Allnic H-8000 has been sitting on my rack for about a week now. Still not enough to give a full comment, but there’s something that I can share.
It is a very well built 2-piece phono stage with a very strong umbilical power supply cable in between the power unit and phono unit. Not too much to say about the features which are all listed on their website. As said above, the debut sound in my studio was not that impressive. It was a bit dry, but very quiet. I turned the unit on 24h for about 3 days and the sound was improving quite noticeably. I assume a 100 hours’ burn-in would be needed.
H-8000 is not a kind of “wow” gear, which impresses you in the first minute, not so even when it was improved significantly after the initial burn-in. I’ve encounter some “wow” equipment in my hifi years, however most of those could stay for a long time. I believe balance and neutrality are the essence of hifi. H-8000 is a very neutral sounded piece of phono stage. I guess it comes with the culture of Eastern Asia, not exaggerating but full of inner power.
I have an Amber cartridge, however unfortunately the stylus tip got some issues and I had to return and replace with a new one. Pity that I cannot drive an Allnic cart with the H-8000. Instead, I use MSL Platinum, VDH Colibri and London Reference with H-8000.
H-8000 gives me a very quiet and dark background from the 1 min though. I guess the power unit design has the credit for this. Overall speaking it is not a high gain phono stage. Though it was rated 74db for its MC inputs but it doesn’t sound like 74db at all. I wrote to the Allnic tech crew and they replied that it was actually 64db and they’re going to correct the specification.
The sound of H-8000 as said is very neutral, though in a full tube design, it doesn’t give you an overwhelming warmth. Instead, it is transparent, clean, full of details with a moderate level of warmth. It doesn’t remind you all the time how much muscle it has but when needed in those tutti moments, it can also give you deep bass , fast response and a crispy rhythm. Compared to my other phono stage, Thoress, it obviously gives more details, slam, micro-movements, and a broader and deeper soundstage. Thoress is warmer, a little bit blurred in details compared to H-8000 and a bit up-front. But I love Thoress a lot for its simplicity and quietness and also its sound signature.
The best fit so far is with MSL platinum with good level of details, scale and dynamics. It is interesting that with MSL 1030 Setp-Up into MM, the sound signature is very different from going directly into H-8000 MC. Well I prefer more the 1030 STUP but direct drive gives me a quite interesting experience with a different style but still good result.
London reference into MM is also quite good, I would say averagely good, not to a point impressed me a lot. I seem to prefer the Thoress MM amplification slightly more, which I feel can show better the sound feature of London reference, warm, layers of details. But on Allnic, the tweet sound more silky and smooth and the bass slam is more dynamic. I can easily tell Allnic to be superior in playback quality but i still like the warmth of Thoress.
VDH Colibri cannot play with Allnic at all. With is medium output and quite high inner imp, the output gain was very low and I had to turn up the volume too loud. Though according to Mr. Hervé from DartZeel, the DTZ pre-amp could be turned up pretty loud up to +11db, I still don’t like see the volume turning up too much.
I tried to roll 2 sets of tube on the H-8000 with what I have handy. I replace the 300B with a Full Music premium version 300B. It increases a bit the warmth, adding some density. And I replace the supplied 5U4G with Marconi CV 575. It gives a big step-up in improving all aspects with a fuller spectrum sound. I’m quite happy with the outcome of the tube rolling.
The Allnic dealer is sending me a Head-Amp, HA-5000 for a trial. According to the Allnic crew, the best combo is to use HA-5000 as a pre-preAmp to H-8000. It is similar to a step-up but not a step-up therefore no gain would be lost in the pre-preamp stage. With its +30db gain onto the 44db MM gain in H-8000, I assume it would be an interesting combo.
I’m also expecting my Amber to come back soon so that I could have a full Allnic setup.
Stay tuned...