We can't improve on what's on the record. What you may or may not be hearing in the concert hall is irrelevant to this.
Phono Stage - The great analog tragedy
In the world of analog playback, there is an interesting observation. There has been tremendous innovation in the field of
Turntable - Direct, Idler, Belt
Cartridge - MM, MC, MI
Tonearm - Gimbal, Unipivot, Linear Tracking
For all of the above designs we find some of the best reference components designed in the 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s. Most of the modern products are inspired from these extraordinary products of the past. But when it comes to phono stage, there is hardly any "reference component" from that era. They just standardized RIAA curve for sanity and left it. Manufacturers made large preamps and amps and allocated a puny 5% space for a small phono circuit even in their reference models, like a necessary evil. They didn’t bother about making it better.
The result? It came down to the modern designers post 2000 after vinyl resurgence to come up with serious phono stages for high end systems. Unfortunately they don’t have any past reference grade designs to copy or get inspired from. Effectively, just like DACs, reference phono stages is also an evolving concept, and we don’t have too many choices when we want a really good one which is high-res and natural sounding. Very few in the world have figured out a proper high end design so far. And most of the decent ones have been designed in the past couple of decades. The best of the breed are probably yet to come.
It is a tragedy that our legendary audio engineers from the golden era didn’t focus on the most sensitive and impactful component, "the phono stage"
Showing 7 responses by newton_john
@pani you say "Coming back to phonostages. I think it is the next most important component after a TT. If the TT is good, a $500 cartridge with a Rega arm into a top class phono will sound superb. But if the phono is poor cheapo, a $5000 cartridge into a $10000 tonearm is gonna sound average. It is after all amplifying the signal at the source by 1000 times. We so easily discard it’s importance" If it is to be amplified 1,000 times, it is important to get the source signal right in the first place as any imperfections such as noise, distortion and interference will also be magnified. |
I agree that it is snobbery. Speaking as someone who has played an unamplified acoustic instrument for several decades, I would never claim that this somehow gives me better judgement than anyone else on what constitutes excellent sound quality. What we are trying to do is most faithfully render what is on the record regardless of genre. |