When I first wrote about Pure Vinyl in the March 2009 "Analog Corner," Robinson recommended using a good microphone preamplifier to provide the appropriate amount of flat amplification. But even without RIAA compensation, the cartridge still requires the optimal resistive loading, so he supplied his customers with pre-loaded RCA-to-XLR adapters. While that's still a viable if limited option, Robinson has now designed and manufactured, in America, four standalone Channel D phono preamplifiers, two of which I auditioned for this review: the AC-powered Seta Nano ($1599) and the battery-powered Seta Model L ($3799, or $4798 with internal RIAA compensation module).

The significantly more expensive, beautifully built Seta Model L includes balanced and single-ended inputs, balanced unequalized outputs, variable gain, and a built-in rechargeable battery power supply (footnote 1). A $999 option adds RIAA correction for both balanced and single-ended outputs (a high-output moving-magnet version is also available for the same price).

Sound Quality
If you're going to archive your LPs on your computer's hard drive, I suggest aiming higher than the Seta Nano. Switching to Channel D's battery-powered Seta Model L ($4798 with RIAA module) produced far superior results. The Model L is a quiet, remarkably neutral-sounding, extremely well-built phono preamplifier capable of excellent low-level resolution—not surprising, given that, in his previous life of designing scanning tunneling microscopes, Robinson had to deal with pico-amperes!

Recordings made using the Seta Model L's RIAA-equalized outputs were models of clarity, definition, tonal accuracy, detail resolution, and spatial coherence. Again, though, the digitally corrected version produced better attack, decay, and overall linearity than the direct analog playback, which was plenty good to begin with.

I recorded a test pressing of Nat King Cole's Love Is the Thing (45rpm LPs, Capitol/Analogue Productions SW-824); using the Seta Model L and playing it back using the digital RIAA, the sound wasn't exactly soft, warm, and romantic, but it was fundamentally accurate in terms of tonality and space, and its low-level resolution was remarkable. Did it sound "digital"? No, not as analog fanatics normally pejoratively use the word.

I then played the record "live," using the $60,000 Vitus Audio MP-P201 phono preamp. While the sound of the Vitus swamped that of the digital recording made via the Model L's flat outputs and the Lynx soundcard, it wasn't $55,000 better, and the differences weren't in the usual digital-vs-analog sense. The "live" presentation had greater transparency, immediacy, three-dimensionality, top-end air, and musical flow.

Summing Up
Though you'd lose the direct analog feed, if you like your regular phono preamp I'd recommend getting the Seta Model L minus the RIAA section and saving $999, especially if you have a substantial collection of pre-RIAA recordings. You could try recording both ways, and chuck your current phono preamp if you prefer the Seta Model L. And don't be surprised if that's what happens, particularly if you pay attention to the digital RIAA's finesse and robust attacks—particularly in the bottom octaves—and its unerring tonal neutrality.

You know the old audiophile chestnut of the lifting of veils from the music? Listen and that's what you're sure to hear, without an additive penalty in terms of the usual digital edge and etch.

When I first wrote about Pure Vinyl in the March 2009 "Analog Corner," Robinson recommended using a good microphone preamplifier to provide the appropriate amount of flat amplification. But even without RIAA compensation, the cartridge still requires the optimal resistive loading, so he supplied his customers with pre-loaded RCA-to-XLR adapters. While that's still a viable if limited option, Robinson has now designed and manufactured, in America, four standalone Channel D phono preamplifiers, two of which I auditioned for this review: the AC-powered Seta Nano ($1599) and the battery-powered Seta Model L ($3799, or $4798 with internal RIAA compensation module).

The Nano includes balanced and single-ended inputs, a balanced, flat (non-equalized) output, and a single-ended RIAA output, both of which can be used simultaneously. The flat output boasts an ultrawide bandwidth (DC–8MHz) and the cartridge loading can be adjusted with rear-panel rotary switches. Space doesn't permit a full description of the Nano (see www.channld.com for complete details), but for some reason the first sample of the Nano went into oscillation and destroyed the tweeter of one of my Wilson Audio MAXX 3 speakers. The replacement unit had a somewhat lower-bandwidth (DC–3MHz) and performed flawlessly, however.

Sound Quality
I started my testing by making a series of recordings using the $1599 Seta Nano phono preamplifier. With the Nano's Flat balanced outputs fed to the A/D converter of the Lynx soundcard and its RIAA-equalized single-ended outputs into the preamp, I could A/B the all-analog, RIAA-corrected "live" playback of an LP with the digitally corrected version. The digital domain version sounded superior—not because digitizing the signal somehow improved it, but because the digital RIAA correction was obviously superior to the analog-domain filter in the less expensive Seta.

Like a high-quality loudspeaker, the digital RIAA equalization's subjective neutrality revealed and resolved far more detail, particularly of low-level information occurring in the same frequency range as high-level information. I could easily hear its superior overall low-level resolution as well—particularly in how it resolved reverberant tails, which extended well beyond what the analog playback produced.

More apparent was the digital version's superior transient response. The analog RIAA version's attack was soft and lacked clarity and definition. Switching to the digital version tightened and clarified the attack and solidified the entire picture. Mush became tightly clarified punch.

I can't say how the Seta Nano compares generally with other $1599 MC phono preamps, because none were available during the time I had the Nano in-house. But compared with the Boulder, AMR, and Vitus phono preamps I reviewed in July's "Analog Corner," which range from $12,000 to $60,000, it was simply out of its league. However, its upper-octave sound, while clean and extended, was somewhat metallic and slightly tinny. However, used to provide flat gain, with digital RIAA EQ, the Seta Nano sounded much better. The cleaner attack and flatter response made the metallic aftertaste less conspicuous and improved its overall coherence.

Summing Up
If you're going to archive your LPs on your computer's hard drive, I suggest aiming higher than the Seta Nano. In fact, if you already have an accomplished phono preamp, just use that, and carefully set Pure Vinyl so it doesn't add RIAA playback equalization during recording, or you'll double your displeasure with massive amounts of possibly speaker-damaging bass.

These are the questions that Rob Robinson—musician, audiophile, software programmer, and former Bell Communications Research Scientist (he was responsible for designing their first scanning tunneling microscope)—asked himself in 2002. Robinson has answered them all with Channel D's Pure Vinyl recording and editing software for Apple Macintosh computers, and has continually revised, updated, and tweaked the program since its launch in June 2006.

