Mana Acoustics

No way! …odd numbers give more than even numbers? …what is this witchcraft?!?

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I must get mine out of the shed then …

Mr Roosters, I know it’s hard not to but discipline old chap!image

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How humble of you to give your divine opinion, says he with the Hidden profile😂

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Totally agree. Less distortion (to a point) on the signal path means louder. I refer to sound stages as layers of chocolate.
JW has evolved the size of them, last time I looked they are little bit smaller and he’s moved away from MDF to more of a particleboard and rounded Edges as the veneer would come off the old ones. Told me he was in hospital and the trolley meal table gave him the idea of using the same kind of wood mix. Probably meds at the time … go figure :joy:
He gave me 2x one and a half thick balance boards that were spare from way back in the day when he supplied Pink Floyd with Mana Racks and stages for a recording studio. They had to be larger as the reel to reel came in at around 480 Kgs!! Unfortunately they really didn’t work in a home system as they seem to over isolate and the music stopped lighting up. I’ve since passed them onto friends who have used them in different ways. Before you think I’m a blind mana follower some of his creations I can’t get along with. For example when I had my credos on mana speaker stages (sorry forgot the real name) it gave great bottom end but killed the sound stage, it was probably that speaker design didn’t like the stands. The ver 1 mana clamps you know with the spikes!!! (which he was very excited about) gave very good hifi but took away the pRat. I couldn’t live with them on my cds2 and had another for the 52 which I never used ( noway in hell was I going to spike it in the sides) I ended up sending them back, He wasn’t happy but he did honour it and swapped out for some sound stages. At that stage he wasn’t trying to start things back up he was doing me a favour more than anything. Was a bit of a #%^*up on my part, as the postage from NZ and to the UK was inhibitive and it was a customs disaster not to mention the hassle it gave him as if it could go wrong it did go wrong.
One thing about Mr Mana, people say he doesn’t suffer fools, I say he doesn’t suffer people that don’t agree with him, and that’s ok as we are all different.

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A further twist: I first heard Mana at RPM in Clapham in the early 90s and I didn’t much care for it. It was the popular two-level table variant. To my ears it sounded very detailed, but also lean and forward in the upper midrange. Impressive in its way, but not especially engaging or lifelike. I was puzzled because I was expecting to like it.

I now suspect that the dealer wasn’t aware that Mana works best when the locking nuts are barely finger tight – at one point there was a fad for omitting the locking nuts entirely – and that he had instead gone “full Linn” on on them.

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I know a village somewhere putting up a temple worshipping ‘her’, and it’s not a joke, it’s a real story, seriously.

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I wonder if any Fraim owners (with plenty of surplus time & cash) are willing to perform a small experiment?

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I know what you mean. I have never seen a Mana equipment stand but people say they work
I don’t disagree so sort of cut it some slack.
Who knows what goes on when you stack so many highly resonant items together obviously
it works by accident that is what i meant by “Factors”.
But that does not mean a Principal has been established.
Spikes are a realy handy construction method to build multiple shelves and just happen to
look HI-Tech. They don’t decouple they couple you could likely just weld them.
Take a look at Quadraspire X Reference a favourite of Exhibitors at shows.
It is a very expensive extremely well designed rack, seemingly assembled by screwing Alloy
Poles together - no spikes here!

I think Richard mentioned in another thread that Fraim doesn’t work on the principle of isolation like most racks. It works on the principle of energy dissipation and dampening. I don’t think more layers gets you anything in that context. Certainly Naim recommend Fraim stops at 6.

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Oh that’s just awful! Your poor wife blah blah :expressionless:
:stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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Some people swear another Fraim base has benefits. As I mention a few times now….Fraim works in a similar way as mana imo.

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I have an idea why multiple Mana are successful this is not a valid theory only speculation.
It is noted by others that a single rack does not sound very good - this has to mean something!!
and 2 racks being useable and with 3 or 4 you are getting somewhere.
Imagine a frequency response plot for rack 1 maybe some what ragged? now when you add
rack 2 being a different sample and being coupled it has a altered frequency response which
is overlaid on the first response the total mean averaged frequency response should be
smoother than rack 1 this process continues with each additional rack.

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So wife friendly :face_with_monocle:
image

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Shame that they don’t make a wine rack module so that two hobbies could be combined…

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What is all the “wife friendly” talk. I’d not put up with any of these racks in a million years.

More like “heavily biased in favor of those without eyeballs”.

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I love the way the ornamental fan is displayed above Mana level, but behind the Brik.

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There is an ornamental fan, and a cuddly hippo, I’m not sure what more she could ask for? …other than a divorce lawyer obviously…. :scream::joy:

I’m thinking that system would sound utterly amazing mind you - so maybe between the two of them, they’ve found a blissful co-existence…

I have to say I agree - but that’s the strange thing about this hobby. Imagine you heard it and were totally bewitched by the sound, and felt you’d been given a secret key that only a select few had. I think that’s how Mana owners feel. I’m determined never to hear a Mana based system for this reason!

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Could be a dedicated listening room too, no??

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Mana is excellent, we have Fraim and Mana in our 3 systems. In my experience Mana works very well and gives a really good lift to PRAT and cleans up the bass. Fraim gives a smoother sound and the PRAT is just as good.

With Mana you just have to be a little careful and not have too much (particularly under speakers) as the sound can change, a bit too leaner in my experience.

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