Best phono stage?
- Thread starter awsmone
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I'd like to know that too. Every time we've used them they help the system to be more relaxed and more resolved.
The Nagra HD is an excellent choice. I have the Nagra HD pre and consider it my finest piece of equipment.
I have auditioned the Nagra phono. It’s amazing kit. You can also use the gauge to help align your cartridge precisely. Very useful.
I was torn between the Boulder, the Nagra, and one I don’t hear a lot about the Van den Hul Grail SE+. The Boulder was too dear and, oddly enough, I liked the Grail more than the Nagra, probably because I tend to use VdH cartridges. Literally my only quibble with the Grail is it truly Radio Shack in how you have to adjust it. Pop the top off and flip switches. It’s an absurd lack of user friendly features for a $28k preamp. Mind you, I only did this once, but shouldn’t ever happen.
I have auditioned the Nagra phono. It’s amazing kit. You can also use the gauge to help align your cartridge precisely. Very useful.
I was torn between the Boulder, the Nagra, and one I don’t hear a lot about the Van den Hul Grail SE+. The Boulder was too dear and, oddly enough, I liked the Grail more than the Nagra, probably because I tend to use VdH cartridges. Literally my only quibble with the Grail is it truly Radio Shack in how you have to adjust it. Pop the top off and flip switches. It’s an absurd lack of user friendly features for a $28k preamp. Mind you, I only did this once, but shouldn’t ever happen.
Usually it’s to set the loading and/or gain. Several companies use that approach. I prefer units with adjustments that don’t require access to the interior.
Nothing i enjoy. Equally true of the versions with caps or just diodes. The ones with caps are also super sensitive to the cap audio quality.
The issue of humming toroids is also unpleasant, so i guess one has to choose their own poison. My choice is a toroid designed for low flux density which most of the times helps, alternatively an EI transformer, or a giant multi kilowatt isolation transformer.
Obviously an overspecced toroid is a little more expensive than the few cents worth of a bridge rectifier and capacitor most manufacturers use.
You should not have to set the loading if the cartridge is LOMC. If you do it indicates the designer was not taking into account the significance of an inductor in parallel with a capacitance- in this case the inductance of the cartridge in parallel with the capacitance of the tonearm cable. If the designer took this issue into account its literally plug and play- no need to fiddle with loading.
Loading of MM cartridges is an entirely different matter though. They need to be loaded to prevent the peak caused by the issue I outlined above from causing brightness in the extreme upper end of the audio band.
An over-spec'ced toroid will still rattle if there is DC on the line! Toroids simply don't like DC in their core plain and simple. EI core transformers (as I mentioned before) are more resistant but it affects them too- they run cooler if the offset is removed.
DC blockers are only made using diodes and capacitors. There aren't any that are just diodes. I'm wondering if we're talking about the same thing.
Being able to add capacitance to tame a nominally 47k Ohm MM is a time honored tradition.
Being able to subtly change the sound of an LOMC by matching resistors is also a common, and audible practice.
It is harder to justify changing the reactive part of the load for a LOMC, but many offer that option as well.
Jonathan Carr observed that you’re really loading the preamp, and not the cartridge. In my experience, the more robust preamp designs do not require much fiddling.
Honestly, I couldn’t care less about the issues being kicked around in this thread … but you asked about the switches, and so I gave you the answer. I understand that your response was just the knee jerk “that’s not necessary”, but there are a lot of units in service across the globe that have interior switches to flip whether you think it’s necessary or not.
Jonathan and I are on the same page with this.
When you load a LOMC cartridge, typically at 100 Ohms or less, you're asking over 2 orders magnitude more work out of it. This causes the cantilever to become harder to move- the work has to come from somewhere. This measurably reduces its ability to trace higher frequencies- essentially the resistor is doing two things: it detunes the troublesome (up to 30dB) peak that so many preamps have troubles with (so no more RFI injected into the input of the phono section, which might sound more relaxed as a result) but also reduces high frequency response and may also affect the mechanical resonance of the arm/cartridge combination.
If you selected the cartridge and used a calculator to know the compliance of the cartridge will work with your arm, having this thrown off can be an issue.
Yes, there are a lot of phono sections that have troubles with this. Why its worth harping about is such phono sections can contribute ticks and pops which sound like they are part of the LP surface (due to overload issues at the input). Once the preamp is freed of this issue (IOW, if it has RFI immunity at the frequencies involved) LP surfaces can seem to be quieter. I think the number one issue of annoyance the digital guys bring up over and over again is ticks and pops.
IMO of course that this is an issue which never hurts to raise awareness.
Certainly we all wish for a world “as it should be,” rather than as it is.
Best is highly specific for the individual, yet mercilessly undefinable for the masses.
Best is highly specific for the individual, yet mercilessly undefinable for the masses.
Level matching. To compensate the various level differences between all your audio sources, the Grail gives you the possibility to change the amplification factor. This amplification factor variation is also meaningful, if you use a quite “super-low”output voltage MC cartridge, or your high output voltage MC system is just at the “low side” of it's kind and you would like to use it at the MM input of “The Grail”.
It's simple, just four dip switches, but strange for a preamp that is otherwise plug-and-play. (As with all current-amplification MC phono preamplifiers, The Grail's circuitry automatically matches its impedance to an MC cartridge's input impedance, so there are no loading requirements.)
Analog Corner #297: van den Hul The Grail SE+ phono preamplifier & SAEC WE-4700 tonearm
The catastrophic February 6 fire at the factory where Apollo Masters produced LP-mastering lacquersflat aluminum discs covered with nitrocellulose lacquerwill be old news by the time this column gets to you, but the repercussions of the loss will be ongoing for at least the next year and...
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Oh, cmon, you cannot possibly be so uninterested in other manufacturers products. Prima Luna examples. The film caps are there only to reduce the switching spikes.
The diodes only blockers are only good for offsets exceeding 0.7v, still sufficient for reasonably well designed toroids.
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I have the conductor in my store which I have heard with a battery PSU and a standard PSU.
If you mean 'uninterested' in that I don't seek them out for study, that's correct. I do look online to see what others are up to. Doing a DC blocker without caps seems odd to me and ultimately not worth it since you spend as much for the film caps as you would for the electrolytics needed.
You've not described what you hear yet. We've heard the difference many times in our shop (smoother sound, blacker background); if you hear something negative about a DC blocker, it will be the first time I've heard of. Considering how well they work, I regard this as something unique.
Sorry for interupting your discution gents, but the “smoother sound” intrigues me. Is there any particular dc-blocker you would recommend Atmasphere, or would any one do?
Any should do- unless its of the 'diode' variety of which I was previously unaware. If DC offset isn't a problem in your system, you won't notice anything.
Hi,
the so-called Jeff Rowland PSU is a special power supply, but not with batteries, but with supercapacitors.
Battery power supplies had the former Cadence phono stages, but there is no battery unit for the Conductor.
Can you please tell us your findings on the differences between PSU and standard power supply on the Conductor?
And how the differences are to the CHP 1 and 10?
As someone who runs two Jeff Rowland Design Group Cadence phono preamps (both with Jensen SUTs coupled to Acoustical Systems Archon and Lyra Dorian Mono MC cartridges) drinking from a single BPS battery power supply, I am very interested to know how the current generation Conductor with and without the optional PSU compares. I generally prefer SUT-based phono preamps with MC cartridges, so it may come down to the sonic contribution of Jensen vs Lundahl transformers in the battle of old vs new JRDG phono preamps. No question that the latter is more flexible.
