Vendetta was comparable to ARC Ph1 which is no where in comparison to reference phonostages of ARC today or other reference phonostages. My point is there is no equivalent of a reference Micro Seiki, EMT, Fidelity Research or even Technics in the world of phonostages that could command similar legendary status and be part of a high end chain today
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 11 responses by pani
@motown-l brings up an interesting point. We had some superb SUTs in the 60s and 70s. Those are the references even today. But reference MM stages? Can’t think of any |
@newton_john i didn’t mean to pit the importance of phonostage against bearing, Tonearm or cartridge. All I am saying is the standard of the TTs and cartridges were so much higher than the phonostages they made in that era. It was almost a neglected child which was there for the sake of completion. No serious effort was made to make top quality phonostages to match the remaining analog innovations. |
@noromance in the list you have suggested, only the Aesthetix IO can be considered to be in the company of a high end analog setup. That one was designed towards the resurgence of vinyls in 1995. I am talking about the golden era of audio which ended in the mid 80s, during which all the best of the analog innovation happened. We got the best direct drives, idler drives and belt drives which are still today the reference by which current TTs are measured. We got some serious MM carts and top quality MCs like the TSD15, SPU, Neumann DST and such. Where were the equivalent phonostages? Not one of that calibre was designed. Full function preamps with a small phono section was all we got. Hardly any standalone phono stages. We have no reference from that era against which today’s phonostages can be measured.
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I started this thread. Few points made so far is very interesting but some are confusing too
The point of all this discussion is, if high end standalone phono-stages is a modern concept (like DACs and Streamers) without any legacy to refer, there is still a lot of innovation left to be done and given that analog is such a small market, not sure if there ever will be some final designs like we have for TTs and cartridges
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The reason I write all this is, when i look around for a high end natural sounding phonostage, there are very very few. I can count them on one hand. This is without bothering about cost. I have heard a huge number of stages so far. Most of them sound wrong or low res. High res and natural is super rare. The art of keeping natural authentic music intact while improving resolution is missing among most of the “audiophile” designers. Typically i fall back on old school reference units in such situations but was surprised there are no such examples to be considered from the yesteryear. They are all average stuff by today’s resolution standard. That’s the reason i call this an analog tragedy |
@larryi in those days there were many high quality MM carts and MC carts from EMT and Ortofon. But they relied on SUTs for the MC gain. Those SUTs by Cotter, Jorgen Schou, Fidelity Research were all masterpieces that even today is held as reference. But as we know, the MM stage is the heart of the phonostage which provides the big dynamic range and resolution. That they didn’t bother to engineer to the same level |
@dover your list of vintage standalone phonostage is very interesting. I will check them out one by one. Having a phonostage inside a preamp or outboard is notional. A preamp with phono and external PSU is probably the best thing. Where I was coming from was, there was no cutting edge work going on in phono, like it was happening for amps, preamps, CD players and Turntables. In the 60s we got Marantz, Mcintosh, Quad for tube amps. In the 70s came in ARC, Naim, followed by Mark Levinson Class A, Krell Class A etc. Then there were Japanese giants like Sansui, Pioneer, Yamaha building the best of the seperates. Take any phonostage (other than the Marantz 7 which I have heard great things about) built inside these components, they cannot be considered in the same league as the remaining of the amplification chain. No cutting edge work on phono. They sound noisy and midfi. |
@lewm I agree I have not experienced too many vintage phonostages but I am trying to find good ones and the shortage of it is appalling. It is well known that they had lesser quality parts but if it was only that then just like the Mcintosh, Quad, Naim amps, we would have had phonostages from that era reissued with better parts. Where are they? I would love to find them actually. Marantz is one unit I am very intrigued and will try it. I still feel the innovation around phonostages is at its highest today which is quite opposite to the innovation around other audio components |
I agree a lot with @dover about high end not co-relating with sound of real music. When it comes to phonostage, what makes it high end exactly? RIAA accuracy? It is a given. In fact most phonostages have very low RIAA deviation (even entry level ones) Resolution? Yea that definitely costs more and depends on quality of parts |