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review iPhono 2

I must be slow as I could not find a link to place this as a review. 

So, I have written about the 1st gen iPhono in the past, comparing it to the very fine Coincident phonostage which I believe is about $6k. I preferred the iPhono but I could just as easily imagine someone else going for the Coincident unit. In that review I thought the Coincident had a better sustain, decay and bloom while the iPhono was hands down the winner in the prat department. The iPhono made my feet move, the Coincident, not so much.

Later on I added the iPower to the fray and the iPhono shored up the areas it lacked. As a former owner of the very very nice Graaf GM70 I was a bit surprised and dismayed when I finally received the iPhono and heard it once fully run-in. I would not have shelled out the thousands of dollars I paid for the GM70 and the vintage NOS tubs I purchased to make it sing, oh and the $1600 I had to spend on the Ortofon ST-80SE SUT to use with the MM inputs of the Graaf as I could not get it quiet enough to tolerate with the MC inputs. The very small $400 iPhono basically did everything the Graaf did (with the iPower that is).

My reference phonostage for the last few years (and probably many more to come) is the fabulous AMR PH77 and I’m running it with a set of Bendix 6900 tubes which elevates its performance even more than the already stellar stock configurations performance. In comparison to my PH77, I found the 1st gen iPhono to be a bit thin and during crescendos it could become a little ragged. Still, it remained in my arsenal as a handy and trusty back-up. The PH77 is of course tubed and as we tube owners know all too well, sometimes they fail and you are down for a while.

Compared to most phonostages I have heard, some of them costing up to $9k I found the 1st gen iPhono to be able to hold its own in some cases crazy as it may sound it was just plain better. I believe AMR intended the iPhono/iTube to be used in conjunction as a sort of baby AMR PH77 and I ran it that way for some time and yes, it does share that familial DNA when it comes to sonic signature.

Move forward some years and I have in my possession the iPhono2 and the iTube 2. To say that the iPhono 2 is better than its predecessor is far too simple a statement. Mr. Fremer thought it to be at least twice as good as the original. I would agree with his assessment. Out of the box with the included iPower is shows far more prowess in the areas of bass but otherwise is pretty close to the original. After about 20 hours a bit more fluidity begins to appear. Again at the 100 and about the 340 hour mark big jumps occur in the areas of fluidity and continuousness. When you get to 480 hours forget about it!

This thing sounds like it has a tube in it, and I don’t mean in that classic overly warm soft rose colored sound that I found so fantastic when I was new to high end audio. No, I am referring to a pellucid but meaty embodiment and rendering of the music. A sound one would immediately associate with MUCH costlier gear.

Most of my listening has been done with my second turntable system which is composed of a Technics SL-1200 GAE with a fully broken in Denon 103R on a LP Zupreme 15 gram headshell and my London Reference. The phono stage then feeds the iCan Pro (best pre I have heard and I have owned 2 MFA Ref units, the baby Ref and the full Ref), the Tube Research Labs GTP 2, and many more. I have had in my system for evaluation the Veloce (battery powered) the Allnic L3000 and many others. From the pre it goes to the custom active crossover and then to a Graaf Modena for the mids, a Harmonix Reimyo PAT777 for the Raal Ribbons and a pair of Acoustic Reality Thaumaturges ($25K when available) for the woofers. The speaker is called the Encore and is my own design. I simply got tired of paying for passive boxes made of MDF with wood screws going directly into the glued wood dust and sold for tens of thousands of dollars but I digress :)

The sound is at once flowing and dynamic. It grabs and holds my attention and really gets my foot tapping. The sound is MUCH more refined and fuller than the original iPhono with no hint of raggedness during large scale bombastic music. For instance it scales far more convincingly on some of the more challenging passages in Hans Zimmers wonderful soundtrack to Gladiator. The original could sound a bit blocky if you take my meaning. It did not have the ability to gracefully scale the mountain so to speak. The iPhono 2 does it with much more ease and refinement.

