The Growing Up Years

Luke Manley was born in 1961 in Cape Town, South Africa. Music and audio equipment has always been an important part of his childhood years - it was during those years that his father, David, a recording engineer by profession, became involved with high-end audio equipment. Their home became the laboratory for David's design work, experimenting and improving high-end audio equipment, and building custom loudspeakers. Immersed in that environment, Luke grew up with an appreciation for natural sounding audio equipment, and developed a perceptive listening ability. At the same time, he also developed hands-on experience working with electrical circuits, mechanical assembly, and soldering.

During his teenage years, Luke attended Dale College in King Williams Town. For his extracurricular activities, Luke excelled in the school's sports team, representing the school in cross-country running competitions. He was also chosen to the school's drama society, taking on leading roles in Shakespeare productions.

After serving his military duty in the South African Army Medics Corps, Luke attended the University of Cape Town, majoring in Finance and Accounting.

When the opportunity came along in 1985 for Luke to join a sailing crew to deliver a boat to the US, the temptation to see the world and explore new adventures was too great to resist. Luke and the crew sailed for over 60 days across the South Atlantic ocean to arrive in the US Virgin Islands, and then continued on another delivery to sail into the port of Bangor, Maine via Bermuda and Halifax, Nova Scotia.

The VTL Years

Luke originally co-founded VTL with his father David Manley in the US in 1986 (See Company History), with Luke responsible for all aspects of the business operations of the company, the manufacturing and quality assurance of all of the VTL products, customer and dealer support.

In this position Luke acquired an intimate knowledge of all aspects of the design and production constraints that the VTL products went through at that time.

By 1993, as David's interest started steering more and more towards designing professional studio equipment, and Luke wanting to take the company to a more market and customer driven focus, the two partners decided it was time to part ways. David founded Manley Laboratories and Luke took over the helm at VTL.

Luke and his mate

Luke is married to Beatrice Lam, and lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. He commutes to the factory (located in Southern California) every week, and goes home to relax on the weekends.

Music is very much an indispensable part of Luke and Bea's weekend lives. Listening to music at home, attending live performances of the San Francisco Opera or the San Francisco Symphony, going to live jazz performances, playing musical instruments with friends, and enjoying good food and wine are amongst their favorite pastimes on the weekends.

Luke's Reference System

Luke and Bea's reference system consists of the VTL TL5.5 preamplifier and the VTL Wotan MB-1250 Monoblock Amplifiers, VPI TNT MKIV turntable with the VPI JMW 12" tonearm, the AudioCraft AC3 MC cartridge, and a Wadia CD transport and 27ix Digital to Analog Converter, all driving the Martin-Logan CLS-1 loudspeakers.

Luke and his music

The music styles Luke enjoys are mainly acoustic music: classical orchestra and chamber, opera, and acoustic jazz. He prefers acoustic music over electric for reference, for obvious reasons.

The Bay Area live venues provide a strong point of reference for the sound of the VTL designs: The San Francisco Symphony at Davies Hall, San Francisco Opera at the War Memorial Opera house, Jazz at Yoshi's (close to the stage, where the in house monitors are hardly heard) as well as live music at other premium venues around the world, such as Carnegie Hall in New York, Catalina Bar and Grill in Los Angeles.