For instance, because hard-drive storage was still relatively expensive when Robinson first envisioned Pure Vinyl, he built the program around burning to CD-R and DVD-R discs. This meant that the editing functions (track starts, stops, splits, etc.) occurred only in less-than-full resolution. Today, with each terabyte of storage costing around $100, Pure Vinyl edits, stores, and plays in up to full 24-bit/192kHz resolution directly to and from a computer's hard drive. The Pure Vinyl software will only run on Macs with OS10.5 or later and is available at an introductory price of $229, which will rise to $299 at some point in the near future.

Necessary Hardware
The minuscule electrical output of an analog signal from a moving-coil cartridge needs to be boosted before it can be converted to digital and equalized in the digital domain. Of course, you could use your current phono preamplifier and record an equalized signal to hard disk, but then you wouldn't get to experience Pure Vinyl's digital RIAA correction—nor would you be able to avail yourself of all the equalization curves provide by Pure Vinyl, of which there are almost too many to count.

When I first wrote about Pure Vinyl in the March 2009 "Analog Corner," Robinson recommended using a good microphone preamplifier to provide the appropriate amount of flat amplification. But even without RIAA compensation, the cartridge still requires the optimal resistive loading, so he supplied his customers with pre-loaded RCA-to-XLR adapters. While that's still a viable if limited option, Robinson has now designed and manufactured, in America, four standalone Channel D phono preamplifiers, two of which I auditioned for this review: the AC-powered Seta Nano ($1599) and the battery-powered Seta Model L ($3799, or $4798 with internal RIAA compensation module).

Whether you use your own phono preamplifier or one of the Setas to rip LPs, you're also going to need a good 24-bit/192kHz-capable soundcard—or, if you're using a laptop, a good outboard A/D converter. When I first wrote about Pure Vinyl, Robinson suggested I buy for my Mac G5 tower an L22 PCI soundcard ($675) from Lynx Studio Technology. I did. Unfortunately, should I upgrade to a new Mac, that card will be unusable—Apple has changed the internal interface. Love those computers! Given how little used computers fetch, I've decided that when the time comes, I'll just keep the old one and use it as a music server and D/A converter.

So to jump with both feet into the Pure Vinyl world, you're looking at an investment of around $5000 for the Seta L preamp, the software, and a suitable soundcard. Or, using your own phono preamp and an inexpensive converter, you can get started for a few hundred bucks.

Open Channel D
The final version of Pure Vinyl v.3.0, which performs hi-rez 24/192 recording and editing, should be available by the time you read this. Once you've downloaded and installed it in your computer's applications folder, and either added an internal soundcard or connected an outboard USB one (Channel D has a list of devices it has tried with Pure Vinyl here), you'll need to configure the computer's AudioMIDI Setup and the soundcard's supporting software.

If you're not friendly with computers, the task can be daunting, in part because it just is, and in part because Robinson has written the instructions almost exclusively in the passive voice.

Double-click the Pure Vinyl icon that you've placed in your dock and, unlike other powerful programs—you can make and eat a sandwich while waiting for Photoshop to open—Pure Vinyl quickly opens on the desktop. You'll see a virtual LP with a blank label, above which scroll the three available functions: "Click LP spindle to record,""Click iTunes icon for music server" (more about that later), and "Drag and drop Pure Vinyl recording to play."

No one spends this kind of money on a phono preamp unless its appearance and functionality are commensurate with its sound, and in the MP-P201 they are—even if there's only the RIAA curve, and no Mono button. However, what will get wealthy enthusiasts to drain $60k from their bank accounts will be the Vitus's unmistakably astonishing sound. Plug it in, play it, and compare it with whatever you own, and unless you are a confirmed tubeaholic, if you've got the krone, prepare to shell out. Designer Hans-Ole Vitus claims that this method has already sold more than a few units of his mundanely named product.

The Vitus includes switchable, independently configurable balanced and single-ended inputs and a single balanced output. Pushbuttons select and save input sensitivity (125–500µV for MC) and loading for each input, the name of which can be selected from a list of 10 popular cartridge brands—or, in Text mode, you can enter your own.

Vitus offers a choice of four dealer-installed modules for resistive loading, only one of which can be installed at a time. Each includes 16 different resistances,. Two are MC only, and two offer both low impedance loading and 47k ohms, for those who have MC and MM cartridges. No alternate capacitive loadings are offered, but really—how many buyers will use an MM cartridge with a $60,000 phono preamp?

Oh, no!
In direct comparisons with the Boulder 2008, the Vitus MP-P201 produced more of everything that anyone would want to hear from a solid-state phono preamp—and for twice the price but with considerably less functionality, it had better well! The first late evening I spent with it had me yelling, loudly and often, to no one in particular, "Are you f***ing kidding me?"

Just when I thought the dynamic and spatial potentials of an LP had been fully expressed, just when I thought the resolution of inner detail of the other top contenders I've heard had revealed all that was engraved in the grooves of some overly familiar vinyl, the Vitus proved me so wrong. Even casual listeners—such as my skeptical next-door neighbor, who visits periodically to hear the latest insanity—exclaimed profanely when he heard his requests through the Vitus.

Often, great amplifiers are described as "gripping" and "holding" the loudspeakers. The Vitus MP-P201 did that to the signal coming from the cartridge as no other phono preamp has in my experience. That effect rippled through the signal chain, improving the performance of everything it touched, and finally tightening its grip on the speakers themselves. It wasn't at all subtle—as a visiting speaker manufacturer heard the other day. Nor did it sound too mechanical or dry or "electronic"—though again, if you primarily value the continuousness and flow of tubes, while you'll be respectful of what the MP-P201 achieves, you might not be as impressed as I was.

The MP-P201's dynamic presentation at both ends of the scale was nothing short of ridiculous. Its bass extension, control, and weight were granitic. Its ability to tonally and spatially retrieve and resolve instruments and voices within a narrow frequency band produced a constant barrage of new information from some very familiar recordings.

Unexpected voices and instruments appeared in three-dimensional space from the most familiar recordings. These familiar recordings are almost part of my DNA, so suddenly hearing something completely new and obvious produced many "WTF" moments. Even after having sat mesmerized by that Shostakovich LP through both Boulders, hearing it now through the Vitus MP-P201 was yet another revelation of what's possible from vinyl playback specifically, and from musical reproduction in the home in general. The Vitus drew a line in the sand of its soundstage that produced images of the fronts of orchestras way back in space, with an unprecedented solidity and certainty of location. Every aspect of the spatial picture was equally solid and convincing, including the front-to-back layering of orchestral sections—even though this Melodiya/EMI is a very distant recording.

Nor did such a degree of delineation sound artificial. It sounded as natural as when I hear the New York Philharmonic in Avery Fisher Hall, with imaging, soundstaging, and depth just as easily audible—not as compartmentalized musical workstations, but as part of an organic whole that some skeptics claim doesn't exist when you hear symphonic music live. It does.