Here is where it gets interesting. As good as the iPhono 2 is out of the box and it is very very good (and especially after 340 hours or more) in fact far far better than the DS Audio optical cartridge system that I auditioned, it can be made to sound a good deal better. Now this is my own thing, the iFi line of SMPS’s are admittedly super quiet and much better than most SMPS such as the ones inside my apple gear, but I hate them ALL.

I do not like green eggs and.., ahem. Sorry, just flashed back to Dr. Seuss when I thought of my aversion to SMPS’s.

I mean I understand why they are used, efficient,  cheaper to ship and inherently regulated. But they still hurt the sound of my system. As an aside I am actually having a custom linear PS built for my SL-1200 GAE to replace the awful SMPS that Technics installed. So to the point, I replaced the iPower with a linear regulated lab grade power supply. I don’t like hyperbole so I offer none but the result was nothing short of breath taking. There is a great deal more that can be had from that little silver box with a good (and I do mean good) linear supply.

Next I added the iTube 2 to the fray. As I mentioned before AMR always sorta intended this combo to be a baby PH77 as was or may still be mentioned on the iFi site. How to put this; everything I have said about the iPhono 2 up to this point; multiply it by 2 times again. Now you have that sorta living presence that the performers are in your vicinity. Things are rounder, more palpable and it breathes much easier. Again I powered the iTube 2 with a linear supply along with the iCan Pro. Please don’t misunderstand me, I lived with these units powered via there very good SMPS’s for quite a while and they made beautiful music BUT I knew there was much more to be had.

Like Mr. Fremer (paraphrased) stated, to get better than the iPhono 2 you are going to have spend much more and you still may not surpass this unit. I auditioned a $16K current phono stage that people rave over and my ears tell me that it cannot compete with iPhono 2/ iTube 2 combination.  I will not call this a reference phono stage. It is great and I listen to it daily but I reserve titles like reference for the likes of Ypsilon, VDH Grail SB and my AMR PH77. The little combo does far more than I could have imagined. It capable of truly astounding musical reproduction on a grand scale.  

Remember to let it run in for at least 100 (and I suggest 300) hours before you really start to judge it but my guess is it won’t take most people that long to know that this is special gear designed by some super gifted engineers who also happen to actually be able to HEAR. Thanks for reading and I hope this helps someone make a decision one way or the other. Happy listening.


audiofun
213 responses Add your response
mantis-toboggan
16 posts
 
It's really too bad that this otherwise great thread has been derailed with a bunch of sound and fury.

I have been enjoying the iPhono2 immensely since my last post. I now have well over 700 hours on it, still using the Pyramid LPS. I also got the Blue Circle stuff I have been eyeing for a while. Picked up a Blue Circle Fx2 X0e powerline conditioner, as well as a Blue Cicle balanced power module. Oh man, filtering out the noise from the powerlines made a tremendous difference in the sound - it removed this high frequency glare that I didn't even realize was in the sound. I'm convinced that the brightness that some people experience with the iPhono2 is a result of dirty power lines.

So I heard a huge improvement with the Blue Circle powerline conditioner and  balanced power module, but I cannot stress the importance of the fuse you are using, and the astounding difference it makes to the sound. I was so blown away by the way the AMR fuse completely changed the sound signature and overall presentation and imaging (honestly it sounds like I am listening to a different turntable and cartridge) ,so I kept reading and went down the fuse rabbit hole. In December I got a good deal on some SR Black fuses, so I put one in the LPS and also in the Blue Circle balanced power module. And the difference was once again jaw-dropping. The SR Black fuses are absolutely incredible, and my system sounds nothing like it did back when I was using the provided power supply. I am in heaven right now, enjoying my system more than ever :D

I also modded the Pyramid LPS with an "Asylum Cord" power cord (Belden 19364 cable and a Marinco 5266 plug, both cryo treated), and also replaced the wire going from the fuse to the on/off switch with some cryo treated Neotech UPOCC hook-up wire. Also made a higher quality power cord for the iPhono2 as well, using some stranded Neotech OCC wire. These items only cost a few dollars, but have brought the sound up to yet another level. I honestly can't believe what I am hearing. 

