Preamp with near-reference quality built in phono?


First some background. About 6 months ago I decided that I want to get off of the continuous upgrade path, and plotted a 2-3 year course for purchasing high quality, reference or near-reference components. The first itch I satisfied was my digital source; I threw away all of my "budget" transports, DACs, upsamplers, digital cables, etc., and purchased a high-quality single-box machine that does a number of things well and has the most musical red book playback I have heard. I then turned my attention to analog. I have not finalized my choice of arm and cartridge, but my table is flexible enough to support many.

Here is my current dilemma: I currently want to upgrade my phono preamp to something that compliments the rest of my system a little better, and that is flexible enough to work with as I settle in on a cartridge/arm combo (for example MM and MC would be nice). Concomitantly, I have begun to wonder if my decision to go with a passive linestage was a good one for the long term. I have read the arguments both for and against the passive, and having tried mine in someone else's system, I have found that its performance can be grossly impacted by changes in surrounding components. So my question is this: does a full function preamp, with phono, exist where the built in phono stage is comparable to best of breed, stand alone phono preamps? Since this is a long-term project, budget is not a huge concern, although I would like to stay under $10k if possible.
sdatch

Showing 1 response by larryi

Probably no. But, there are some extremely good preamps that can be had with really good phono stages. The Audionote line of preamps come to mind first.

I have a Levinson No. 32 linestage with a built-in phono stage. The phono stage has a very wide range of adjustment to gain, resistive loading and capacitive loading, channel balance, low frequency filtering, etc. Also, because it is integrated with the incredibly versatile Levinson control system, all adjustments can be done by remote control. However, I have not shot this phono stage out with any stand-alone units. I've heard fantastic systems with phono stages that cost near $30k, such as the Boulder and Connoisseur phono stages, but I haven't had the privilege of hearing these in my own system.