The Vitus MP-P201's speed, transparency, three-dimensionality, frequency extension, rhythmic ability, musical grip, and any other parameter you could name—with the exception of what only tubes can do—took the overall sound to a new, exalted level. That Shostakovich performance sounded as convincingly "live" as I've ever heard from a recording—except through the Ypsilon VPS-100 tubed phono preamp ($27,700), which I reviewed in my August 2009 column.

If you can look yourself in the eye and spend $60,000 on a phono preamp, you need to hear Vitus Audio's MP-P201. You need to hear it even if you haven't got the $60k—just so you know what awaits you, should you strike it rich.

NAD has solved this problem by offering the PP 3 moving-magnet/moving-coil phono stage ($199). The PP 3 has circuitry identical to that of the PP 2 phono stage ($129), but adds a line input and a 16-bit analog-to-digital converter with USB interface, to permit the conversion of LPs to a digital format via a Mac or PC computer. The PP 3 has both MC and MM inputs, as well as a USB output (a USB cable is supplied). NAD also includes the VinylStudio Lite software, to facilitate converting the analog signal to a computer file.

NAD's Greg Stidsen told me that, in order for the PP 3 to perform to the "NAD standards" of ultralow noise, wide dynamic range, high overload margins, accurate RIAA equalization, and low distortion across the entire audioband, NAD included high-quality, audio-specific transistors and capacitors. Moreover, the PP 3's A/D converter is powered by the USB bus, effectively creating separate analog and digital power supplies.

Sound
I tested the PP 3 via its MM input using my Rega Planar 3 turntable with Syrinx PU-3 tonearm and Clearaudio Virtuoso Wood cartridge, driving a Creek Destiny integrated amplifier and Epos M5i speakers. (A Follow-Up review of the Epos M5i, an upgrade of the original M5, is in the works.)

I entered this reviewing process with some expectations of what I'd hear from the PP 3. I've enjoyed listening to a wide range of NAD gear over the years, beginning with the 7020 receiver I bought for my wife when we began dating, in the mid-1980s. At the time, I thought NAD electronics had a unique sonic signature: a rich, lush midrange, a slightly warm midbass, and slightly sweetened highs, but not enough HF extension or top-end air. The 218 THX power amplifier I reviewed in the August 1999 Stereophile, although a much more modern design than the earlier products derived from the original 3020 integrated amp, had the same NAD house sound.

So I was surprised to discover that, over a wide range of LPs, the PP 3, used as a regular phono preamp, was a more neutral performer than any other NAD component I'd heard, with extended frequency extremes and quite a bit of air. The midrange exhibited a rich, vibrant, holographic character that made me want to listen to a broad palette of vocalists. Dionne Warwick's voice in Hal David and Burt Bacharach's "Wishin' and Hopin'," from her Golden Hits Part One (LP, Scepter SPM 565), was bathed in a golden ambient glow, and the trumpet counterpoint had a silky metallic sheen. I've always felt the Doors' Jim Morrison was underrated as a ballad singer, and in "The Unknown Soldier," from Waiting for the Sun (LP, Elektra LPZ 2049), the NAD revealed his sultry baritone with all his subtle dynamic inflections intact.

Exploring further up the vocal range brought me to Jack Bruce's original recording of his "Theme for an Imaginary Western," from Songs for a Tailor (LP, Atco SD 33-306). His exploration of his upper register in the song's boisterous bridge was forceful yet silky through the NAD, with no trace of hardness. But the NAD didn't gloss over Tom Waits' guttural growl in his "Big in Japan," from Mule Variations (LP, Anti-/Epitaph 86547-1); all of his dynamic phrasing and pitch inflections were as clear as I've heard them through more expensive phono stages.

The NAD's overall neutrality, delicacy, and resolution of detail made it a good match for well-recorded jazz. In "Gloria's Step," from Bill Evans'Live at the Village Vanguard (LP, Verve 9378), the middle range of his delicate piano playing was reproduced without coloration, and with all his subtle phrasing intact. Moreover, it was very easy to follow all the subtleties of Paul Motian's delicate background drumming in this track, even at low volumes. On "Goodbye Pork Pie Hat," from Mingus Ah Um (LP, Columbia KC 65512), Charles Mingus's melodic bass lines were woody, deep, and airy, with no overhang or coloration.

What most floored me about the PP 3's performance was its ability to render lightning-fast transients with a good sense of dynamic slam. Bill Summers' percussion interlude on the bridge of "Palm Grease," from Herbie Hancock's Thrust (LP, Columbia KC 32965), covers a broad range of syncopated percussion textures; with the NAD, the instruments seemed to jump out of the speakers in the front of the stage, giving the tune a lifelike quality. At the delicate end of the transient spectrum, the rapid-fire passages in Artur Rubinstein's readings of Chopin's Scherzos (LP, RCA Living Stereo LSC-2368) retained all their delicacy and speed without a trace of smearing, especially in the more-difficult-to-reproduce upper-register passages.

All three of these expensive phono preamps I review this month—the Boulder 1008 ($12,000), Vitus Masterpiece Series MP-P201 ($60,000), and Abbingdon Music Research PH-77 ($11,995)—share certain sonic attributes not found in less costly, less ambitious units: all are free of "electronica" and glaze. Their edge definition of aural images is smoothly and naturally delineated. All three produce music on a grand, effortless scale. All, to varying degrees, are without easily identifiable sonic signatures, while reproducing harmonically and physically identifiable individual instruments into the deepest recesses of the soundstage. And each one let me easily suspend my disbelief and experience reproduced music as if it I were hearing it live.

Compare with any phono preamp costing $1000–$2000 and, good as such models can be, you'll immediately hear the scale of their sonic pictures diminish in all dimensions. Individual instruments will begin to smear together the farther back you listen. Dynamics will diminish at both ends of the scale, harmonic structures will start to unravel, and edges will blur. Your wide-eyed amazement at the pricier players' sound will turn to a disappointed grimace.

Using an excerpt of a sonically spectacular reissue of Donald Johanos and the Dallas Symphony's justly renowned 1967 recording of Rachmaninoff's Symphonic Dances (45rpm LPs, Vox Turnabout/Analogue Productions AP 54145), remastered at 24-bit/88.2kHz by David Hancock, and using Benchmark's ADC 1 A/D converter, I made recordings as played through all three phono preamps, as well as through the Boulder 2008 and a reasonably priced, well-engineered solid-state unit. I used these files for comparisons in my evaluations here, and played them for others without identifying which preamp was which. When the recording of the perfectly fine, relatively inexpensive solid-state phono preamp came up, their faces fell.