Honestly I can't thank you enough, audiofun. All the advice you've provided here has been absolutely spot on.

The reported problems with the iPhono2 are nothing more than a faulty batch of power supplies, but it seems there were a bunch of dudes with axes to grind ready to pounce. Reading all these disappointed dudes' experiences on stevehoffman forum is disappointing, but funnily enough I had my own weird experience with the iPhono2 and almost returned it. I would defend the product to the death now, but at one point I was so pissed off at it. I couldn't get this grounding hum to go away no matter what I did; grounding the grounding post didn't work, I tried grounding every item connected to it in every possible combination and nothing worked. I was convinced the thing was defective and almost returned it, but wanted to give it one last real attempt. I touched a real ground off the outer shell of the output RCA's (the ground of the output signal), and finally the thing was silent. So I just wrapped a ground wire around them and it was silent ever since, and also stopped running hot. I've had it for almost 2 years now, it's been turned on 24/7 the entire time and it's doing great.

Anyway, this business with having to ground the output RCA's was only with the supplied power supply. With the Linear Power Supply, the output rca's don't need to be grounded, and also the thing never runs hot anymore. It's just luke warm to the touch.

Seriously, I am pretty sure all those problems with it running hot and having weird hums are from the power supply, and some of the guys who returned it probably could have got it to work if they tried long enough, but I can't really blame them. iFi had a bad batch of power supplies or something. Mine seems fine but it only worked when I grounded the output RCA's. And mine is a pre-order unit, so it was one of the very first shipped. I can't say enough about how awesome this thing is, and I am so incredibly grateful that I didn't return it. But to be fair, the grumblers have a point in that iFi actually has some pretty strict wording on their website about using only the provided power supply, so really, the people who are complaining are the ones who have are following the manufacturer's instructions, and they are also not getting anywhere close to getting the best sound out of their units. And all of us who use linear power supplies are praising the units, but we're actually going against the manufacturer's recommendations. It's kind of ironic that we're praising the thing and they're roasting it.
racedoc
80 posts
 
Hi audiofun,

thank you for your review of the iPhono 2!

Due to the fact that I had a fully broken in iPhono 2 for a longer
lasting test in my stereo system, unfortunately I have to disagree
in a few points.

Despite the fact that the iPhono 2 is one of the best phono stages
in it price range it firstly had no chance in some aspects (like
surface noise, 3D, tone colours...) compared to my reference
(internal Tidal phono stage).
Secondly I compared it (like you) with my DS Audio systems
(DS-002 and DS-W1) and these are audiophile miles ahead of
what is possible with the iPhono 2 (for this comparison I used
a ZYX 4D - Atmos and a Shindo SPU).
Thirdly the iPhono 2 was now replaced with a similiar priced
phono stage which bettered the iPhono 2 in all relevant aspects
by smaller to significant margins. The (of course in my opinion)
clear winner in that price range is the Trichord Dino Mk3. Especially
with the optional Dino+ PSU it is my clear favoured "best bang for
the buck".
audiofun OP
799 posts
 
Racedoc:

Hi, you are welcome.

I have no experience with the Tidal gear, but it is beautiful and I would hope that it betters many phono stages based on the pricing differential alone. Obviously I have no opinion as I have not had the pleasure of hearing the Tidal gear, perhaps one day :)

I have heard the DS and we definitely differ. The DS was probably the single worse phono stage I have ever heard. I found it to be very phasey with respect to surface noise artifacts. The surface noise was separate and distinctly out of phase from the rest of the music. The surface noise was always left of center and out front, it was really weird. The sound was thin and anemic, just plain bad. I have suspected and I hope that the unit was faulty because I am not exaggerating, it was terrible. I really have to believe that unit was not operating correctly, especially in light of your listening impressions.

