If boulder is tops what is second tier?

i've listened to the Boulder phono stage a couple of times at shows. it did sound good but certainly not particularly unique.....but until comparing it to another with the same cartridge in the same system who knows?

so far my favorite is the internal phono stage in the battery powered darTZeel NHB-18NS preamp. but there are many i have not personally tried in my system.

based on my personal experience i can say that if the dart is at the top of my list......the Lamm LP2 would be a level or two below that....the Aesthetix Io Sig would be slightly below the Lamm....the BAT-VK10SE would be below the Io. i would add that many have rolled tubes and modified the Io Sig and considerably improved it.....and who knows how that might change my impressions. my experience with the Io Sig was stock.

i am told that the 'big' FM Acoustics ($40k list price) phono stage is similar to the Boulder......and that was the reference used to design the darTZeel.

after hearing what properly implimented battery power does for the dart pre line stage section i would be skeptical that any A/C powered phono stage could compete. but that is just my guess.....until you compare who knows?

Rich; you said;

"Suffice it to say, there are a number of things regarding the engineering of electronics that should prevent them from being affected by the cables connecting them."

i am one that has a great deal of experience with different gear and lots of cables. no matter what gear or combination of gear i have tried the sonic performance has always varied with the cables i used. cables are a component.....whether one likes it or not. OTOH if someone sees it different no problem.....i feel no need to convince anyone. it is typically the cable non-believers that have some inate need to convince people differently.

i have recently had an experience that does say a bit about cables/gear interaction though. Herve Delatraz, the darTZeel amp and preamp designer/manufacturer, wrote an article for Stereophile back in November 2001. this was prior to him introducing any commercial products. this article focused on how impedence interaction between electronic gear reduced the ultimate performance of any cables. he theorized that impedence matching would basically eliminate most cable differences.

a year ago i recieved his new preamp (i already had two of his amps). both his amp and preamp are designed to work with 50 ohm BNC cables both in and out (he calls this design a 'zeel' connection). he represents that any length up to 1 kilometer will sound the same (which is to say much better than standard cables due to impedence matching). after listening i must agree with his representation.

the only thing is that even though the Zeel connection outperforms any standard cable approach......after comparing various 50 ohm BNC cable brands there is still a variance in how each type sounds (i prefer Herve's version).....and the differences are quite easy to discern.

conclusion; we are not finished learning about what cables do.....but there is no doubt in my mind that different cables many times sound differently. which does not mean that everyone can/will hear the differences in their situation.

one more issue; there is no place in the audio chain where cables have more effect than the phono cable.....the tiny signal that the cartridge produces combined with the need to boost it 40db to 70db will multiply cable influence many times. if you can't hear phono cable differences look to your system performance and resolution and not proof that cables don't matter. it is very clear.