INTRODUCTION
THANK YOU!…
…for purchasing the Manley Laboratories Mastering BACKBONE. This product is the culmination of
many custom Manley mastering consoles and mastering processors we have built over the years. When
we started building custom consoles in 1990 the only option for mastering houses was to commission
purpose-built systems from rare engineering shops like ours. We began to attract top mastering engi-
neers who would approached us and request audiophile grade consoles and dedicated mastering ver-
sions of our compressors and EQs. We were happy to listen and oblige - and frankly, somebody had to
support that neglected side of the business.
Over the next dozen years, mastering businesses flourished and branched, and many more audio
companies developed products aimed specifically for mastering. In fact, a whole new sub-category
of mastering grew out of this, most often called “project mastering”. We were getting deluged with
requests for custom projects at a point in time when it was difficult to keep up with orders for stan-
dard products. We had to limit the number of custom projects we could accept, and even those were
beginning to take too long to build and test. Eventually we stopped accepting custom work altogether.
Meanwhile, several smaller companies were beginning to market non-custom off-the-shelf mastering
consoles (some remarkably similar to ones we had built).
However, even with several companies building reasonable mastering consoles, we were still get-
ting requests for something similar; not custom, but “Manley, like the famous guys use.” The Manley
BACKBONE is one part of our solution. In fact, it represents an evolution in performance from where
we left off in our custom designs.
The Manley BACKBONE is built with a unique electronic topology that maintains a fully balanced
signal path through 95% of the console. All other designs require the balanced signals to be converted
to unbalanced before sections that, for example, allow you to boost or cut level, then inversely need to
be converted back to balanced to feed the outside world. In other words, this new topology not only
does it in one stage rather than three or four stages, but also does it as cleanly and quietly as any single
stage could that we know of, including fully discrete approaches. This topology also provides better
common mode rejection and power supply noise rejection than conventional approaches. This is signifi-
cant especially in the “Sum-Difference” functions.
Each of the 10 gain blocks and all of the switches are on connectors, which means if the unit ever
requires service, repair can likely be done quickly without the need for a technician or soldering iron
– just a medium-small Philips screwdriver. No expense was spared in the quality of the parts, so one
should expect many years of continuous professional use.
Please note that this is not a “Monitor Control Box.” The Manley BACKBONE is simply a device
that routes various analog processors with maximum fidelity and allows you to maintain the shortest
possible signal paths while providing some flexible central control functions. This unit is not supposed
to color your sound in the least (excepting the SUM-DIF feature, of course); it just exists to let you use
your favorite outboard gear in more creative ways.
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