Atma-sphere MP-3 Mk III vs Alnic L-10000 OTL linestage + Allnic phono aotl

Ouch. The Allnic 10000 is expensive.. You can load up the MP3 with V-Caps or spring for the 2 box MP1.

I have the Atmasphere mp3 mk3 with all silver vcaps.  I don’t recommend it, phono stage to me is not a user friendly, extremely noisy, to me an overly priced preamp.  I recommend the Allnic, hands down the unit to buy.  

Look at Dave Slagle's EIMA LR Phono Corrector. 

Call Albert Porter and see if he has an Allnic H-7000 for sale. I have one and it's extremely quiet, plenty of gain and built like a tank. LCR unit. All tube, separate power supply.

I second dentdog on the Allnic H-7000 recommendation. I have one also, but I’ve had Allnic pre’s for 10 years, linestage and phono and they are quiet, versatile and very reliable. They work great with Atmasphere OTL amps also. I used an L-3000 with Atma’s MA-2’s for 9 years with superb results. Best of luck!!

I have the Atmasphere mp3 mk3 with all silver vcaps.

@zipost 

Your System page shows an MP-1, not an MP-3. FWIW, we don't recommend NOS 12AT7s in the phono (as seen in your system photos) as they tend to be too noisy. I agree that some of the NOS tubes sound better, but its very rare to find examples these days that are actually quiet, simply owing to the fact that audiophiles have been scouring the countryside for them for the last 50 years.


Your system page suggests that your power amp is single-ended. I agree it can be quite tricky to make this work with a balanced preamp, since single-ended and balanced are inherently incompatible (if this isn't handled correctly one result can be buzz of some sort). However I don't agree that the phono section is hard to use, since all phono cartridges these days are balanced sources- with the MP-1 its plug and play with a balanced tonearm cable. You don't have to worry about loading (even though the phono section does have a loading strip), because the phono section is immune to the RFI generated by the cartridge/tonearm cable combination.
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The main advantage of the MP-3/MP-1 line section is its direct-coupled (balanced) output. We patented the technique (actually there are two patents now), which is part of why the MP-3 and MP-1 are so far the only tube preamps with a direct-coupled balanced output, until the introduction of the Allnic.

Both The MP-1 and Allnic can drive a 16 ohm loudspeaker (and as a result, headphones too). IOW, both preamps actually have a scaled-down power amplifier as the output buffer. There are not that many ways to execute a direct-coupled output! I'll be very interested to see/hear how Allnic has approached the issue.

I had both units Mp3 and Mp1 in my set up.   Using stock tubes or aftermarket NOS, no way i can say that the Atmasphere Phono section works on Low MC.  Balanced cables or Rca single ended, whatever choice of cables ( i tried them all).  It gets worst when the cartridge is low at .25mv ( according to the manual, it’s doable for low mc) all you hear is tube noise rush.  That is from my own experience and honest assessment!

We show at audio shows with Dynavectors and the like that only have 0.25mV and don't seem to have any problems (we got Best Sound at Show from Dick Olsher with exactly that cartridge). The cartridge that we use in the shop is only 0.25mV and it seems to work fine.

So I suspect you've been using noisy tubes without realizing it. It could also be that your tonearm cable isn't set up properly; certain hookups will cause the phono preamp to be quite noisy because the cartridge isn't presented to the input of the preamp correctly.

I had an atmasphere mp-3 over a year and then upgraded to an mp-1, For the money it is hard to find something better than an mp-3 for both analog and linestage, excellent preamp, the phono stage if you have RF around your place or EMI sources and you are not not using a good phono cable could pickup some external noise, the phono stage is designed around gain and it is hard to keep quiet if you are not using the proper interconnects or tubes, I loved my mp-3.

If you use a high gain MM cartridge you might want to use gain attenuation plugs which are inexpensive from Ralph, I ordered some for my mp-1 phono stage, that’s the way you would switch the preamp between high and low gain.
Edit 1 - I have a truly balanced system using balanced pre (damn autocorrect always typing pee) and balanced amps, but I have tried single ended amps with no issues as long as the interconnects are properly build.