Superb PHONO Preamp ?

My friend bought the Klyne 7. Listened to the unit: (1) On MC, it was strange for me that 100 Ohm did not sound better than 47K, the sound did change, but not conclusively one better than another settings. Theoretically, and on other phono stages, 100 ohm definitely should've been better. (2) Very detail and silvery sound, but cold and not emotional. Violin tone lacks the 'friction' of horse hair rubbing the string. Not projecting air surrounding, vocal or cello.

The Aesthetix has a bigger, lusher, and slower sound, and the noise is quite obvious. I personally find it too slow, and the 2-box to me is not acceptable.

I ended up personally with the Groove. Extremely quiet, the best in the detail retrieval, so far heard none better. And it does not sound 'solid-state', but very suave, musical and a slight warm tone (but not overly goldend). Very fast transient and explosive dynamics.

Just to share that I picked Groove after hearing the following stages.

Owned-then-sold: AIM3, AIM3a+GB, ARC PH3, Linn Linto, Pentagon, Krell KPA x 1, Krell KPA x 2 (dual mono), Vendetta SCP2B, Spectral DMC20.2

Heard-w/o-home-trial: Aesthetix Io, Herron, Klyne 7, YBL, Hovland.

My comment on Aesthetix is solely relative to other phono stages I heard. It is more noisy than Vendetta and other solid state and bigger/lusher than solid state should not be a surprise, but it doesn't mean that it is all gooey like a Jadis.

But, if you have not heard the Linto, Vendetta, or Groove, it is hard to grasp how 'fast' these phono stages are relative to tube, no matter how good, tubes are 1000x slower than the best solid state. That's fact, no design can fundamentally make tube to have a faster rise-time and higher damping factor than solid state design. For personal preference, I like fast, high impact sound, and thus I am using linestage from Spectral, and active speakers like ATC SCM50ASL.

Perhaps I should rephrase that "Aesthetix is the fastest tube phono stage, but slower than the fastest solid state phono stage"... that's what I really meant. It is definitely a much better stage the ARC PH3, but still more noisy than the PH3.

The COTY award went to Connoisseur, but your reference to the ranking actually is the 'Best Buy' award, which meant to say the Linto was a better value than Connoisseur, not a surprise.

The COTY is cost-no-object accolade, but it is also not exhaustive, as only candidates submitted for COTY competition (major cost $$$-wise for manufacturers), and the setup, hand-holding, etc has to be first-class to compete in COTY. While Best Buy is a loose entry requirement, and the reviewers were given broad liberty and a budget of 'stars' to vote for BB products.