Essential, Are you quoting the phono gain of the Boulder or its true S/N ratio? 46db S/N sounds impossibly bad for any commercial product, let alone one that costs as much as the Boulder. |
Banpuku, Maybe you ought to re-evaluate the other preamps with a 10K load on your cartridge. Perhaps it is the cartridge that is working optimally into the Lyra piece but not so well with the 100-ohm load afforded by the other gear you tested.
Altho I know that it is a relative rarity, I wonder why no one has mentioned Raul's Phonolinepreamp in this thread. Earlier comments led me to believe it is a contender, but I've never heard it myself. |
John, If you can get away with only 10-ohm grid-stoppers, perhaps you could get away with none at all. (I have forgotten what tube types are used in the K&K that might require grid-stoppers.) In circuits that really need grid-stoppers, 100 ohms is usually the minimum starting point. Anyway I use Audio Note 100-ohm grid-stoppers in signal path applications, and I agree that they are very transparent. For less demanding applications, Riken-Ohm resistors as grid-stoppers are also excellent. I have been thinking about that K&K balanced phono stage for quite some time, for use with MM cartridges. Looks very good. The other balanced tube unit that I like is the Hagerman Trumpet, which sadly seems to be NLA. |
Thanks, guys. I am sure that both the ARC and the AMR are wonderful, based on a slew of favorable comments, but they are goddawful expensive, not within my budget for a secondary phono stage. I am trying to stay at or under $2500; way under that amount would be better. |
Fcrowder made the very good point that only a very few of us are qualified to say that this or that phono stage is "best", because most of us have a very limited listening experience with a wide variety of the "best" phono stages. This hasn't prevented subsequent posters from making absolutist claims. That's OK by me; it shows real enthusiasm and delight. And some guys have owned an impressive number of different top notch phono stages, so their opinion carries some weight, As for me, I would need to hear more different phono stages in a controlled environment before making such a claim, though I remain a devotee of the Atma-sphere MP1.
One issue for me is the question of the fundamental difference in sound (if there is such) between solid state and tube phono stages. I have yet to be blown away by a solid state phono, but I certainly have an open mind on the subject. I should, because I have not heard Connoisseur, Boulder, MBL, ASR, Pass, Essential Audio, Klyne, etc. I own a solid state Ayre P5Xe, which is very nice but a bit lacking in the ability to convey the excitement of music, as compared to the MP1. I have heard that tweaking the Ayre can boost its performance considerably. One guy I met at RMAF built an external PS for his. On the subject of Klyne, there has not been much mention of it in this thread. Is this because it seems to have been discontinued? Is Klyne still making new units or just repairing and occasionally upgrading their old ones? My new found interest in vintage phono cartridges makes me yearn for a unit with externally adjustable loading both for capacitance and resistance. I have a lot of early to mid-50s jazz LPs (including the sublime Ella and Louis recordings) that are not cut to RIAA specs, so adjustable compensation is very appealing as well. Has anyone heard the Krell (please forgive me) KPA? It sports variable bass and treble roll-off. Was also looking at Yamaha C2A and Accuphase C200X, very vintage pieces that have these features too. |
The AMR was designed and in part executed by Thorsten Loesch, a guru of tube DIY people. It has many highly desirable build features not found in most commercial products, e.g., a choke-loaded power supply, true dual mono, etc. Also it has that amazing adjustability for playback compensation, and for cap and resistor loading. I take your opinion seriously, Downunder. Too bad the AMR did not fare better in your opinion. But do you think the difference you heard might have been due to auditioning the AMR in an unfamiliar system, compared to your home system? |
Check Audiogon for sale ads. You're already here, so why not? I think the FM122 (maybe the same unit each time) is regularly available used for $7000. Were it not so expensive, I might have bought one myself by now. The adjustability is very alluring. However, I have no idea whether it sounds good, or not. The 222 is even higher end, I think. |
I purchased a Silvaweld SWH550 phono stage (the top phono in that now extinct line of product) about 6 months ago, to use as a dedicated MM phono stage. Found it on eBay for surprisingly low cost, probably because few people have ever heard of Silvaweld, let alone do they know that Silvaweld products were designed by the same guy who now designs for Allnic. Brad Morricab gave rave reviews to the lesser SWH450 version, in Positive Feedback and on the internet. The 550 is pretty cool, uses tube rectification, choke-input filter, and separate tube-based voltage regulators for R and L channels. Each tube in the circuit also has its own decoupling capacitors located near the plate pins. However, unlike the top Allnic phono stages, the SWH550 does not use LCR RIAA filtering. I've been enjoying it, but not insanely so. The other day, I replaced the suspect output coupling caps with a pair of Mundorf Silver/Oil caps that I broke in before installation. Holy cow! This simple upgrade vaulted the Silvaweld into the stratosphere. The SWH550 feeds my MP1. I use the built-in MP1 phono stage for MC cartridges. I have not heard a huge variety of very expensive phono stages, but suffice to say that the Silvaweld is terrific, as is of course the MP1. The Silvaweld has MC capability; the needed extra gain is added at the input via the use of what appear to be battery-biased JFETs, rather than the more typical SUTs. Have not auditioned the MC circuit. This should remind us that brand names are secondary; the meat of the matter is the circuit design and the parts implementation. |
Dear Programmergeek, I am sorry and surprised to learn of your frustration with the Io Eclipse. This is the sort of thing that causes end-users to abandon tubes in favor of solid state. Don't give up too easily. You might contact Albert Porter; he used an Io happily for many years, although lately I think he must have switched to Allnic H3000, since he is a dealer. But he may be able to give you some tips. Sounds to me like you have one or more bad tubes in there. If the issue is on one channel vs the other, you might identify the culprit by switching one tube at a time from one side to the other, until the noise shifts with one tube change. Or variations on that theme.
Never had any such issue with my Atma-sphere MP1. |
Kiko, Is it correct that the Pro-ject max input resistance is 1200 ohms? Yet in other respects it seems suitable for MM cartridges, as well as MC. Why does it not offer 47K ohms or the like? |
