Phono Preamp Reviews

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Gramophone DreamsPhono Cartridge ReviewsPhono Preamp ReviewsSolid State Power Amp Reviews
Gramophone Dreams #91: Mobile Fidelity, PrimaLuna, and First Watt Redux
Herb Reichert  |  Nov 29, 2024  | 
Herb waits for Godot

It's important for readers to remember that I've spent my adult life as an artist and mechanic. Making things. Working as a tradesperson during the day then at an easel or workbench at night.

When I finished high school, all I wanted to do was work in a fancy, well-equipped shop building drag race engines. Engine building was something I had already shown a talent for, but my parents insisted I go to college. Unfortunately, my high school grade point average was so low I was turned down by every college I applied to. Consequently, my parents forced me to attend Wright Junior College in Chicago, a place where teachers rolled joints for their students. And I got straight A's. Those easy A's got me into Western Illinois University, a small state college in a tiny rural town called Macomb near the Mississippi River. My mother was so proud, she told everybody she knew that her son was accepted into "university," but she could never remember which one.

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Phono Cartridge ReviewsPhono Preamp ReviewsSpin Doctor
Spin Doctor #18: Moonriver 505 Phono Stage, DS Audio E3 Optical Phono Cartridge System
Michael Trei  |  Nov 07, 2024  | 
I spent the second three-and-a-half years of my life living with my family in Sweden. Our home was on an island just outside of Stockholm called Lidingö, which locals tell me today is like the Beverly Hills of Stockholm, a fancy place where the rich and famous live. Fifty-nine years ago, it wasn't quite so fancy; it just seemed like a cool place for a little kid from New York City to grow up.

I can't honestly say I remember many details about my life between the ages of three and a half and seven, yet apparently some of that Swedish way of thinking ended up influencing my life view, specifically, how Swedes approach consumer goods and purchasing decisions.

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Phono Cartridge ReviewsPhono Preamp ReviewsSpin Doctor
Spin Doctor #16: Sutherland Dos Locos Phono Preamp, Dynavector XX-2A Phono Cartridge
Michael Trei  |  Aug 28, 2024  | 
Ron Sutherland makes a strong case for being crowned the king of all phono preamps, though I expect he would blush at any such suggestion. In 1979, with degrees in physics and electronic engineering (where his final project involved designing and building a digital logic–controlled preamp), he teamed up with Gayle Sanders to found electrostatic speaker company MartinLogan. ("Martin" and "Logan" are Sanders' and Sutherland's middle names, respectively.) But after a few years, he found the increasingly corporate mindset at M-L a bit stifling, so he decided to go his own way. Ron wanted to build gear he thought was cool and fun while not being directed solely by its commercial potential. He joined up with his brother to start Sutherland Engineering, creating hi-fi equipment that piqued his own interest and hopefully that of a bunch of customers.

At first, Sutherland made a wide range of components, including preamps, power amps, and DACs, but gradually he focused more and more on phono preamps. Today that's the only thing he makes...

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Audacious AudioPhono Preamp Reviews
Pass Labs XP-27 phono preamplifier
Jim Austin  |  Aug 22, 2024  | 
One of the pleasures of reviewing—and also using—products from Pass Laboratories is an encounter with Nelson Pass's writing, which can usually be found in the owner's manual and is always competent, insightful, and sometimes funny. How often do you get real pleasure and insight from reading an owner's manual?

Pass Labs has a lot of owner's manuals online. Reading through one, I encountered the following passage; you'll find the same or similar language in other manuals and on the Pass Labs website. I present it not only because I admire it and agree with the philosophy it expresses but also because it captures the spirit of the product under review—the XP-27 phono preamplifier ($12,075 in silver)—at least as I've experienced it during an extended review period. Here it is, quoted at length with some slight adjustments to make it consistent with Stereophile's editorial style...

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Phono Preamp ReviewsSpin Doctor
Spin Doctor #15: Austin AudioWorks Black Swan phono preamplifier
Michael Trei  |  Jul 30, 2024  | 
Forty years ago, as I was starting out on my audio journey, I railed against the flashy mainstream audio gear of the day. To me less was more, and I tried to convince my friends that my small, austere British-made audio rig, including what my friends jokingly called my Lynn Swanndek turntable (after the Steelers wide receiver), really did sound much better than their big silvery Japanese stacks loaded up with shiny knobs, switches, and meters. Audio was all about the sound after all, and I wasn't interested in some dazzling visual display that had nothing to do with what I was hearing. I gravitated toward gear that wasn't flashy or fancy looking, feeling that meant that the effort and expense to create it went where it counted most, to the parts that made it sound great.
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Gramophone DreamsPhono Preamp Reviews
Gramophone Dreams #85: Let the Right Brain In; the Hagerman Audio Labs Piccolo Zero head amp
Herb Reichert  |  May 28, 2024  | 
In the months since I told my Lenco story in Gramophone Dreams #79, two of my friends have bought L75s, and now they're enjoying them more than their shiny movie-star decks. One told me he has put more than $2000 into a Lenco L75 he bought online for $350. When I asked how his hot-rodded Lenco compared to his fancy belt drive, he replied, "You can feel it. The Lenco's motor pulls like a team of Clydesdales. It makes my belt drive feel like a pony pulling a child's cart."

