first, yes, LAV is Lavender

. Maniak however, I don't know. AMP has a Polish Maniak who's obviously not the same

I guess that's a question we could ask to Manwe.
About the sizes issues, well, unMO3 seems to always bring up huge files, which differ greatly (size wise, again) from the "original" releases (as found in zik disks and the like). However, from what I could see, there are also some musical differences (couple of notes, another sample, etc...), but, well, nothing big

. As such, I stick to the "DFC" tag (direct from composer) when a music is from a game but not ripped (or sent by the author) to distinguish those from the direct rip. I didn't find, yet, a 100% identical file (even when ignoring the MO3 sample size effect).
Sylvain