I think your experience must be limited, and I disagree with your premise. Not to say those vintage units were better than what we have now, but only to say you might be surprised at the similarities between old and new circuit designs. We simply have better parts today and the benefit of hindsight. For one example, the Marantz 7C originally used selenium rectifiers, because that’s what they had available. If you simply upgrade the rectification, the SQ takes a leap forward.
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"
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The Sansui AU III is a commonly listened to by myself as an Amp used for driving Stacked Quads. If I can say it has one advantage in comparisons to other same models that might have been heard by others. Which is where it has been fully overhauled where Components are concerned and Tube Rolled for across many Years. With the permutation for Tubes in use, it makes the option to Bi Amp with the spare AU III quite an expensive consideration. The Phonostage on the AU III Model has been heard on different occasions with a range of SUT's or Head Amp's in front of it. Where during these occasions as a device for replaying LP's, it has proved as impressive a the Modern Day Design Phon's that have been loaned for use at the same arranged session. Very experienced individuals with audio equipment, as a result of their listening to the Vintage Phon' have found criticism, only good appraisal has been shared. |
@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 |
in the 60’s, 70’s analog circuitry was quite common. It was usually discrete components, no IC’s. Most of the experienced engineers had good knowledge on how to build an amplifier. There was no reference component (IC) that was used. Rather many different designs. The standard to follow were the riaa curves as you noted. Now, there are many electrical engineers in the US (and likely other countries) that are not experienced in analog circuitry, as it simply isn’t common.
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Arnieco, your thesis is the opposite of Pani's. Any phono stage requires lots of gain, more than any other audio component, and a filter that conforms to the RIAA standard de-emphasis curve. Except for tubes, today's parts (discrete transistors, ICs, capacitors, resistors, inductors, diodes, etc) are simply superior to even the very best available 50 years ago. Furthermore, the RIAA standard has not changed since the 50s, and there are only so many ways you can build that filter into a phono gain stage. In fact, there are on line calculators that would allow anyone to build an RIAA network any of several ways. The designer does not even have to be a genius. So it stands to reason that today's electronics can be superior to anything available 50 years ago, if the manufacturer cares enough. But likewise I think the old gear can be modernized using the superior parts now available. So there is no real issue or certainly no tragedy. |
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