When I asked him what he thought his rebuilt Clydesdale deck, with its new bearing, Jelco tonearm, and Grado Prestige Gold cartridge, was doing that his well-regarded belt drive was not, he replied, in a low, serious voice, "I think it gets more of the first part of a note."

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Phono Accessory ReviewsPhono Preamp ReviewsSpin DoctorTurntable Reviews
Spin Doctor #12: EMM Labs DS-EQ1, The Wand 14-4 Turntable, M•A Inner Sleeves
Michael Trei  |  Apr 30, 2024  | 
"I think both moving coil and moving magnet cartridges are terrible." That's what legendary Canadian audio designer Ed Meitner told me when I asked about the pioneering transimpedance current drive phono stage he created for his Meitner PA6 preamp some 40 years ago.

Meitner has been designing innovative hi-fi gear for the pro and consumer audio markets for more than 50 years, but for most of the last 30, he has been best known for his work with high-resolution digital audio and DSD recording. Despite this focus on digital—and despite that comment about the two leading phono cartridge technologies—deep in his heart, Ed still loves analog and has fond memories of the Kenwood optical cartridges from the 1970s, which I discussed in last month's Spin Doctor column. So when Ed read that a company in Japan called DS Audio was bringing back an improved version of the optical cartridge using modern materials, he contacted designer Tetsuaki Aoyagi to learn more.

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Analog CornerCable ReviewsPhono Preamp ReviewsTurntable Reviews
Analog Corner # 247: Dr. Feickert Firebird turntable, Viva Fono MC phono preamplifier, AcroLink and Fono Acustica interconnects
Michael Fremer  |  Apr 11, 2024  |  First Published: Mar 01, 2016  | 
Dr. Feickert Analogue's top-of-the line turntable, the Firebird ($12,500), is a generously sized record player designed to easily accommodate two 12" tonearms. Its three brushless, three-phase DC motors, arranged around the platter in an equilateral triangle, are connected to a proprietary controller in a phase-locked loop (PLL); according to the Firebird's designer, Dr. Christian Feickert, a reference signal from just one of the motors drives all three—thus one motor is the master while the other two are slaves. (Man, today that is politically incorrect, however descriptively accurate.)
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Phono Preamp ReviewsSpin Doctor
Spin Doctor #10: Tone Controls, Vinyl EQ Curves, and the Mola Mola Lupe
Michael Trei  |  Feb 28, 2024  | 
Twice in the last month I have been at someone's house, servicing their turntable, when they asked whether they should be considering a new phono preamp that offers additional playback equalization curves besides the standard RIAA. My usual reaction is to thumb through their record collection, where, more often than not, I find that they don't own a single record that was cut using a curve other than RIAA.

Phono playback EQ is one of those audiophile topics that stokes some people's passions, with plenty of disagreements about how important it is. I have seen grown men get into heated discussions about the history of record EQ curves, but in truth, the subject is only likely to matter if you listen to a lot of 78s or original mono LPs pressed between the late 1940s and the mid-1950s.

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Analog CornerPhono Cartridge ReviewsPhono Preamp Reviews
Analog Corner #249: LKV Research Veros One phono preamp, Triangle Art Apollo MC cartridge
Michael Fremer  |  Feb 09, 2024  |  First Published: May 01, 2016  | 
Designer Bill Hutchins, of LKV Research, builds the 2-SB moving-magnet/moving-coil phono preamplifier in North Conway, in the White Mountains of New Hampshire; he uses as many US-sourced parts as possible, and sells his products factory direct. I reviewed the 2-SB in March 2014, on AnalogPlanet.com: the 2-SB's sound was exceptionally fine—especially if you like refined, solid-state quiet and detail, and especially considering its then-price of $2500. Since that review's publication, the 2-SB has been upgraded with a version of the third gain stage from LKV's JFET-based Veros One phono preamp ($6500; see below), and its price has risen to a still-reasonable $3000.

In May 2014, Bill Hutchins introduced the Veros One phono preamplifier ($6500).

