What is the best phono preamp you have heard?

What a blast from the past....

My Allnic H 1201 takes the cake for me. Its everything I looking for.

Americanflag, the quoted portion in my response to Jperry was not in the original review.

I have used numerous phono preamps over the past 20 years. But the internal phono board in my Classe CP-500 preamp sounds the best. Possibly because it is not outboard? I don't know. But very nice sounding.

Figured I might as well contribute to a 10 year old thread.

Tbg,

What do you mean certain parts were not in the original review?

Jperry, although the comment about compatibity for some MC cartridges was in the original review, the rest was not. Unbeatable at any price was.

Based on the quote below from Michael Fremer's review of the BMC MCCI he does not think it is the best, and it is not compatible with some MC cartridges.

"I'm not suggesting the MCCI is in the same league as the Ypsilon VPS-100, Boulder 2008, or other top phono preamplifiers that I've heard. It skimps somewhat on instrumental textures and timbres; and the bass, while very well extended, doesn't exhibit the control and stability those manage."

Jafox, the Koda is a line stage and the MCCI is a phono stage. I have always thought the BMC MCCI was their best piece. It may have been a coincidence that the Koda blosomed just when I put the HFC URR on it, but I'm not taking it off to check this out.

Tbg, 5-15-14: "The Robert Koda K 10 is now the best I have ever heard"

Tbg, 5-16-14: "I agree with Fremer, the BMC MCCI ($3890) is the best at any price"

Ok, so in one day the "best" got bested. And I need to pay $13k for a power cord to truly appreciate this phono stage? Now that's pretty sad.

I agree with Fremer, the BMC MCCI ($3890) is the best at any price. You ought to hear it with the HFC power cords.

For the money, the Linn Uphorik MM/MC phone pre-amp.

It's extremely flexible & quiet and I'm using one in a non-Linn system with the EMT TSD15 SFL MC cart mounted on a Brinkmann Bardo / Origin Live Encounter anal;og setup.

I haven't heard a lot of different phono stages, but IMO, the Herron VTPH-2 seems to be the most uncolored unit. It is also very detailed and has excellent timing / transient coherence. Nice and natural dynamic snap. No stridency. I can find nothing wrong with it.

The Robert Koda K 10 is now the best I have ever heard, but one must provide the best power cord (HFC Ultimate Reference Rhodium)and the best isolation (Star Sound Tech Apprentics platform on a good base.

The Graham Slee Era Gold MK V

The amount of separation between instruments, the dynamics and the speed with which it replicates the sounds breaths new life into recordings. The increased depth and width of the soundstage is mesmerizing and it is really something special to listen to.
It can be less than forgiving however for a recording that steps too far outside the bounds. It won't smooth that over.

Threshold fet-10/PC with e power supply.

I have heard it and in fact I have the step-up tranny.

This is a amazing phono pre. It is fast and nuanced but still has soul. I have heard this in two completely different systems (same phono pre) and it did nothing but great things.
The Ypsilon gets my vote. If only I could afford it.

e

Crubio-On paper it is promising but have you heard this unit?
Has anyone else?

I've never had one in my room, but what I've heard at shows, suggests it is the Ypsilon VPS 100 with their MC20 stepup transformer. If I could afford it, I'd have it.

I haven't had opportunity to sample many high end units, the seduction was great IMO, and the bottlehead Eros is now the best I've personally heard!!! After 8 months, I'm still loving it!!!

The AMR phono stage has most of the features you desire, perhaps even the last one.

I have yet to hear a best phono stage...I own/owned a few good ones: the Aesthetix-Eclipse and Signature both with 2 power supplies and NOS tubes, Lamm lp2 deluxe with Western Electric 417a tubes, Allnic, Manley Steelhead, VAC Renaissance, etc...because there is no single best. Obviously, system dependence plays a major role, but I am not sure one unit can be a "best".

You have to decide on what you are willing to spend, what features are important to you and compromises you are willing to live with and live with them.

If I could plug in one unit that simply is the best, my wish list would include-ultra low noise, huge variable gain, infinitely adjustable settings from a remote, neutral to the extreme, plenty of air and bloom, very low
distortion, and most importantly the ability to play more often than not music that makes me feel like I am at a live performance.

I have not heard one like this yet

The Nagra VPS.