While there are some genuine bargains in high-end audio, as there are in wines and automobiles, my mother's old adage still holds: "You pay, you get." With these three, you pay a lot and you get a lot.

Abbingdon Music Research PH-77 Reference Class Phono Equaliser
Beneath the gorgeous chassis of Abbingdon Music Research's tubed PH-77 Reference Class Phono Equaliser ($11,995) is a true dual-mono phono preamplifier with unprecedented, microprocessor-controlled features. Its limitless flexibility includes 21 phono equalization curves in addition to RIAA, eight gain settings, from 30 to 72dB, and 32 loading options each for moving-magnet and moving-coil cartridges—all selectable at the push of a series of touch-sensitive buttons, either on the front panel or on the remote control. The generously sized fluorescent panel announces the setting choices, including cartridge brand.

Cartridge brand? Yes. You can choose from a long list that ranges from the well-known (Lyra, Shelter, Shure, etc.) to the exotic (Allaerts, 47 Labs, SPJ). Also aboard is a 24-bit/96kHz A/D converter, accessible via a USB port on the rear chassis.

The zero-negative-feedback circuit, which operates in pure, single-ended class-A, utilizes a hybrid first gain stage, half of which was adapted from UK designed "Advanced Gamma Tracking Array" (AGATA) preamplifiers, with the second half comprised of NOS Mullard ECC81/12AT7 tubes, in a direct-coupled, zero-feedback configuration. 26 silver-foil coupling caps perform pure passive RC equalization (including RIAA). The second gain stage uses NOS Philips 5687WB tubes both for gain and to produce a low output impedance (<200 ohms). The PH-77 preserves absolute polarity at all gain and equalization settings.

According to an AMR press release, the PH-77's input stage is an adaptation of circuitry of extremely low noise that's used in quantum-particle research. The result is difficult to believe: a claimed level of input noise of –145dBV (0.056µV). The dual-mono power supply includes choke filtering, and tube rectification via a pair of NOS (new old stock) EZ80 tubes.

Curve Ball: The addition of various EQ curves is both useful and fraught with the potential for abuse. Most American companies adopted the RIAA curve in the mid-1950s, and by 1958 and the advent of stereo, almost all other US and European labels had followed suit. But before that, different record labels used various curves of their own.

It seemed a simple and obvious question, but I couldn't get an answer out of Ron Sutherland. Why did his new 20/20 phono preamp use an AC power supply instead of batteries? I asked directly, I asked repeatedly, I tried framing the question in different ways, all to no avail. Did the AC supply make it sound better? Was it less expensive to build? Were potential customers turned off by having to replace batteries once every year or two?

After all, his other phono preamps—the less expensive Ph3D ($1000), his more expensive Hubble ($3800), and his instant classic, the PhD ($3000 when last available)—all share Sutherland's supercool power supply: a bank of D-cell batteries. All three also share a supremely quiet, natural purity that Michael Fremer has described as being "free from electronic detritus." That purity, and the underlying battery power, was what made Sutherland's phono preamps special. They were why people bought them instead of competing products. Some might say they were the reasons the Sutherland models existed at all. Their combination of sonic purity and battery power supplies was Ron Sutherland's signature, and arguably maintained his place at the forefront of today's audio designers. So why no batteries?

Sutherland politely acknowledged that mine were "good, simple questions," and that he'd "have to think about how to answer them." We discussed various aspects of the 20/20's design, potential future Sutherland products, even manufacturing techniques—but as for the battery question, all I got was "It's a different design . . . a different product, and balances a number of design parameters. It is what it is."

So what is what it is?
Batteries or no, the Sutherland 20/20 is a gorgeous piece of audio gear. It shares a family resemblance with Sutherland's earlier models, the PhD and Direct Line Stage, but its slim proportions make it look much more graceful. Even Sutherland's top model, the Hubble, seems a bit chunky in comparison. Sometimes all the elements of a design—size, shape, finish, detailing—come together just so. The 20/20 is one of those designs.

Inside, too, it's sleek and simple. Under the top cover, which is removed by loosening four thumbscrews (neat!), are two identical, completely separate subchassis, connected only by the front and rear panels. This approach completely separates the two channels and, as Sutherland said, "Optimizing a circuit layout for performance and manufacturability is exacting, iterative, and very time consuming . . . and it's easier to do with a mono circuit than a stereo one. So why not spend all the time and attention you have on just one board, make it as simple as possible (mono), then use it twice, and separate them so they don't interact?"

The 20/20's boards themselves are typical Sutherland: beautifully laid out, lavishly executed, with top-quality components used throughout. The gain and cartridge loading are set by jumpers, a less costly—though less versatile and not as "purist"—alternative to using plug-in resistors,

The "Why no batteries?" question aside, the 20/20's power supplies are another example of clever optimization, albeit one that Sutherland is a bit uneasy about. His concern isn't technical, but rather Will audiophiles allow me to do this? The this is using an inexpensive, outboard power supply designed for laptop computers for each channel. "The goal is to feed perfect, ripple-free, noise-free DC power to the boards. I think of it as putting distance between the circuit and the wall receptacle. Rather than do it all myself, I divide the process and let these power supplies do the first part of it for me. They do what they do extremely well, which is the rectification and bulk of the filtering, and the elimination of the noise and ripple associated with the rectification. Plus, now all that's done in a box that's 6' away from my audio circuits."

The outboard supply puts out 48V DC with about 17mV of ripple. The 20/20 then runs that through 11 cascaded stages of low-pass RC filtering based on super-premium electrolytic caps—to eventually deliver about 30V to the boards, with residual noise and ripple that he describes as "way less than 1µV—too low for me to measure and really know what it really is that I'm measuring." This over-the-top filtering approach is inefficient, he notes, citing the drop from 48 to 30V, but "because I'm using AC power, it can afford to be." He then reiterated that "I just need audiophiles to allow me to do this: to use these supplies to do their part incredibly well, and then to do my part incredibly well, to optimize the overall system."

That said, there's ample reason to break with tradition and offer the thoughts of an obscure English company called LFD, whose products may already have tripped your surveillance wires. In their "Charter to Product Commitment and Traditional Values"—which can be read in its entirety on Frohmusik's website and is signed by Bews and Hawksford (see below)—the people of LFD suggest, in so many words, that they will not manufacture goods outside of their native England; that their design work is guided by listening as much as by engineering theory; that they believe some component parts sound better than others of identical numeric value, depending on their specific role in an audio circuit; that their philosophy of circuit design is decidedly minimalist; and that they advocate the enjoyment of music on vinyl LP. That the principals of LFD have thus far avoided being burned alive as heretics is a source of wonder.

