I'm a product tester, finding fault is a compulsive behavior for me. Women love it.
I don't know why you say I should have expected to be disappointed with the phono stage. There's no justification for inferior quality in any feature of a product because quality does not need justification. The engineers at Integra must be enthusiastic about quality audio to have built the rest of the features in this unit, but perhaps we can draw a conclusion about which camp they fall in; vinyl vs digital by their poor implementation of this particular feature. I occupy all camps.
Non-sequitor: Chant from a moderate political rally: "What do we want? Only necessary change!! When do we want it? In due time!!!"
I don't know why you say I should have expected to be disappointed with the phono stage. There's no justification for inferior quality in any feature of a product because quality does not need justification. The engineers at Integra must be enthusiastic about quality audio to have built the rest of the features in this unit, but perhaps we can draw a conclusion about which camp they fall in; vinyl vs digital by their poor implementation of this particular feature. I occupy all camps.
Non-sequitor: Chant from a moderate political rally: "What do we want? Only necessary change!! When do we want it? In due time!!!"