I have not heard the Trichord, sounds interesting.

Thanks for your insights, they are appreciated.
audiofun OP
799 posts
 
Mantis-toboggan:

I’m just seeing this as I grew tired of some of the foolishness. I appreciate your words, thank you. My whole goal was just to share my experience with a superior and affordable phono stage.

I appreciated the intelligence of how you and racedoc presented your impressions regardless of whether or not I agree with those impressions.  At the end of the day we all have our likes and dislikes.

You have probably cost me money :) because now I have to buy some of the SR Black fuses and compare them to the AMR mk2 fuses. If the SR Blacks are better, in they go :)

I’m really glad you are enjoying your unit and more importantly, your music!
invictus005
597 posts
 
After all these long posts, iFi is still Chinese junk. It will always be Chinese junk. 
lewm
13,030 posts
 
Mantis-Tobaggan,
Congratulations are in order as you seem to have been successful in taking your audio system to heaven with you.  I hope to try that some day myself.  I have two systems, and I'd like to bring them both.

You speak of the need to ground the output RCAs does not make sense, if you will pardon my saying so.  The output ALWAYS has to be grounded.  In fact, if by some chance the output jack is not grounded within the driving component, it will still be grounded to the audio ground of the component that is being driven, via the ground lead within the IC which connects to the outer (ground) contact of the RCA. Can you amplify on your experience?

What is the cost of an SR Black fuse?  (I just looked it up; $120 from High End Electronics.)  So here we have a very good phono stage that costs less than $500, but wait, it needs a $120-fuse to sound best.  My advice: don't buy any product that uses the word "Quantum" with a capital Q.  That's a red (or black) flag that you are in the hands of a charlatan.

I am not scoffing at the ifi phono2, by the way.  I think it's a great product in its weight class and probably above.

Audiofun, If you are referring to the DSA phono stages, it is indeed quite likely that something was defective when you auditioned it or them.  Those are very fine solid state phono stages; it would be very surprising if the ifi 2 outperforms them, just based on the cost differential and the honesty with which the DSA stuff is constructed and offered to the public (as compared for example to most "audiophile" fuses).  From your description, I offer the possibility that the two channels were 180 degrees out of phase with each other.
chakster's avatar
chakster
6,144 posts
 
@racedoc 

The (of course in my opinion)
clear winner in that price range is the Trichord Dino Mk3. Especially
with the optional Dino+ PSU it is my clear favoured "best bang for
the buck".

As i can see Trichord Dino MK3 is another phono stage designed for MC cartridges with MM as a bonus, because there is NO option to change loading for MM, which is a MUST HAVE for any good phono stage design! There is only one option for MM and this is 47k ohm, not higher. I don't know if it can be moddified, but again i'm pretty sure the RCA plug resistors is much better option, so we can use whatever load resistor value we like, not just what a manufacturer offering us. It is stupid to ignore 100k Ohm for MM, the best MM cartridges made by JVC Victor, Grace supposed to be loaded at 47-100k Ohm range and Japanese were smart to suggest these settings for the users in every manual that comes with their cartridges. But the designers of the MM phono stage nowadays are not so smart, they are more concerned about MC capabilities and completely ignoring MM capabilities which is more important.  

 

mantis-toboggan
16 posts
 
lewm,
Thanks for the congratulations and your thoughtful post. I have been lurking this website for years and always enjoy reading your posts.

