Analog Corner

Setup and Use The P1's rear panel is well organized and easily accessible, even by the braille method I have to use because I don't have an easy way to reach the rear panel of any component placed on my HRS racks, which are set close to the wall behind them.

Ground hum and noise are facts of the analog life, yet ground-wire spades come with variously sized gaps, from tiny to gaping. So do the ground lugs on phono preamps. Mismatches are common, and that's frustrating, especially if you have to reach around the thing to make a connection. The P1 has the absolute best ground-lug system I've ever encountered. Were I the King of Analog, I'd decree that Every manufacturer must copy it. CH Precision provides a pair of mini-banana plugs to which are affixed mini-wing nuts. You can securely connect the ground-wire spades to the wing nuts, then easily push the mini-bananas securely into the two signal-ground receptacles on the rear panel. It's such a pleasure. So many grounding systems are such pains—as on products with three or four inputs and just a single, fat ground lug. This may be subsidiary stuff, but it's important subsidiary stuff.

CH Precision's Android-based remote-control app works if you can provide an Ethernet Internet connection, which I could. I'm an Apple guy, so CH lent me a Samsung tablet, which for me was harder to learn than using the tiny buttons on the front panel and the display's nested menus. P1 firmware updates can be installed via a flash drive plugged into the USB port on the P1's rear panel.

Sound If you've got an ultra-low-output MC cartridge or three, the advantages of a current-amplifier phono preamp will become as immediately apparent to you as they did to me when I reviewed the B.M.C. Phono MCCI in the June 2013 issue. The ultra-low noise floor, freedom from voltage-suppressing loading, and overall tonal neutrality allow the cartridge to fully express itself, for better or worse. I heard that with the B.M.C., and with MR Labs' VERA 20 (footnote 3). Inherent in current-amplifier phono preamplifiers are an openness, a tonal neutrality, and a background quiet that you should hear, though the result will not be to everyone's taste—especially those who prefer a warmer, richer sound. However, it's easy to argue that the place to inject those qualities into the system is at the cartridge and/or loudspeakers themselves.

In any case, via either voltage or current input, the P1 was the quietest phono preamp I've heard. Backgrounds were dead "black," even with the volume well advanced and my ear almost touching the tweeter: I heard only a hint of hiss and zero hum.

More important, music had an honesty, clarity, transparency, and rhythmic drive that, in the right systems and for the right ears, will be "the end." But it won't be for everyone, and satisfaction using such a no-compromise, honest electronic circuit will certainly depend on the records played.

Before I played, for the first time, a new monophonic reissue of Bob Dylan's John Wesley Harding (2 45rpm mono LPs, Columbia/Legacy/Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab MFSL 2-464), I said to myself, "I have an original Columbia mono, a Sundazed mono, and the Columbia/Legacy mono. What the hell am I going to learn from this reissue?"

A lot. All of the versions I have sounded better through the P1, but especially the new MoFi. If you love this album, it's worth the asking price of $49.99. I don't know how MoFi did it, but the clarity of the strummed acoustic guitar and its ability to consistently cut through and be heard above the more powerful bass and drums amazed me, especially through the P1.

The P1 tightly controlled the somewhat loose and deliberately overripe bass on all issues of this album while fully expressing it and, at the same time, clarifying the guitar-strum transients. It all resulted in the feeling that I was hearing this album for the first time. Again.

Even the microphone pops amazed! They came quickly, erupted fully, then evaporated as I've never heard them evaporate before. I don't want to concentrate on such imperfections, but they were evidence of the P1's speed and solid musical grip.

I'd never heard "The Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest" so perfectly reproduced. The MoFi made it sound better than ever through a variety of phono preamps, but best of all through the CH Precision P1. And the louder I played it, the better it sounded.

Compared to my reference phono stage, the Ypsilon VPS-100 Silver Edition—or even to the much-loved and recently departed Dan D'Agostino Momentum—the CH Precision's overall sound was on the analytical side. But with the right recordings, wow! And the P1 was a rhythm'n'pace champ.

Some products have me up all night, pulling out record after record; some don't. The P1 did, and gave me an exciting and fully pleasurable sonic ride every time.

I don't see how anyone could sit down and listen through all eight sides of The Randy Newman Songbook (4 LPs, Nonesuch 550735-1) and not think "There's Randy at the microphone and there's his piano," both presented three-dimensionally, with studio acoustics, harmonics, textures, and especially dynamics, all intact. Yes, I know—it was recorded digitally, mastered by Bob Ludwig from files cut at 24-bit/96kHz.

Unfortunately for me, the P1 inspired me to also try cartridge after cartridge. That takes a lot of time. I began with the Lyra Etna SL, but then just had to try cartridges of even lower output—Ortofon's Anna and A95—and then some with ultra-low internal impedance, such as the Kubotek Haniwa HCTR01. In the last few months I've tried them all, but don't have space to go into detail here.

When I then played the same tracks through my reference phono stage, I liked the Ypsilon VPS-100's somewhat rounder, more three-dimensional images, more-fleshed-out harmonics, and sense of musical flow—but I sure missed the P1's tauter, faster, cleaner bass lines and overall grip. With some LPs, the Ypsilon was more pleasing; with others, my nod went to the P1. I need both! If I ran a Gear Motel—you know, one of those places where audio components check in . . . but they don't check out—I probably could have both. But I own and love the Ypsilon, and I can't afford the P1 even at an accommodation price. So back to CH Precision it will go. And I will miss it (footnote 4).

A good compromise between the ruthlessly revealing, utterly transparent, and honest but technocratic CH Precision P1 and the more harmonically rich but equally transparent, full-figured but not fat-bottomed, somewhat more forgiving Ypsilon VPS-100 would be the Dan D'Agostino Momentum. I could live with and love any of the three. But if you love the sound of, say, your Koetsu through Audio Research's Phono Reference 3, I'd say that only the Ypsilon might please you—with the emphasis on might. But however you slice it, these are the best of analog times.

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Footnote 3: The owner-founder of MR Labs has since passed away; his successor is working to get the company back on a firm footing.

Footnote 4: As you can read in the June 2017 Analog Corner, the P1 did not go back to its manufacturer. "The longer I used it, the more obvious it became that I couldn't part with it," Mikey wrote, and he bought the review sample.—Ed.