Review: Atma-Sphere MP-1 Tube preamp

Category: Preamps

The quest for the best sound I could produce in my 23 X 15 X high celinged room has been aired on this forum since February 2004. It has now come to an end. This is an epilogue, but if not done, I would feel that I was just a chronic never-satisfied audio neurotic, peppering the weary Audiogoners with what-ifs and various combination questions, so feel obligated to conclude it, for fairness and also because it may help others reach the sonic nirvana that I now have.
As I now type, the reverberating, slowly-decaying notes of Ashkenazy are melded into the ghostly, haunting tones of Perlman's Stradivarius, surrounded by Harrel's cello - all achingly beautiful and more real than anything I have heard in the decades since I listened to my mother, aunt and grand-father, all superb musicians, play flute trios in my house, 10 feet away from me. The Archduke trio has never sounded so real. I can now hear the strings being plucked - the thwap and slight echo is life-like. They are in this room, real and, unlike any system I have ever heard, actually have me in the middle of the performance, rather than just an auditioner sitting in front of a set of speakers.
Now the BBC Symphony Orchestra is playing Beethoven's 5th - I am not going to continue to write the audio reviewer's trite lines of counting the fingers on each violinist or feel the spray from the basoonist or trombones - but I have never heard an orchestra reproduced in my living room like this. The sound is open, transparent, and full of authority. It is actually spine-tingling and riveting. Reviewers have spoken about the "authority" of the MA 2.2's, but I never experienced it like this before the MP-1s came into the system. I hear only now why 2 reviewers have claimed the MA 2's to be the best amplifiers they have heard. They clearly need the right signal. Believe you me, they get it in spades..........
Nojima playing Liszt or Richter playing the Hammerklavier, Kiri singing Dovo Sono have never sounded like this before. I claim neither literary or musical qualifications nor will use the banal alliterations that are always used in describing how huge a soundstage is, how detailed the instruments sound, how unreal the sibilance of a closely-miked female vocalistand the impact of the bass notes......all these are true but with the emotional addition of the music tugging at your soul and making you say and feel "OK, this is it....this is what I'm looking for and now I'm satisfied - there cant be better"
This system kept me up until 4 am the day the MP-1s came out of the box - and I get up at 5 am - and I left work early to get back to it and it only gets better - 2 days later.
It doesn't matter if it's Patricia Barber, Nigel Kennedy and the Kroke Band, Hugh Masekela or Jimmy Buffett's Fruitcakes in the Kitchen - it all sounds glorious, unfettered and, most significantly, in comparison with my prior preamp (ML 32), involving and coherently appealling.
Of course there are other variables (interconnects), but that will be a separate review.
All I can say right now is that the MP-1 brings out everything I have heard, read and expected from the MA-2s without any restriction at all. It is as though there is no preamp; furthermore the synergy shouldn't be surprising, since they are built by the same man with the same philosophy and there is not the sense that the preamp and amp are separate components, which is what I got from the MA-2/ML 32 combination, where the music is probably as detailed, but with a leaner, more clinical ambience and, hugely apparent and most striking, totally less involving and detached from me. The cliche "emotionally involving" has never been more apt or appropriate than describing the sound I now hear.
Maybe the fans of VTL 7.5, BAT, Aesthetix all have their own preferences and experiences; however, my hunt is over. This sound is mine for keeps. (Also, keep in mind this is the MP-1 Mk II with Caddock resistors)
Mr Kartsen, you may well have kept me away from Tanglewood, The Met and Avery Fisher Hall. It is certainly cosier here and I can bring my Dachshund with me - she always liked Tannhauser, but the men in monkey suits wouldnt let her in......:)

Associated gear
Atma-Sphere MA2.2 (modified)
Kharma 3.2
Esoteric DV-50
Stealth Indra from CDP to MP-1
Purist Dominus MP-1 to MA-2.2
Michael Wolff Ribbon Source PC
Purist Dominus Rev B S/C (8 feet)

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