Class 2.0 compliant.
Sound came courtesy of Paradigm Signature S8 speakers ($8,999/pair).
Can you please tell the wyred for sound people to hire a decent industrial designer, their casing looks utterly horrible
Like they (or anyone) would listen to me. Yeah.
Those equipments in black looks not too bad.
I’m happy to see great sounding equipment that is really affordable! Please convince Wally to loan you a mINT until the new separates come out, I’d like to read your reaction to Wyred 4 amps on your Eficion F300s.