Those principals are Dr. Richard Bews, who serves as LFD's managing director, and the well-known audio engineer Dr. Malcolm O. Hawksford, LFD's technical director. Some of you know Dr. Hawksford as the director of postgraduate studies in electronics engineering at Essex University, or from his articles in Stereophile, or as an especially distinguished member of the Audio Engineering Society. It was, in fact, from one of the papers Dr. Hawksford delivered to the AES that LFD got its name: Low Fuzzy Distortion (footnote 1). (In this context, fuzzy means random, though that's not to say the more common definition might not also apply.)

Description
It turns out that LFD has been around for nearly a decade: surprising news, given their low profile, itself a function of the company's insistence on constructing their products bench style, one at a time. Indeed, though their amps and preamps use printed circuit boards, LFD is that rare maker of solid-state electronics that acknowledges and, where possible, exploits the superiority of point-to-point wiring.

At the same time, LFD has no particular fear of op-amps, a stereo pair of which is used in the product under review: the Phonostage LE ($1295). According to Richard Bews, the NE5534 op-amp chip that provides voltage gain in the Phonostage LE was chosen specifically for its sound quality—and because it can be used to produce the desired DC offset for biasing the preamp's output-coupling capacitor. At the input end, a high-end Beyschlag resistor establishes the cartridge load, while the RIAA equalization network uses new-old-stock Bayer/WIMA polycarbonate capacitors. LFD apparently had the good sense to squirrel away those parts over the years: shades of Shindo.

The power supply is simple—and, according to Bews, a bit unusual: "Regulators are used to reduce noise," he says, "but [are] then followed by a large RC filter, which seems to produce a smoother sound compared to just regulators with small decoupling capacitors on their outputs." The Phonostage's PCB employs a star-ground scheme, and all wiring between it and the various other components is PC-OCC, which LFD says is made to their specifications in the Far East. A small frame-type transformer by VTX supplies the juice.

With the possible exception of the 47 Laboratory Gaincard, the LFD Phonostage is indeed as minimalist as they come: 28 resistors, 24 capacitors, 4 regulators, 2 epoxy diodes, 2 op-amp chips, and 1 transformer, all in a pleasant-looking but by no means opulent chassis made mostly of panels of extruded aluminum. Build quality was fine—happily, someone went to the trouble of tapping the screw openings in the extrusions, rather than counting on "self-tapping" metal screws to do the job for them—and most surfaces were finished in an attractive dark-gray textured paint. An exceedingly small, blue LED on the front panel reminds the user that the Phonostage LE is powered up, a state attained as soon as it's plugged in: Like most other high-end audio products that don't consume a great deal of current, the Phonostage lacks a power switch.

Installation and setup
The manual supplied with the LFD Phonostage LE is a simple thing: one page of Please do this, Please don't do that, and Thank you for buying our product. Things to do include leaving the Phonostage LE powered up all the time and keeping it at least a half-meter away from other electronic components, in order to prevent induced hum. Things not to do include asking the Phonostage LE to drive interconnects longer than 2–3m, or allowing oneself to fidget over the product's fixed 47k ohm input impedance. (In LFD's opinion, the quality of an input resistor has far greater influence on sound than its specific value.)

Designer John Curl decided to keep the JC 3's design simple by choosing purity over adjustability. Therefore, the loading for moving-coil cartridges is limited to 100 ohms or 47k ohms, with 47k ohms also for the moving-magnet input. Curl believes that the vast majority of MC cartridges are suited for 100 ohm loading, and I concur. If you don't like that, leave it wide open at 47k, which I believe is almost never correct. Changing the loading is done via custom-made NKK selector switches with gold-on-silver contacts.

Schram understood that the limited loading options might lose him some customers, but he let Curl call the shots. Why? For you youngsters, I quote Stereophile's founder, the late J. Gordon Holt, who in 1988 wrote that "Few people in the audio business would deny that John Curl is an audio design genius—arguably the greatest one of our generation. He designed and built the electronics for Mobile Fidelity's SuperMaster and David Wilson's (of Wilson Audio) UltraMaster tape recorders, two of the three best analog recorders in the world. (The other is Keith Johnson's home-brew unit.) He designed the JC-1 head amp and JC-2 preamplifier sold under the Mark Levinson name some years ago." Curl's Vendetta Research SCP-2 is still considered by many, including Stereophile's Bob Reina, the classic modern-day phono preamp against which all others should be measured.

Schram says the passive parts used in the JC 3's RIAA equalization circuit are identical to those used in the Vendetta, which cost $3000 in 1992. The circuit uses active parts chosen for both their very low levels of noise and the spectrum of that noise, which Schram says is critical to how we perceive noise. The circuit is fully direct coupled using a DC servo—there are no coupling caps in the signal path—and the output stage is a true dual-differential, balanced design.

The Vendetta was "about 10dB quieter" than the JC 3, but the FETs used in the older design are no longer available. That hardly matters: the Vendetta was designed for use with the Ortofon MC cartridges of its era, which output only 0.05mV. Today, most MCs produce 10 times that.

The power supplies, using an R-core transformer that Schram says rejects more AC "crud" than does a toroid, are modeled on the design and layout of the JC 2—according to Schram, one of the quietest line stages ever made. Two low partitions of carbon steel isolate the transformer from the phono-circuit modules. The power supply also has a large inductor and ultrafast, soft-recovery diodes. Each gain/EQ module is housed in its own internal enclosure of extruded aluminum. The JC 3 has a built-in AC line conditioner, as well as a switch to invert the AC polarity, which can be useful in eliminating ground hum.

A Mono/Stereo switch on the front panel activates relays within each channel's gain/EQ module. When the switch is set to Stereo, each channel's signal remains within that channel's housing. The signals meet each other outside the shielded housing only in Mono mode. The JC 3's gain is 47dB (MM) or 68dB (MC), and its signal/noise ratio for MC cartridges is 75dB input shorted, IHF A-weighted.

A Closer Listen
Of the four phono preamps I review this month, the Pass Labs XP-25 had the deepest, tightest bottom end. The Parasound JC 3's bass was also tight and punchy, and came very close, but it couldn't dig to the very bottom, where the XP-25 did go when the music called for it—as the Big Joe Turner track "Down Home Blues," from Kansas City Here I Come (LP, Pablo 2310 904, recorded by Allen Sides at Ocean Way in 1984) did.