I think so far -- IMHO -- it has to be a toss up between the Boulder 2008, Precision Fidelity C7/A Revised, and Counterpoint SA-5000.

i am a total newbie, and may be WAY behind the rest here, but does anyone have nay experience with the early (mid-to-late 70s) PS Audio Phono Pre amps? seems like many who have posted here are either old enough, or have been thru enough gear to possibly have tried these?

i have a PS Audio III and a matching Linear Control Unit up and running... probably late 70s maybe like 1978-79?

just asking, and trying to learn a bit. was perusing past threads on MC cartridges, amps and S/U transformers trying to pick up some info and happened upon this thread.

just for your information, i have mono Quicksilver M-80s, the PS Audio pre amps with Vandersteen 3s, also a Rega Planar3 TT, McIntosh MR 71 and Jolida JD100 CDP... all vintage, except the TT and CDP.

thanks
tom

Aesthetix IO Signature. I can't believe that I have not posted here yet? Until now, the one and only best phono stage I have heard is the IO Signature. I have heard the Pass Xono, the ASR Basis both mini and exlusive, the Einstein and the integrated on my Octave preamp. The IO was to me in another league coimpared to these others. I have no reason to look further nor do I desire to persue anything else to compare the IO too, I am completely off the audio rage of the day,,,,,,now I need to see how quad amping will sound like, yes, that is my next quest, 4 tube mono amps.

Ciao,
Audioquest4life

I am posting here again since I put new tubes in the ear 834p. I have to say I am very happy with this unit and will be taking it to a higher level. I am considering having it rebuilt completely with the finest parts.

Paragon 12A, wow, how fondly I remember that piece.

The build in phonostage in my Paragon 12A preamp and my Audio Note AN-6c or Koetsu (each with different cartridges) step up transformer. I've heard a lot of phonostages (owned a ASR Basis Exclusive and Audio Research PH5, E.a.r.) and even sold my beloved Gryphon Orestes phonostage since they all could't match the Paragons ability to make you focus just on music while listening.

The General Electric MONO one tube(6SC7) phono preamp circa 1955- 959. 1957 Price: $10.95. YES, it is the First and still the Best preamp ever made (millions sold over the years). This is the preamp that started the moving magnet revolution. SIMPLER IS BEST. I would not use any other phono preamp with my Cary 211's

It's interesting to get people's take on the Herron vs. the Rhea. I have owned both for the past few years and have a different take than others who have compared them.

The Rhea eats tubes and eventually gets noisy. Since I'm replacing the tube set AGAIN, I dropped the unit off at Aesthetix for a once over to see if some other problem is causing this behavior (I live by the beach and it may be salt air which is a pain in the ass in so many regards). However,

With new tubes, the Rhea strikes me as AT LEAST comparable to the Herron in every way and strikingly superior in one key regard.

Although the Heron may be a bit tighter in the bottom end, the difference is marginal at most. OTOH, the "bloom" evident in the Rhea makes the Herron sound a bit dry and analytical (though less so than the ARC PH3 which I had in the system for a while). Note that this characteristic was evident with various cartridges through an ARC LS25 & Cary 300Bs into Merlins and Zingalis; also through a Joule LS, ARC VT130SE, Odyssey Stratos, and Cary 805s into Verity Parsifal Encores; as well as a few other combos tht have come and gone. In other words, it was consistently evident. Pretty much every visiting listener I can recall has concurred.

The Rhea is also far more flexible with multiple ins and outs and very expansive remote loading capability. The latter may be the key to its superior performance since cartridge matching is so critical.

When equipped with a new tube set, it is almost as quiet (i.e. dead silent) as the Herron. FWIW, the Herron is better than any other phono stage I've had in the system - and that is a very long list!

Regards,

Marty

Foundation Research V5 tops them all. Custom assembly made specifically for the cartridge to be used. Hence, no switches. From the ground up, well engineered with built quality being first rate. Two key areas are addressed in its design, Mechanical & Electrical Isolation. There is a waiting list and delivery is 8 to 12 weeks ARO. At 6K, there is none better, even at double or triple the cost.

I second the Nick Doshi Phono Preamp. It out classed my prior reference the Supratek Grange. Which I have to say was a fine preamp as well, with excellent bass control, however, the Grange lacked the organic tone and musicality off the Doshi. Other phono pre amps I have owned are the Mcintosh C200 and Mcintosh C2200. Neither of the Mac's are in the same leauge as the Nick Doshi or the Supratek Grange.

Dear Swampwalker: Do you have any comments about?

Btw, which your best one.

Regards and enjoy the music.
Raul.

Dear 4yanx: I wonder why do you have interest on our circuit board supplier? do you need it?

Regards and enjoy the music.
Raul.

Dear Swampwalker: Finally, something that help us to make a minimum trade-offs on the circuit/layout design was the extensive use of specialty computer help/design platafforms like: Spice, Ultiboard, electronic Workbench/Multisim, etc.., were we can confirm the validity and truthful of our work.

