Popularity of a step-up transformer?

[chatr]

Ussually these days buzz comes from 3 main sources if to speak about SUT:
1. Tonearm grounding and tonearm itself. Some of tonearms hums by design.
2. Cable between SUT and Phono must be shielded. No exceptions.
3. Loose connections. Many years ago manufacturers used standard rca socket female/male dimensions. Not today.

Mine has no buzz, no hum, no hiss--completely silent and quite.
1. The ground wire (black wire in photo) from the tonearm is unconnected. No extra cable between the tonearm and SUT. No RCA plugs. No RCA sockets. No switches. Just solder the tonearm internal wires directly to SUT unsheilded primary wires. Hard wired to one turn ratio at a time.
2. Again no extra cable between SUT and the phono stage--just directly screwed the SUT unsheilded secondary wires to gold plated pure copper RCA plugs. All magnetically active parts came with the plugs are unused.
3. The same brand same material gold plated pure copper RCA sockets are used. The perfect fits are acheived. They are soldered directly to the phono stage PCB--no intermediate cables are used.

The result is extremely transparent.

 

[Balle Clorin]

Listened to these ..level matched to within 0.4db
Music First
Audionote S6
Consolidated Audio
Lyra Kleos and Ear Youshino 324

Quite surprised that the sound difference was so obvious as it was. Makes the objectivist in me wonder what is going on. Some matching effects do matter …

 

[Balle Clorin]

Mine has no buzz, no hum, no hiss--completely silent and quite.
1. The ground wire (black wire in photo) from the tonearm is unconnected. No extra cable between the tonearm and SUT. No RCA plugs. No RCA sockets. No switches. Just solder the tonearm internal wires directly to SUT unsheilded primary wires. Hard wired to one turn ratio at a time.
2. Again no extra cable between SUT and the phono stage--just directly screwed the SUT unsheilded secondary wires to gold plated pure copper RCA plugs. All magnetically active parts came with the plugs are unused.
3. The same brand same material gold plated pure copper RCA sockets are used. The perfect fits are acheived. They are soldered directly to the phono stage PCB--no intermediate cables are used.

The result is extremely transparent.
View attachment 144498

View attachment 144505View attachment 144500

Not cats in the home I guess..

 

[iaxel]

Listened to these ..level matched to within 0.4db
Music First
Audionote S6
Consolidated Audio
Lyra Kleos and Ear Youshino 324

Quite surprised that the sound difference was so obvious as it was. Makes the objectivist in me wonder what is going on. Some matching effects do matter …

And...?

 

[Balle Clorin]

…. AudioNote 300B Japan version, also Maratz Model 7 original Mint. EMT 930, and some speakers I forgot to Get the name of.

EDIT Consolidated Turnratio is 1:

Michael advised me to go for a 1:12 turns ratio, given that my EAR324 phono stage does not have a lot of headroom to handle an excessively amplified input voltage.​

 

[iaxel]

Seem like Devore Fidelity O/93.
I was asking about the comparison, which one came at the top of the list?

 

[dionisofun]

Listened to these ..level matched to within 0.4db
Music First
Audionote S6
Consolidated Audio
Lyra Kleos and Ear Youshino 324

Quite surprised that the sound difference was so obvious as it was. Makes the objectivist in me wonder what is going on. Some matching effects do matter …

The objectivist in me wonders what differences you objectively heard between the suts mentioned.

 

[hb22]

Listened to these ..level matched to within 0.4db
Music First
Audionote S6
Consolidated Audio
Lyra Kleos and Ear Youshino 324

Quite surprised that the sound difference was so obvious as it was. Makes the objectivist in me wonder what is going on. Some matching effects do matter …

What wires/cables are you using?

 

[Balle Clorin]

And...?

The complete set up

setup — hifideli

www.hifideli.com

 

[Balle Clorin]

What wires/cables are you using?

I do not know, and do not care much about cables as long as the LCR values are appropriate enough to not screw up the phono signal .and have proper shielding/low noise pickup. Professional cables, not hi-fi cables.

 

[Balle Clorin]

The objectivist in me wonders what differences you objectively heard between the suts mentioned.

Good question, I cannot hear anything objectively. But subjectively one SuT in particular sounded thin , bright and had a smaller sound image. We went Back and forth and and rechecked levels but my impression remained. To exaggerate one sounded like a transistor table radio, and another like a full range stereo system.

I had a SUT once that measured a significant drop in bass level below 60hz compared to others , maybe the same happened here.

 

[Balle Clorin]

Seem like Devore Fidelity O/93.
I was asking about the comparison, which one came at the top of the list?

If I had to choose and had too much money I would go for Consolidated Audio, For features I would go for Music First, the sound was not to different from Consolidated. Consolidated and AudioNote sounded remarkably different. And I am an objectivist and do not hear differences in cables, feet or power products.
But before I spend such money I would measure the SUTs to make sure the difference I hear is real..I will be surprised if what I heard was not measurable.