Best phono stage?
- Thread starter awsmone
- Start date
if you come from the uk why not a tron nemesis phono. world class phono ok 2 boxes( heavy) but not a standard wide.
View attachment 141642
Nemesis RIAA Phono Stage - Tron Electric
Once in a lifetime something really special comes along which changes peoples perception of what is possible in terms of performance and quality. Enter the Nemesis! A valve phono amplifier all others will be judged against. RIAA Phono Amplifier It took 5 years to locate all the parts to build...tron-electric.co.uk
I had my Basis tt, Airtangent arm, compressor pump and a few thousand lps stored away 7 years due to lack of room.
I started to stream music and was appalled by the sound quality in the beginning.
To my surprise after spending a boatload of money streaming did sound musically engaging and I was and am still happy with it.
A new home, enough room for my analog toys.
I would like to add a CH Precision 1 to my L1, X1, A1.5.
When budget allows, sigh. Right now my Klyne 7 phono stage will have to do.
Will my vintage Klyne be embarrassed by today’s phono stages? What to expect from it and new phono stages?
I started to stream music and was appalled by the sound quality in the beginning.
To my surprise after spending a boatload of money streaming did sound musically engaging and I was and am still happy with it.
A new home, enough room for my analog toys.
I would like to add a CH Precision 1 to my L1, X1, A1.5.
When budget allows, sigh. Right now my Klyne 7 phono stage will have to do.
Will my vintage Klyne be embarrassed by today’s phono stages? What to expect from it and new phono stages?
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No, I don't know any other transistor phono with so few weaknesses in music reproduction.
You can try Sut with the lowest gain setting. You'll be surprised at how much potential it has. Every time I hear it at a friend's house, I think, "I'm such a fool, why did I sell it?" Congrats have fun listen to music.
Probably not!
Most of the new manufacturers phono stages are just cashing in on the vinyl resurgence, as well as appealing to certain markets where the look and the material of the product is more important than how it sounds. I would check out the manufacturers who have been making vinyl based products since before the digital era, as those will have had about 40 years of development which the newer companies won't have. Not forgetting that 99% of manufacturers dropped analogue and moved over to digital from 1982 onwards and now some of them, as well as some completely new companies have come back to analogue products when there is a sniff of money to be made.
As I have said many times on a few audio forums, to make a good phono stage you need to know what it takes to make it sound really good and the vast majority of manufacturers simply don't.
A great component is a great component. The Klyne is just that. Anything that’s potentially better will cost an arm and a leg. Tubes are always there for something different.
the Kline 7 is a fine component, I used one for many years, the 7.5, excellent, but there is better, Sutherland big loco much better, to beat the Klyne you are looking at $20k on the new market IMO, if you like the klyne I wouldn't waste my time on tubes for what its worth
Agree. CH P1 might be available used with the P10’s getting into the market. Lots of high end SS. I think Gary Koh’s Genesis SS phono is more of a new design effort. The Sutherland is great as well.
I picked up a used Aesthetix Io Signature and it has kept me from looking at any phono pre amps.
I carry 2 phono stages that I like. The CH Precision P1 and the upgraded P10 and also the ASR Basis Phono Stages. I also have some Certified Pre-owned P1 in stock. The CH Precision Phono Stages have a built in upgrade path. You can reach out to me at 626-975-1353.
A Gryphon Orestes and Grandinote Celio are a lot of fun for music lovers.
For the playful, the Restek Emas (7 phono inputs, all freely configurable) and a Soulnote E2 (create your own equalization curve, mm/mc, and optical pickups) are great.
For the playful, the Restek Emas (7 phono inputs, all freely configurable) and a Soulnote E2 (create your own equalization curve, mm/mc, and optical pickups) are great.
Expensive but remarkably versatile is the Soulution 757. Allows the use of optical cartridges and reel to reel plus can act as a preamp if multiple inputs not needed. While not the equivalent soundwise(or costwise) of my 4 box Aires Cerat Zephyrus, its a lovely sound for solid state.
FWIW a lot of crackle on LPs isn't the LP at all but instead is generated by the phono section.
You'll know if your phono section is an exception if changing the 'cartridge loading' has no effect.
Yes. In my case, Minnesota.Sure depends on what state your vinyl is in.
I've bought used vinyl many times that does not have a tick or pop on an entire LP side. I'm very used to that. But I've found that in the digital community that's a major complaint. I discovered serendipitously (and in a very graphic manner) about 35 years ago that if the designer was not careful about the design of the input of the phono section, ticks and pops could be generated by that phono section due to a poor high frequency overload margin.
This problem is very common with solid state amps and receivers built in the 1970s and 80s; I'm convinced an entire audiophile generation grew up thinking ticks and pops were endemic to LPs when really phono sections were responsible.
I have a lot of used records, some have a few scratches and other blemishes. The well preserved, and most newer records play without pops and ticks, unless one of the tubes, often Russian NOS are going bad. My 1986 SS pre with built in MM/MC phono is dead quiet and you can hear changes of loading the cartridge to the correct value quit clearly, something i consider a advantage, not a design flaw
The same is the case with my Io, just add the inherent tube rush that come with this design. I am never put off by a older slightly scratched record, i prefer them to the perfect reissue every time.
If you were to test the cartridge on the bench you'd find that the loading has zero effect on it at audio frequencies because its inductance is so low. Literally it can pass a 10KHz squarewave with no rounding and loading it has no effect on that.
But loading can have a tremendous effect on the input of the phono section.
As you know, the cartridge is an inductor. Its in parallel with the capacitance of the tonearm cable; together they form a tuned resonant circuit (this is the same principle used to tune the FM radio in your car). With most LOMC cartridges this resonance can be as much as 30dB above the signal of the cartridge and might be between 1MHz and 5MHz. When that peak goes into excitation (oscillation, which it does when a signal is present), if the phono section isn't able to handle the RFI it will make distortion, which you hear as brightness.
The loading resistor detunes that resonant peak; thus killing the oscillation. That gets rid of the brightness.
The theory behind inductors and capacitance in parallel is taught in electronics 101 in the first week anywhere where electronics is taught. But many designers that did not take that aspect of LP playback into account. So their phono sections respond to loading resistors- its easily heard. But if the phono section can handle the RFI thus injected into the input of the phono section then the loading resistor doesn't do anything. You get less ticks and pops too.
This is all very easy to demonstrate, easy to measure and there is a thread on this site that goes into this particular topic with quite a bit more depth.
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