Regards and enjoy the music.
Raul.

Dear Dear Swampwalker : Our Phonolinepreamp is an active high gain design: no step-up transformer/autoformers inside/out.

The gain can be tailored up to 100db with the same quality performance: no trade-offs.

Regards and enjoy the music.
Raul.

Dear 4yanx: Sierra Proto.

Regards and enjoy the music.
raul.

I live and work in the Valley. Who is your board supplier?

Dear Swampwalker : In absolute terms I agree with you: " every design involves trade-offs ", like anything in the life: there is nothing perfect.

Your post give me the opportunity to do a " stop on the road " ( thx for that ) and " see " which are our Phonolinepreamp trade-offs :

first, the whole concept design: it is a true balanced input to output, non feedback, direct coupled, dual mono, pure class A, fully regulated input to output with a dual mono external power supply and current drive whole design with a " ground plane " approach.
This topology is for the three separately stages that composed the Phonolinepreamp in an integral unit: MC stage, MM stage and line stage: as a fact this Phonolinepreamp has three independent preamps.

In my opinion we don't have any trade-offs here.

second, circuit diagram ( layout ): this is something that after 12 years of work José perfectioned. The latest modifications we did it in this year. We research everything about the RIAA eq., MC/MM and line stages and today we can say are almost perfect.
Here to our knowledge there is almost no trade-offs, but who knows: ?

third, parts we use it: in those 12 years we almost tested ( matched ) the whole critical and non so critical parts like: transistors, Fets, teflon capacitors, resistors, solder, buffers, connectors, switchs, attenuators,
power transformers, etc, etc. Btw, our design don't use any signal cable internally, everything is soldered to our 4 layers boards. Where were necessary we use military specs parts and 0.01% limit on the value parts.

Here I think that we can have some trade-offs: these trade-offs could be the whole limits and quality of those parts. THis not depends of us, we use it only the best.

fourth, circuit boards: we use one of the best/quality boards supplier that we can find and it is in Silicon Valley.

can we have a trade-off here?. I think not but it could be.

fifth, power supply, this is it:
To complement our balanced design's inherent power supply rejection capability, we have designed an audio grade power supply that takes power quality to a new degree. The power supply is located in its own separate chassis in order to minimize any possibility of interference in the analog signal stages of the preamplifier. The power supply has been specifically designed to be an improvement over battery supplies having very low noise and low impedance . Some of the characteristics of the power supply are: Discrete dual mono design with 4 ultralow noise supplies for the left channel and 4 ultralow noise supplies for the right channel, dual high-quality toroidal transformers, AC power RFI/EMI filtering, extended power range of +/- 20 % of the nominal input, and high quality military-grade power connectors.

Is there " land " to improvement?, maybe, but for today we are satisfied.

sixth, the interface with the outside world: Ultrawide bandwidth output buffers.
There are 4 ultrawide bandwidth class A balanced output buffers responsible of interfacing the preamplifier to the outside world with transparency and current capability to drive even the most difficult loads and cabling. Every channel has 4 independent power supplies, two of them
dedicated to the balanced signal stages, and the other two dedicated exclusively to the output buffers. The adoption of this strategy is simple to explain: No matter how difficult the output load is, the preamplifier will always deliver the optimal signal quality at its outputs.

I think no trade-offs here.

I know that our Phonolinepreamp is not perfect but we are still trying to achieve that target.

The result of our work is a preamplifier combining
the purity and transparency of a passive preamplifier with the speed, dynamics and drive of an active preamplifier.

Well, what can I say?. I don't want that you think that I'm conceited, no: the fact is that we are proud of what we have and we want to share with you and every one our achievements about.

Regards and enjoy the music.
Raul.

Raul- I do not doubt that your phonoline stage is excellent, but I do take exception to the "no compromise" statement. Every design involves trade-offs. If there was one design approach that did not involve compromise,then everyone would follow it. That is a bit of an overstatement, but I think you understand what I mean.

Dear Rapogee: There is a critical audio link that in my opinion all of us must to take in count to give you answers to your " open " question: that critical audio link is the line stage preamp where we ( all ) paired those phono stages.

Normally the stand alone phono stages needs a line preamp for it can work. For to do this we need additional connectors and interconnect cables and the line preamp it self. This line preamp must be accurate, very low distortions, transparent/clean and very well balanced top to botoom.