Not sure what was going on with having to ground the output RCA’s on the iPhono2, but it was indeed weird. I agree as per your explanation, it shouldn’t be the case, but maybe something in the iPhono2 was not connected properly, or maybe it was because the provided power supply is only a 2-prong power supply without a ground prong. Either way, connecting the turntable’s phono cable ground wire to the iPhono2’s ground post did nothing, and when I tried grounding the iPhono2’s ground post to a real ground it actually made it worse. I was out of ideas and was ready to return the product, but before doing that I decided to open a ticket with iFi and see if they can figure it out. iFi said it’s almost definitely a missing ground somewhere. I had the iPhono2 hooked up to an ADC, and the ADC was connected to a computer with an optical cable. iFi thought it was because I was using an optical cable going from my ADC to the computer, which has no ground, and they recommended using a coax, so I tried that and the hum was still there.

In my attempts to diagnose the hum, I took the ADC completely out of the chain and connected a pair of headphones directly to the iPhono2’s outputs, and the hum was still there. It was only when I accidentally touched a real ground off the output RCA’s that it finally went silent.

What you say about the iPhono2 needing a fuse to sound its best seems a bit unfair at face value, to be honest. You could say that about any tweak for any turntable, amp, anything. My turntable doesn’t need the expensive mat I’m using, but it sounds better with it. My amp sounds better with a nice powercord than a cheap one. It’s not fair to single out the iPhono for this. Besides, the iPhono2 itself doesn’t take a fuse. It’s the linear power supply (that iFi doesn’t recommend using) that takes a fuse. We’re talking about tweaks here.

As for the "quantum" thing, I completely understand the reluctance to buy into something with "quantum" in the name (except the TV show Quantum Leap, which rules). I have always been a skeptic and cannot stand the pseudoscience that various new-agers are always putting forward, laden with "sciencey"-sounding buzzwords like Quantum.

There was another audiogon forum where a user said something similar - they were intrigued by the SR Black fuses, but they had reservations about Synergistic Research based on a strong disagreement with the company’s philosophy. In a previous life, I also would have immediately dismissed anything with Quantum in the name, quickly laughed, assumed charlatanism and placebo was at work, and moved on.

But I only pulled the trigger on this product after reading the many testimonies on various audio forums, including several threads on audiogon. I wasn’t even a believer in fuses until a few months ago. It’s interesting that even people who believe in audio cables, power cords, power conditioners, are still reluctant to consider fuses. We all have that line where it’s like "ok, this is too much". Fuses are probably the most easily dismissed, yet significant tweak out there. After experiencing the improvement the AMR fuse made, I got curious and read at least a dozen forums, specifically searching for posts from users who have experience with multiple fuses. No one really praised the AMR that much, a couple of people said it was good and had lush midrange, but the couple of people who had both the AMR’s and the SR Blacks couldn’t stop talking about how good SR Blacks were. The guy I bought my Blacks from is an amp maker, and he had various high end fuses for sale, from AMR to Furutech to Isoclean, and his opinion was the same as what I had read on many forums - the SR Blacks are not just a little better than the other fuses, they are a lot better. Having scoured many discussions about the SR Blacks, I have personally never seen a post by somebody who tried the SR Black fuse and was not absolutely astonished by it. Even Synergistic Research puts their money where their mouth is and offers a 30 day trial with a full refund to anyone who is not satisfied, and to my knowledge, no one ever sends these things back. Mine were used, on a very good deal, and I knew that if I didn’t hear a difference or didn’t think it was worth the money, I could sell them for the same price that I bought them, so there was really no risk.

I completely understand the reservation of supporting a company that one feels perpetuates pseudoscience with the terminology they use, but that’s more of a political decision than an epistemic one, and I’m personally not as invested in "identifying" as a skeptic and punishing companies for supporting pseudosciencey language as I used to be (and I totally used to be that guy). I’m just interested in what’s true. If these SR Blacks transform your system as much as people say, or if it’s all just hype, I wanted to know. So, for me, this exercise was not about which companies I support and which ones I don’t, or voting with my wallet. I was just blown away by the difference the AMR fuses made, and I wanted to see what else was possible. The SR Blacks were the most hyped fuses out there, and I could try them without financial risk, and curiosity got the better of me.