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Gramophone DreamsPhono Preamp Reviews
Gramophone Dreams #80: Mobile Fidelity Electronics MasterPhono
Herb Reichert  |  Dec 28, 2023  | 
During my cub reporter days at Stereophile, I was always on the lookout, casting about for midlevel analog components I might latch on to, ones that could join my long-term daily-driver reference system by complementing the character of my midlevel DeVore Fidelity Orangutan O/93 and Falcon LS3/5a loudspeakers. I was searching for these basic traits: alive and vigorous, clear and well-sorted, relaxed and natural. One of my first-ever Stereophile reviews, in the October 2014 issue, was of Sentec's EQ11 phono preamplifier, which featured six EQ choices, selectable from the front panel, Bakelite knobs, Switchcraft switches, and a gray Hammerite-paint finish.

When I reviewed the Sentec, I owned three turntables and about 300 records. But phono stage–wise, I was a beggar and a borrower, hoping a friend's phono pre or some review product would jump out of the deck and become my reference.

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Brilliant CornersPhono Preamp Reviews
Brilliant Corners #10: Tron Electric Convergence Signature & PrimaLuna EVO 100 phono stages
Alex Halberstadt  |  Dec 21, 2023  | 
"The phonograph record is an art form itself," Lester Koenig wrote in March 1959, "and one of its advantages is the performance that exists uniquely of, by and for the record." Remarkably, when Koenig included this pronouncement in his liner notes to Sonny Rollins and the Contemporary Leaders, the 12" long-play record had been the dominant carrier of recorded music for less than a decade, and stereo discs had been mass-produced for just over a year.

For Koenig, this issue wasn't merely academic. Before making his name as head of Contemporary Records in Los Angeles, he had attended Yale Law School, worked as a screenwriter and producer at Paramount, and gotten blacklisted by the House Committee on Un-American Activities. At Contemporary, he set out to become a leading practitioner of the art of phonography.

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Analog CornerPhono Preamp Reviews
Analog Corner #251: ModWright PH 150 phono stage
Michael Fremer  |  Dec 11, 2023  |  First Published: Jul 01, 2016  | 
ModWright Instruments' PH 150 moving-coil/moving-magnet phono stage measures 17" wide by 5" high by 12" deep and weighs 19lb. Knobs on its front panel let you easily make adjustments that with some phono preamps require accessing the rear panel or going inside. Starting at the left, the Select knob offers settings for MC, MM, and Mute. The Gain knob offers levels of 0dB, –6dB, and –12dB. With MC selected, those settings would correspond with 72, 66, and 60dB of gain, respectively; with MM, the numbers would be 57, 51, and 45dB, the last being more typical of most MM stages.

First, let's talk about problems with grounding and hum...

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Gramophone DreamsPhono Preamp ReviewsTurntable Reviews
Gramophone Dreams #79: a Vintage Lenco L75 turntable & the PrimaLuna EVO 100 phono stage
Herb Reichert  |  Dec 05, 2023  | 
My adoptive mother, Lily Mae, was a retired businesswoman and former fashion model turned stay-at-home mom and artist-painter with famously good taste in everything. She raised me to have good manners, an "active awareness of color and texture," and "an eye for form." She expected me to critique her paintings, her decorating, and her wardrobe, urging me constantly to develop "good taste in everything."

In Lil's world, a perfect day was for me to skip school and go with her clothes shopping at Marshall Field's, where it was my job to sit in a plush chair offering comments about which outfits had the best fabrics and best "complimented her form." She always said "form is bones" and fashion is about "how fabrics hang on people's bones."

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Computer Audio ReviewsDigital Processor ReviewsPhono Preamp ReviewsSolid State Preamp Reviews
Mytek Digital Brooklyn Bridge II Roon Core preamplifier
Tom Fine  |  Sep 01, 2023  | 
The concept of streaming digital music files over distances great (as with internet-streaming services like Spotify, Qobuz, Tidal, etc.) and small (from a home-PC hard drive, NAS, or networked music server) became mainstream only recently. But it was already brewing during the late 20th century, with people illegally downloading low-bitrate MP3 files made from CD rips and coming close to killing the recorded-music industry.

That wasn't streaming exactly, or not in the current sense, because the files needed to be downloaded, stored locally, then either played out of a computer or loaded onto a portable player, but from that point forward it was a steady march to the streaming-dominated present.

Never mind Napster—the first subscription audio "streaming" service was one you probably wouldn't think of: Audible, the audio book service now owned by Amazon, which started up in 1995. I did beta testing and editing work for early-days Audible, and around that time, I started loading up home-ripped MP3 files on a pocket-sized Rio MP3 player (which by then had replaced Audible's proprietary player), using it in place of a portable CD player. This led to experiments with a PC music library/player running Linux, controlled by a Handspring PalmOS device connected to the stereo system via a Sound Blaster 16 card.

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