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Melody P2688 Preamplifier - Review by Richard K

Last June at the T.H. E.  Show (the Home Entertainment show) in Newport Beach, CA I stopped in Angel City Audio’s room and heard the Melody P2688 for the first time. I fell in love with the delicacy and richness of the sound and could not get it out of my head after a long day listening to gear of every sort imaginable. By the end of the day, I had to go back to check if I still thought the Melody was better than a whole day’s worth of listening to other equipment…, and it was. 
 
I am a bloom and decay guy, and the Melody fits my conception of what my ears want to ear. I put off buying the P2688 for about two months, but finally I could not live without it. Since I have purchased the Melody, I had a chance to compare it to an Ayre preamp and an Aesthetix, and both sounded too dry, and also made most recordings sound too similar. With the Melody I feel that I experience each recording as a separate and distinct aural experience. 
 
One example. One of my favorite recordings is Philippe Eidel’s Mammas, a one-shot group of strong European female voices. With the Aesthetix I appreciated the beautiful recording and enjoyed the voices filling out the recording space. But with the Melody I could follow the decay of each phrase ending and hear it working its way up to bounce around in a high stone ceiling. 
 
I will die with this machine.

 

 

-Richard K