I use the 640p with a Pangea P100 power supply and it sounds great. Worth the 100 bucks for the Pangea. The 640p has been replaced by a new model (641P) that might be better, but I haven't compared them (the new one is basically the same price as the old one). I assume the Pangea works with the 641p. I see no reason to buy another phono pre myself as this 640p sounds so good with my system and it is one of the few out there with the rumble filter I need, but if I replaced it I'd just get the new one.
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Aewhistory: Remember that both the internal phono stage and the Cambridge are being run into the same line-level preamp. I have never heard this Radio Shack product, but I can't imagine it offers resolution high enough to allow the listener to hear differences among phono stages. Perhaps gross tonal differences would be apparent, but I would imagine that the Optimus line stage is the bottle-neck in this system. |
I think anyone getting into vinyl would be well-served by looking at older preamps that included phono stages as a matter of course -- before line stages were common. I know that my Adcom GFP-565's price here on Audiogon is way below what any comparable recent stand-alone phono stage would cost if bought new (or used). Awesome phono stage. And you get an entire preamp to go with it! |
I use a Jolida JD9. This little beauty of a phono preamp is under $500 and performs on par with much more expensive models. Also, it is very easy (and inexpensive) to make some DIY upgrades that take it into the realm of multi-thousand dollar phono preamps. I wrote a little review here of the JD9 including upgrade instructions. |
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