The JC 3's midbass attack was timbrally and texturally ideal—for instance, with "Green Shirt"'s rolling bass lines (from a superb reissue of Elvis Costello's Armed Forces, LP, Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab MFSL 1-331). But dynamically, while performing well beyond its price, it couldn't compare with the XP-25—or, at more than ten times the price, the Ypsilon VPS-100. I compared the $2350 JC 3 with the three far more expensive phono preamps only because it's good enough to play on the same field. That's not the same as winning, but it's still impressive.

At the other end of the price spectrum, the Parasound JC 3 was identifiably less extended on top compared to the Pass XP-25, which, until it was broken in, seemed to have a "crispy" lift in the top octaves.

When, without paying particular attention, I switched among the versions I'd recorded of "Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere." from Neil Young and Crazy Horse's At the Fillmore 1970 (LP, Reprise 44429-1) with these four phono preamps, all of them sounded good. But when I paid close attention, I heard more cymbal shimmer, bass solidity, and definition from the Ypsilon VPS-100 and Pass XP-25. The Parasound JC 3 tucked it in ever so slightly at both ends of the audioband, losing some shimmer on top and punch on the bottom, while the Allnic H-3000V produced some shimmer but lost out in bottom-end definition, image focus, and "snare crack" in favor of spatial opulence.

I heard more upper-midrange air and spaciousness from the two tubed models, but the Allnic really pushed forward a big bubble of sound that sounded more like a ringing coloration than something actually in the recordings. I could really hear this with Tina Brooks'True Blue (LP, Blue Note/Music Matters MMBST 84041; the input resistance and transformer input turns were both set correctly to 30 ohm loading for the Ortofon A90.) When Brooks' tenor sax and Freddie Hubbard's trumpet both blare the main theme, instruments lost focus and solidity and began to bloom, with a slight haze forming around them on the higher and louder notes. Both instruments announce the theme in unison and then stop, which hangs the artificial reverb out in the pause for a millisecond. Then the horns repeat the theme. In that pause, the Allnic's slower reaction time somewhat obscured the reverb.

When I switched to the JC 3, I lost some of the trumpet's brassiness and the sax's reediness, but the images remained extremely well focused, timbrally and spatially, as the two instruments ascended. When they stopped, the reverb was well defined in the ensuing pause. The JC 3 had superb musical grip and control, especially for its price.

Mikey Sums Up
At $2350, the Parasound JC 3 is a remarkably fine phono preamp that easily held its own against the far costlier competition. Its minor shortcomings were at the extremes of frequency response, dynamics, and timbral verisimilitude; the centers held firm. In other words, unless you're running full-range, ultradynamic speakers, you won't miss what the JC 3 hasn't got to give—and even then, I can confidently say that the JC 3 represents the best current value in a phono preamp that I know of, as long as you can live with the limitation of a choice of only two loadings, 100 and 47k ohms. Highly recommended! —Michael Fremer

The RS-30EQ is just as well built as Leben's CS300 integrated amplifier, with which I auditioned it, some of its parts being even more robust. A few of the RS-30EQ's power-supply components are assembled on a small fiber-composite board—not a printed-circuit board—with most other parts supported by terminal strips. As with the CS300, everything was neatly wired, point-to-point. Unsurprisingly for a phono preamp—especially one that uses CR equalization—there were signs of extra shielding inside the RS-30EQ, and Leben says that a specially made "orient-core" power transformer was chosen for this product in an effort to minimize hum and noise.

Sound Quality
Because the Leben integrated amp lacks a phono stage, I supplemented the CS300 with the RS-30EQ, using a 1.5m-long Audio Note AN-Vx interconnect to go from the outputs of the latter to the inputs of the former. I preceded the Leben phono preamp with either an Auditorium 23 SPU Standard or Silvercore One-to-Ten step-up transformer, for use with low- and high-output MC pickups, respectively. The two Leben components sat directly on the wood shelves of my borrowed Box Furniture rack; only stock AC cords were used.

From the start, the Leben combination distinguished itself as a punchy and realistically textured amp with an especially deep, tight bottom end. Most stereo recordings sounded pleasantly large through the Leben, with instruments and voices maintaining good physical presence. The Leben was tonally well balanced overall, and although it had the sort of warmth and humanness I associate with tube amplification in general, it was free from egregious timbral colorations.

Rachmaninoff's Vocalise, Op.34, from Analogue Productions' recent 45rpm remastering of the recording by Donald Johanos and the Dallas Symphony Orchestra (Vox Turnabout TV 34145S), sounded lovely through the Leben, with sweet, delicate string tone and perfectly colorful woodwinds. Internote silences were reasonably "black," though not nearly as stygian as with the best Shindo and Lamm electronics of my acquaintance. String tone, especially in the double basses, was also fine while playing through the Leben electronics a 1960 recording of Saint-Saëns's Carnival of the Animals, with Beatrice Lillie, Skitch Henderson, and the London Symphony Orchestra (LP, Decca SXL 2218). The performance was sufficiently present that my dog expressed a keen interest in the various animal sounds therein (recorded for the occasion at the London Zoo).

The Leben didn't have all the color and physicality of the Shindo separates when playing the curiously titled "Old Danger Field," from Bill Monroe's 1981 studio album Master of Bluegrass (LP, MCA 5214), but it was on the same page: enough to make the listening experience enjoyable as more than just hi-fi, if you know what I mean. Monroe's mandolin didn't leap from the mix, and the imaginary stage was spatially a bit flat overall—but it was rather wide and tall in comparison to that of the other amps, with a convincing sense of scale. Bass impact was excellent, as was the timing of the notes played by the upright bass. In the midrange and trebles, things clucked that ought to have clucked.

Conclusions
A quick tour through audio's alternative fora uncovers a generous amount of praise for the Leben CS300—to which I can only add my admiration: This exceptionally well-made amp and its companion phono preamp sounded wonderful in my home. They were a pleasure to look at, a pleasure to use, and delightful to hear.

Combined, the retail price of my Shindo separates is approximately $27,500. For less than a quarter of that amount, Leben CS300 integrated and RS-30EQ phono preamp provided a lot more than a quarter of their musical and sonic abilities. They didn't have all of the Shindos' color, presence, internote silence, or magical sense of flow, but the Lebens had their wheels firmly planted on the same road.

For the well-to-do Porscheophile, the line's ne plus ultra is the GT2 RS ($245,000)—the ultimate expression of the Porsche 911 concept and "the fastest and most powerful road-going sports car ever built in the history of Porsche," in the words of Porsche CEO Detlev Von Platen. Every detail of the GT2 RS's design and execution has been stripped down, scrutinized, and optimized, to produce what is, essentially, a civilized racecar for the street. At the top of Sutherland's line is the Phono Block. Though its price of $10,000/pair and general availability make it a bit more obtainable than a GT2 RS, the Phono Block, too, represents a stripped-down, optimized, no-compromise design.

