Cocky or tender, Sinatra hits the bull's-eye with instinctive good taste. Unlike most of his younger rivals he refuses to pump phony emotion into a simple ballad or follow the disgusting custom of singing old favorites at a slowpoke pace until all vitality oozes out of them. "Whatever his derelictions, Sinatra is still the master of his field.
As a result the Reprise people have gone to the costly bother of recalling Sinatra's record from California distributors, pressing new disks with a revised title, Sinatra Swings, and printing new jackets. Last month, after a hearing, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Gordon Files called the case "a classic example of unfair competition," and issued an injunction prohibiting Sinatra's record company from selling or distributing Swing along with Me in its original form. "In understandable anger Capitol filed suit. No one was greatly concerned about the new company (many singers branch out into business), but the near duplication of titles set tempers blazing. A month later, fed up with feathering other people's nests, Frank recorded a similar batch of songs with a similar title, Swing along with Me, for his own record company, Reprise Records, and rushed it out ahead of Capitol. Last March, Sinatra recorded an album of songs called Come Swing With Me! for Capitol Records, who have sponsored Sinatra for eight highly profitable years. The Mani sells for $129 in the US UK pricing runs £112 (including VAT), and it's AU$199 in Australia.Frank Sinatra has become his own business rival. LP auditions didn't alter my opinions about the virtues of 2014 vinyl playback. So anyone hoping high-resolution formats will totally knock out LPs is dreaming with a great turntable analog is fully competitive and possibly better than high-resolution digital. Dylan's scratchy vocals had a bit more body on the LP. The LP had more weight, more gravitas, and the sound was more enveloping on LP. The SACD sounded smaller, Dylan and the band were less present, and Tony Hall's nimble basslines were less nimble on the SACD. To test my theory about LPs sounding better than CDs or high-resolution digital I compared Bob Dylan's "Oh Mercy" SACD (on my Oppo BDP-105 Blu-ray player) with my original, 25-year-old LP on the Pioneer turntable. The Mani was fully up to the job of revealing the differences between the two cartridges. That's an understatement, resolution jumped a couple of notches, soundstage depth improved, bass definition was better. The Shure cartridge is good for the money, but Zu Audio's DL-103 Mk.II moving-coil cartridge provided a more audiophile experience. The "spaces" between the instruments were more clear cut I heard more room sound, deeper reverberation, more of the subtle sounds that make LPs more involving to listen to than the best digital formats. For comparison sake I brought out my NAD PP2i phono preamp, and it sounded clear and concise, but the Mani had superior resolution of the quieter details on my LPs. The Mani's sound was big and smooth, I heard a minimum of groove noises, clicks, and pops on my LPs. I used a Pioneer PLX-1000 turntable (look for my review next week) with a Shure M44-7 moving-magnet cartridge for the bulk of my listening tests. Like every other Schiit product I've tested the Mani is made in California with a large percentage of US made parts, including precision film capacitors, thin-film resistors, and low-noise gain stages. If you're using an AV receiver or a turntable with a built-in phono preamp the Mani would be a logical upgrade. Cartridge impedance loading can be set to 47 Ohms for moving-coil cartridges or 47,000 Ohms for moving-magnet cartridges. Mani has four user-selectable "gain" modes (30, 42, 47, and 59 dB), so it'll sound great with any cartridge you pair with it.
It works with moving-magnet (MM) or moving-coil (MC) phono cartridges. The little Mani's all-metal chassis measures a scant 5 by 3.5 by 1.25 inches (127x89x32mm).
Mani amplifies the miniscule voltages generated by a turntable phono cartridge so your LPs can be played over AV receivers, desktop powered speakers, boom boxes, etc. I've lost track of how many Schitt headphone amplifiers and digital converters I've reviewed, but their all-new Mani phono stage is a very different kind of product.
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