Maybe some of you can think that your line preamp is a " star " one and maybe it is, but I can tell you that there are only a few line preamps with a top quality sound reproduction. That's why we decided to design and build our phonolinepreamp in an integrated way: the synergy between both stages is of paramount importance and you can't make any compromise here.
Our phono stage design is a great one but our line stage design is a great one too: same quality performance level!!!!

Regards and enjoy the music.
Raul.

Dear Dgad: In my opinion the phonopreamp don't depend on the cartridge in use ( other that the cartridge output level ), as a fact a cartridge quality sound reproduction depends on the phonopreamp in use.

Regards and enjoy the music.
Raul.

Would the answer to the best phono stage be a cartridge dependant answer or is it an absolute for "most" cartridges?

Can't say, because I've heard precious few in my own system. But, I have "heard" (i.e., they were in systems that I heard playing) the Connoisseur, the top-of-the-line Boulder, an Audionote (uk) M-10, and a Kondo rig (I think M-77 with stepup). The best I've heard in my own system, which I plan on purchasing, is the VivA Fono (an Italian tube-based phono stage with input transformers). It worked well for me with my Lyra Titan once I experimented with a demonstration model by removing loading resistors and changing the type of 12AX7 tubes it utilizes (it was originally optimized for a Transfiguration Orpheus).

Dear Rapogee: Other than our self design: Vendetta Research and FM Acoustics.

Regards and enjoy the music.
Raul.

Dear friends: +++++ " These private built designs offer opportunities for no-compromise componentry and fanatically careful circuit layouts at a relatively affordable cost. When a design goes commercial then compromises must occur and/or the price must go through the roof. Private builders making one unit at a time can indulge in luxuries that would be impractical for a commercial operation. " +++++

This Doug post is a very interesting one, not only because I have self design: Phonolinepreamp, but because like Doug say it the design is a no-compromise one. In our ( José and I ) Phonolinepreamp we don't do any compromises: not only in the design it self, research, testing, parts, layout, etc, but more important we don't do any compromise on the quality sound reproduction against the LIVE MUSIC. Our design is not a comercial-thinking or price-minded design but a music-lover design and this subject makes a great diference against the comercial designs, this is a very important and critical plus for all of you.

Regards and enjoy the music.
Raul.

my bad, Jafox.

The Klyne I mentioned will have to do.

Earthpulse - This is a discussion on phono stages not line stages. "No preamp at all" is not applicable here.

Dougdeacon raises a very good point on the issue of what ultimately happens when a product goes commercial. The personal service from a privately built design would appeal much to me as well. Establishing a good relationship with such a designer would be a good first step to getting a top performer that would otherwise be way out of reach. And this could be equally true with an engineer skilled in modifying equipment.

There's a lot of commentary here as to one model being "better" than another. But nobody ever seems to describe or quantify the differences, much less as to why it is better. Or is "preferred" a more appropriate term? Come on guys, please tell me what it is about one model that you like over the other.

As an owner of the Io, I am very much aware of its weakness with it not being as extended on the top as well as lacking the ultimate in low-level resolution compared to its competition. But what it does in the context of midrange textures so far is unmatched by others I have auditioned.

If you have not heard the Io fully loaded with Telefunken 12ax7 & 6DJ8 and Mullard EL34, you simply have not heard the Io. Anyone who judges this with the stock Sovtek tubes has no idea the potential of this product. Yes, it can be a bit of a hassle and costly to experiment with various EL34, 6922, 12ax7, etc, tubes here. But if someone is spending $10k or even $20k for a preamp, I would think that a week or two of effort and $1000 in tubes to audition would be small peanuts.

At this point, if I had to return to the Sovtek tubes, I would surely move onto a different model which has all the latest whiz-bang passive components and other advances. But for a fraction of the cost to move up to such a new design, the Io's massive under-the-hood space allows for virtually any passive component to be upgraded.

The Io Signature is $3k more than the standard Io and yet if you look at the parts difference between these two, there really is not a huge difference. Most likely the sonic performance benefits here are what "justify" the significant cost difference. I suspect simply changing ALL the Relcaps to Dynamicaps or V-Caps would take this unit to a whole new level. And this too could easily be done for no more than $1k. Just imagine the insane price in a commercial upgrade....the Io Signature Statement Reference.

For the performance benefits from the two $1k investments I mentioned above, I suspect this done to a standard Io would not only so easily surpass the Io Signature but could easily compete with all the commercialized products that were mentioned above. It might not be "better" as people here say, but it would certainly exceed the performance in some very key areas.

The best I have heard... is no preamp at all.

I like the TVC approach and have been very pleased by the Sonic Euphoria.

When it comes to active preamps, the Klyne was the best I have had the privilage of really evaluating.