Under the Hood
In keeping with Ron Sutherland's no-compromise philosophy, the Phono Blocks are just that: two completely separate but identical monophonic units. The approach is extreme, but as Sutherland points out, it maximizes separation and eliminates any crosstalk. Each Phono Block chassis externally resembles a Sutherland Hubble, but instead shares its architecture with the 20/20, which I reviewed in the February 2011 Stereophile.

Each Phono Block itself comprises two heavily shielded, individual subchassis, linked by the front and rear panels. The right-hand subchassis is the power supply, which Sutherland says is key to the Block's performance. As in the 20/20, the Block's supplies are AC driven, but according to a much more extreme take on the Sutherland philosophy of putting as much distance as possible between the wall outlet and the audio circuits. Here, the AC is run first through a toroidal transformer, a dual-pi ferrite-bead/film-capacitor filter, and a second toroidal transformer. It then is split into two parallel paths, one for each amplification section of the audio circuit. Each path then runs through a discrete-diode, full-wave bridge rectifier, filter capacitors, a constant-current regulator, and two more RC pi filters. From there, power travels between the power supply and audio chassis via an umbilical nestled in a shielded channel in the front panel, through three more RC pi filters, and a constant-voltage shunt regulator at the load. Even more filtering is supplied in the form of electrolytic and film capacitors bypassing each of the active devices. Sutherland notes that, all told, the power supply has over 100,000µF of capacitance and takes over 20 seconds to charge up when power is applied.

The left-hand subchassis is the audio side, comprising the final power-supply filtering and two gain stages. The first is a low-noise instrumentation amplifier, which acts as an input stage to load the cartridge and supply the initial gain. For the second stage, Sutherland uses an op-amp to accomplish the RIAA equalization and to supply the output current. Rather than use coupling capacitors to eliminate any DC, as he has in some of his other designs, Sutherland wraps both of each Phono Block's amplification stages in a DC servo loop.

It's an oversimplification, but largely true, to say that the Phono Block's audio board resembles that of a 20/20 or Hubble on steroids. For example, the Hubble is itself an extravagant, beautifully executed design, but where it has a 12,000µF bank of thimble-sized electrolytic capacitors, the Phono Block has D-cell–sized whoppers totaling over 100,000µF. Everywhere you see a 1µF WIMA polyproylene cap bypassing an active device in the Hubble, in the Phono Block you see both the polypropylene and a pair of 660µF electrolytics. With the Phono Block there's more of everything, everything is bigger, and it's all done to the nth degree. Looking at the audio board, it's obvious why the Phono Blocks are mono units—two boards wouldn't fit!

The over-the-top execution applies to the board itself. Sutherland points out that material between the traces on the top and bottom of a circuit board will act as a dielectric, effectively putting an additional capacitor in the circuit. He mitigates this effect by reducing the width of the signal-carrying traces to just 0.015" and having no traces on the underside of the board in signal-carrying regions. Plus, the FR-4 fiberglass circuit board itself is 1/8" thick, which is twice the norm. As Sutherland notes, "I could use exotic materials for the board and get a 10% or 20% reduction in the dielectric effect, but that can cause problems with traces not sticking. By simply using a 1/8"-thick board, I cut any dielectric effects in half. . . . plus, I get easier manufacturability, better durability in the field, and a more stable, rigid platform for the circuit," Sutherland said when I spoke to him about the design.

The Phono Block uses plug-in cards to select loading and gain, which eliminates any switches and puts only a single set of resistors in the circuit at a time. It's an approach typical of Sutherland's design ethos: optimize performance while eschewing any frills or features that might compromise the final sound. "Sure, I could have included a switching circuit to select gain and loading, and had it adjustable with a remote control. I could even have added a digital readout to show what values were selected, but doing any of that would have added complexity and cost, and created noise that I'd have to work to eliminate. At best, the final product would sound no better, and quite likely, it wouldn't sound as good."

The Phono Block does, however, have a couple of features that the other Sutherlands don't. One is a choice of one of three grounding schemes: audio grounding directly to the chassis, floating the audio ground off the chassis, or "soft grounding" through a 50-ohm resistor. Another is the inclusion of a white-noise generator: a small plug-in board that allows the Phono Block to burn itself in quickly and efficiently, or to burn in a set of phono cables. When the burn-in is done, the generator is replaced with the proper loading card and the unit is ready to go. "I'm into adding features that do no sonic damage to the final product," states Sutherland. "When the customer is done with the white-noise generator, they just take it out and there's no harm done."

Use and Listening
Ron Sutherland's strip-down-and-optimize design approach has resulted in the phono-stage equivalent of Porsche's GT2 RS: the Phono Block provides a simple, straight-ahead user-friendliness that no amount of frills and features could approach. At Sutherland's suggestion, I began with the 50-ohm soft-ground setting, plugged in cards for 100 ohms of loading and 60dB of gain to match my Lyra Titan i cartridge, hooked up the Phono Blocks, and I was done. No muss, no fuss, no switches, no adjustments, no remotes, no further choices to make. All that was left to do was to listen.

A word about the Shure V15VxMR: After spending a week listening to it in the VPI Classic 3, I've come to respect it far more than before, though I've always thought it was pretty good. It tracked incredibly well at 1.25gm, resolved detail and spaciousness (contrary to the reputation of MMs), and its response sounded remarkably flat, with deep, taut bass and extended highs. It was slightly recessed in the upper mids/lower highs, but hardly dark, as some online commentators have described it.

Shure stopped making replacement styli for the Shure V15VxMR more than a few years ago (footnote 1), but Jico, a Japanese company that specializes in replacement styli, began making a replacement, complete with brush-damper, for $159.99. Another company, Super Analogue Stylus, makes a $144.95 replacement stylus for the V15VxMR that's apparently better (don't ask me why it costs less).

I got one of the Jicos from LP Gear. Perhaps it needed to break in and I didn't have time to do that for this column, but out of the box it sounded a bit brighter, more forward, and less supple than the standard stylus, but still very good. If you own a V15VxMR, don't let it lie around gathering dust because you can't replace its stylus. You can!