While I am still an extremely skeptical person, most of the "audio skeptics" I come across reading online forums are mind-readers who assume they know the inner-workings of everyone else’s mind. They act convinced that everyone they disagree with is fooling themselves or is under the spell of the placebo effect, and this goes not just to fuses but to power cables, interconnects, speaker cables, everything. I started out being one of these people, but I’ve been surprised way too many times in this hobby to ever again dismiss something a priori. At one point I believed cables made no difference, and eventually I heard the difference myself. The same thing happened with my belief in digital cables, power cords, and most recently fuses. So while I am still very skeptical and science minded these days, I want to at least check for myself.
crazybookman
24 posts
 
Great read about this little preamp. I bought it last week and was shocked how it completely transformed my audio system. The best way to describe what I’m hearing now is ’continuous sound’. Up until now, what was bothering me about my system is this graininess, this discontinuous sound. iFi iPhono 2 fixed that for me, and it did it in a rather spectacular fashion and with such aplomb.

About a year or so ago I got tired of the harshness and graininess of my audio system. I had invested a lot of money (for my budget) trying to build a decent digital hi fi. Made a lot of improvements and tweaks, and the sound kept getting better and better. But the fundamental discontinuous nature, the graininess, glassiness and overall hardness of the sound stubbornly persisted.

So I finally decided to switch from digital to analog. Bought me a decent turntable, a decent tonearm and a decent cartridge and SUT and phono preamp. Yes, the vinyl playback beat the digital playback, easily, but I continued being annoyed by the ’electronic’ nature of the sound. I was actually dismayed that even a fully analog front end would still deliver grainy, discontinuous sound that retained that annoying glassy, hardened metallic quality.

It was only last Saturday, when I plugged in iFi iPhono 2, that I’ve heard, for the first time in my system, that glassiness and metallic overtone disappear to be replaced by silky smooth, warm, liquid sound!

My questions:

1. How many hours before this phono fully breaks in?
2. Why are the manufacturers cautioning users not to replace their flimsy walwart PSU with any other PSU?
3. What is the recommended linear regulated PSU that I could use to replace the original iPhono 2 PSU?
4. Is there a way to select MM gain that would be between the 36 db and the 48 db?
5. Would iPhono benefit from isolation pads/sorbothane pads/spikes?
6. When experimenting with various RIAA settings, I can barely detect any difference; is that other people’s experience as well?

On a side note: criticizing someone for enjoying a chosen component in their audio system is the same as criticizing someone for enjoying their meal/drink in a chosen porcelain dish, using chosen cutlery and glassware. We all have preferences in how we like to enjoy our meals, and it’s not only the food that matters, it is also very important the surrounding ambient and the accoutrement. Why would someone think it is any different when it comes to enjoying music, is honestly beyond me?

Thanks!
wrm0325
72 posts
 
Have the iphono2/itube2 combo in play for a few days now. What else to say, other than I'm completely at a loss to figure how this combo can sound so compelling for this price. And I'm comparing it to much more expensive tube/passive pre gear. Very highly impressed. More to come.

Just ordered a couple of Twisted Pear Placid HD PS units. It will obviously take a while, but I will eventually get the two Placid PS units built and in the system. I'll report back then.

Cheers,                   Crazy Bill The Eel Killer
pbraverman
22 posts
 
I have posted my experience with the iPhono2 and iFi’s customer service here:

https://forum.audiogon.com/discussions/my-feelings-and-incidentally-the-ifi-audio-iphono2

My story is just data for you to consider. Make of it what you will.
audiofun OP
799 posts
 
pbraverman:

Read your trial, sorry you had to go through that. It's never fun when these sorts of things drag out. I thought you handled it well and I especially liked your balanced and intelligent response to one of the less enlightened posters to your thread. 
pbraverman
22 posts
 
@audiofun Thanks for your kind words. I am not trying to be a jerk, but I don't feel like I was treated fairly, and I do think that's fair game for posting. Listen well! Thanks again.
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