Spin Doctor

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.

At the risk of stereotyping, Swedes are obsessed with the quality of the goods they buy and will happily pay a premium to get very good quality. Then once they've bought it (whatever "it" is), they hang onto it for the long haul, rejecting the disposable approach that's typical for us Americans, constantly trading and upgrading to get the latest widget (another stereotype, but hey, it's true). A Swede would rather pay $200 for a top-quality tailored shirt and wear it for a decade than wear out a pile of $30 shirts in a couple of years.

I'm especially Swedish when it comes to hi-fi. Despite having worked in high-end audio for most of my adult life, with access to gear at "industry accommodation" prices, my core system has evolved very slowly. For more than a quarter century, I've owned and used a Vendetta Research SCP-2B phono preamp, an Audio Note P2 SE Signature power amplifier, and of course my Quad ESL-57 electrostatic loudspeakers. When I find something I really like, I hang onto it.

Still, sometimes change is necessary. I have been reviewing audio gear for nearly 30 years, starting in 1995 at Listener, my dear friend Art Dudley's magazine. My reviewing work influences the equipment I use. For 15 years or so before I joined Stereophile, most of my reviewing was focused on multichannel home-theater gear, for sister magazine Sound & Vision. I'm lucky enough to have an entirely separate room and system for home theater and surround, so my dedicated stereo rig became pretty locked in, with those Quad speakers augmented by two separate subwoofer systems.

Now that I have returned to reviewing mostly two-channel gear, I have slowly been making changes to my stereo rig, to make it more versatile and review-friendly. To that end, I recently added a pair of Joseph Audio Perspective2 Graphene loudspeakers and a Pass Labs INT-150 integrated amplifier to drive them.

But back to Sweden. Their neighbors Denmark and Norway are known for bigger brands—Bang & Olufsen, Ortofon, Jamo, DALI, Dynaudio, Hegel, Electrocompaniet—while Sweden's audio industry is made up of smaller, specialist manufacturers that aim (often in idiosyncratic ways) for cutting-edge performance: Lejonklou, Engstrom, Bladelius, and of course Swedish Analog Technologies (SAT). Add Moonriver Audio to that list (footnote 1).

Moonriver Audio 505 Hybrid Stereo Phono EQ Stage
Moon river, wider than a mile I'm crossing you in style some day
Oh, dream maker, you heart breaker Wherever you're going I'm going your way

Normally I might think it trite to make such an obvious connection between an audio company's name and a song—I don't start singing a song by The Police every time I put on the red light to power up my Roksan turntable—but Moonriver Audio's founder has acknowledged that his company is named for the 1961 song, written by Henry Mancini and Johnny Mercer for the movie Breakfast at Tiffany's, which starred Audrey Hepburn, who originally sung it. But did the inspiration for Moonriver Audio's name come from the Hepburn original or the version Andy Williams recorded a year later, which soon became his signature song?

On the front panel of every Moonriver component just below the central logo is the Swedish word Fågelsång. Somewhat mysteriously, it translates as "birdsong." That makes me think that the inspiration came from Hepburn's version, because her light and airy singing voice had birdlike qualities.

Founded in Malmö, Sweden, in 2015 by Greek-born George Polychronidis, Moonriver Audio didn't launch its first product, the Model 404 integrated amplifier, until 2019. It took Moonriver another five years to launch their second distinct product (footnote 2), the Model 505, the first Moonriver phono preamp. The 404 and 505 are built into the same full-sized chassis, so the 505 is hefty as phono preamps go. With its black brushed-aluminum faceplate, walnut end cheeks, gold lettering, and subtle yellow indicator lights, the 505 has a warm, inviting appearance, a welcome change from the cool silver and bright blue LEDs that most contemporary audio equipment use. The front-panel layout, with its four metal knobs framed by several small silver toggle switches, manages to look both modern and retro. Word is, Polychronidis took design cues from Japanese components of the early '70s, specifically Sansui components like the AU-222 integrated amplifier, but these have obviously been updated.

