David McGown wrote:
For those of you who spin the black licorice discs to satisfy your musical sweet tooth, I have, for the past couple of months, been listening to an iFi Phono 3 Black Label phono preamp in my system.
I have been listening to a number of phonostages that I have built over the years, Aikido phonostage, Pass Pearl 1 & 2, Pete Millett LR phonostage, Hagerman Octal Cornet, Hagerman Bugle, etc., and used a number of moving coil stepups. I always keep coming back to the Aikido phonostage, but seems it is always keeps me tube rolling or modifying the front end for the gain and sound I like, and I never seem to settle in totally on the sound.
Enter the iFi Phono 3. It is a really small solid state unit, powered by a switching power supply (one of the new iFi iPower 2 versions). It has alot of flexiblility for gain and loading thru dip switches on the board. I have tried it only with moving coil cartridges so far, but have used it with both a Denon DL-103R (aluminum body + line contact stylus) and a Benz Ruby 3. In any case, the sound quality is better than anything I have built. It is dead quiet, grain free, and tonally neutral (but not FET cool sounding). Every recording I play seem to have a quiet background (i.e. it seems to be undisturbed by ticks and pops), even with moving coil input. Digital quiet. Really hear alot of detail and texture, with a big soundstage with good depth. Also is very involving, I keep wanting to put on the next record, and old records sound new again. It is really a surprising little unit, and reasonably affordable (under $1K). I have to say, that despite the considerable upgrades on the digital side of my system the past few months, this unit is a substantial upgrade in vinyl enjoyment that keeps pulling me back to analog when I get a chance.
David
* BTW, it will actually fit in a stocking.
I had the same experience with an iFi phono stage -- that is until one channel went noisy. It is now in some landfill. If you can find one -- Mark Levinson's Red Rose Rosette phono stage is unbelievably musical, transparent, and dead quiet. The nice feature of the Red Rose is the fact that the settings are easy to get to on the back side making switching cartridges an easy activity. The MC input is serviced by a braced of hand-matched JFETs. NICE!!