As suggested by all those knobs and switches, the 505 is endowed with a host of features, including connections for up to four tonearms and gain and adjustable loading appropriate for moving coil and moving magnet cartridges. Each of the four inputs can be adjusted independently, and the settings are recalled automatically each time that input is selected. Input 1 has both single-ended and balanced connectors, while 2–4 are single-ended only. There are three pairs of outputs, one balanced and two single ended. There's a halfhearted nod to variable EQ for 78s and very early LPs, with a switch that allows you to select the Decca curve instead of standard RIAA. On request, Moonriver can supply a version with the Columbia curve instead of the Decca curve—but why didn't they make it simple and include all three?

When an input is set to Moving Coil, the gain can be adjusted from 48dB to 72dB in six steps; the resistive load has five steps, from 10 ohms to 1k ohms. Five steps may sound limiting, but if you're willing to lift the 505's hood and poke around inside with a multimeter, you can create your own custom setting by tweaking a pair of trimmers, at anything from a dead short to 820 ohms. Unusually, the moving magnet input is also highly adjustable, with six gain settings, three resistive loads, and five capacitive loading options from 100pF to 680pF, a much higher value than you're likely to need; with many setups, the tonearm wiring provides all the capacitance needed for accurate MM playback. I would have preferred a 0pF option in place of 680pF. Even so, all those MM options make the Moonriver a good match for difficult-to-match cartridges, including moving iron cartridges such as the top Grado and SoundSmith models, which call for both high gain and a high impedance load.

Moonriver describes the 505 as hybrid—not tubes and transistors but a combination of ICs and discrete components, within an all–solid state circuit. "While the IC op-amps offer very low noise levels," Moonriver says, "a discrete circuit offers life-like drive and dynamics, something not possible from IC op-amps alone."

Back in his native Greece, Polychronidis worked for many years as a technician servicing audio gear, so he wanted to make the 505 easy to work on. With its removable top and bottom covers, the 505 provides good, easy access to the circuitry, which uses mostly easy-to-replace through-hole components.

I used several cartridges during my time with the 505, including my trusty Dynavector DRT XV-1s, and Lyra Atlas λ Lambda. I also tried the Benz Micro LP-S I used when reviewing the ViV Labs tonearm, which turned out to be an especially synergistic match with the 505. The best results with that cartridge were obtained with the gain at 64dB and a 470 ohm load. With the 505 set that way, I heard an excellent dynamic envelope and a neutral tonal balance.

Polychronidis says "The soul of the music is in the midrange; this is where most of the emotion, the passion, the joie de vivre is contained." My own priorities jibe perfectly with this thinking. Until you've heard a system that's pure and transparent through the midrange, it can be hard to grasp how important this area of performance is. Once you've experienced it, less capable equipment starts to sound gray. That's why I have clung to my Quad ESL-57 speakers for so long. They have glaring weaknesses, but their strengths push those weaknesses into the background. The 505 is an ideal match, with a vivid and lively midrange performance that lets you listen deep into the music's structure.

Listening with the Benz LP-S cartridge, I played "Soul Station" from Introducing Roland Kirk (Argo LPS 669). Despite the album's title, this is Kirk's second album as leader, coming about three years after his debut, Triple Threat. The debut's title is a reference to Kirk's ability to play up to three horns at once, creating amazing note combinations, all in perfect sync. On Introducing, he shares the stage with trumpet and tenor sax player Ira Sullivan; that may be only two people, but sometimes there are four horns blowing at once! The 505 did a great job sorting it out, allowing the contrasting tonality of each of Kirk's horns and the slightly darker tone of Sullivan's tenor to be clearly presented.

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Footnote 1: Moonriver Audio, Poststugan 532, 21165 Malmö, Sweden. Tel: +46 (0) 765905066. Email: info@moonriveraudio.com. Web: moonriveraudio.com. North American distribution: On a Higher Note, PO Box 698, San Juan Capistrano, CA 92693. Tel: (949) 544-1990. Web: onahighernote.com

Footnote 2: Meanwhile, they introduced a Reference version of the 404.