Among the LPs used for this review were: a double 45rpm reissue of Ella Fitzgerald's Ella Swings Lightly (Verve/ORG MG-VS 6019); AC/DC's Back in Black, remastered by George Marino and issued in a boxed set (Epic); and a stupendous 45rpm set of Falla's The Three-Cornered Hat, with Ernest Ansermet and L'Orchestre de la Suisse Romande (Decca/London/ORG 102). The Falla has everything: depth on a huge soundstage, three-dimensionality, and timbral richness. It opens with a stage full of castanets, shouting male voices, then a solo mezzo-soprano (Teresa Berganza) way in the distance, and strings, winds and brass.

PTE MMMC (in MM mode)
Jim Rush's MMMC ($1595) is an MM/MC phono preamp made in America by Precision Transducer Engineering (PTE). Its metal chassis is housed in an attractive wooden case, and contains a full complement of gain and loading options selected via DIP switches accessed by removing the bottom plate.

Even the MM input offers, instead of only 47k ohms, a plethora of loading choices—21 of them, from 4.9 to 75k ohms—and the excellent instruction manual shows why some high-output cartridges that have unusually low inductances, such as those from Soundsmith and Grado, would benefit from another choice even when the manufacturer recommends 47k. Rush surmises that that recommendation is made because 47k ohms has become the "standard," even if it might not be the best choice for every MM or moving-iron cartridge.

But while the PTE MMMC is very well made (even if a metal shield epoxied to the tops of some board components had broken loose and was rattling around inside when I opened the shipping box), and features a board packed with quality parts, its sound in MM mode was not particularly inviting, especially after hearing either of the . . . Lejonklous (I had to look again). The PTE sounded flat, cardboardy, and glary.

But I'll spare you the rest of my listening notes-as soon as I'd completed my listening, there in my inbox was a message from Rush. Without knowing what I'd written, he told me that he's made changes to the MMMC's MM section that have much improved its sound. He's improved the overload margins by 6dB, changed from passive to active RIAA equalization, and increased the power-supply voltage so that the 1kHz overload is now 26dB. Output coupling capacitors have been changed to poly film, and the entire signal path is now low-tolerance film caps. An upgraded sample is on its way to me.

Switching to MC Mode
With a Lyra Helikon SL cartridge mounted on the tonearm of VPI's Classic 3 turntable, my first job was to listen through a known, reasonably priced phono preamp. I used Einstein Audio's Turntable's Choice ($5400). This combo produced finer detail and image resolution, and a noticeably wider and deeper soundstage, than did the Shure through any of the MM phono stages surveyed. The Lyra-VPI-Einstein's transparency, too, was far superior, but most noticeably better were the combo's textural and timbral delineation. For the most part, you pay more, you get more.

The PTE MMMC, loaded at 100 ohms, commendably pushed back the front of the soundstage and increased the overall depth; in the Falla recording, Teresa Berganza's more compact, better-focused voice could be heard emanating from well back on the stage. Strings were still a bit hard relative to the far more expensive Einstein, but drum textures were believable-as were, generally, the percussive attacks. The bottom end was well developed, helping to produce rich lower strings, warm French horns, and an enveloping hall sound. Macrodynamics, while no match for the Einstein's, were very good, particularly for $1595.

The PTE reproduced satisfyingly tight, but not the deepest, kick-drum sound from AC/DC's "You Shook Me All Night Long," and the electric guitars cut through nicely, while cymbals had a bit of electronic overlay that somewhat diminished their desirable brassy ring. That same overlay affected Ella Fitzgerald's voice, which was also a bit too big. Overall, though, a pretty good performance.

So it was with a special kind of excitement that I introduced to my system the Parasound Zphono•USB phono preamplifier ($349), cued up my new copy of Deserter's Songs, and hurried back to my orange couch before the stylus could hit the lead-in groove. In that moment before the music emerged, when my listening room ballooned with a sweet, heavy silence and the enormous winter moon poured through my white curtains to expose the cracks in my tired walls, I wondered if I would be disappointed.

Earlier that day, I had accompanied John Atkinson to Michael Fremer's lovely home in the thickly wooded suburbs of northern New Jersey, to run a full set of measurements on the MBL Radialstrahler 101E Mk.II loudspeakers ($70,500/pair; review to appear in an upcoming issue). Just prior to the tests, while JA positioned microphones, I tiptoed around Mikey's famously messy listening room, carefully avoiding jewel cases, power amplifiers, and speaker cables, and marveling at all the stuff. Nearly every inch of the place was covered in music and gear.

"Wanna listen to something?" Mikey asked.

"Yeah," I said, taking a seat. "Do you have the new Mercury Rev reissue?"

"I don't have the new one," Mikey said, "but I've got an original. Wanna hear 'Holes'?"

Amid all the chaos and clutter, Mikey quickly located the record and cued it up on his Continuum Audio Labs Caliburn turntable, fitted with a Continuum Cobra tonearm and Ortofon A90 moving-coil cartridge. Mikey's Musical Fidelity Titan power amplifier drove the MBLs via TARA Labs Omega Gold speaker cable. The preamplifier and phono preamp were Ypsilon's PST-100 Mk.II and VPS-100 Mk.II, respectively. Interconnects were TARA Labs Zero. I did the math in my head: A system like this would cost well over $400,000—yikes!—a lot of money by just about any standard.

When I listen to music at Mikey's, I expect to be extremely impressed. On this occasion, what first caught my attention was the force with which notes emerged on the stage and the grace with which they faded away: Garth Hudson's tenor and alto sax solos, for instance, were fluid and poetic, beautifully and fully expressed. But perhaps even more impressive was the system's ability to envelop me in sound. Everything just seemed so big and present, creating a remarkably physical experience.

Now, as I sat on the orange couch, again waiting anxiously for Deserter's Songs to begin, my experience at Mikey's was still fresh in my mind and ears. How would my system compare?

When the music emerged, I heard sinuous strings sweeping across a big, wide soundstage; percussive acoustic guitar churning from the left channel; eerily realistic tambourine coming from the right channel; bass and drums at the rear of the stage, presented in a way that was clear, powerful, and easy to follow; that surreal bowed saw wavering and warbling, sounding like a choir of weeping spirits; and, finally, the fragile, childlike voice singing "Time, all th' long red lines / that take control / of all th' smokelike streams / that flow into your dreams . . ."

I was very happily surprised. Whether it was because I was back in Jersey City, in my own room, surrounded by my own things, or because I'd been so eager and hopeful, or because I was high on winter moonlight, I can't be certain—but as I sat there listening again to "Holes," I couldn't help but think that the experience wasn't merely as good as what I'd heard earlier that day at Mikey's—it was better. I considered shooting off delirious text messages to Natalie and Nicole, raving about the wonderful sound and music, but decided against pestering them with more hi-fi talk. Yes, Mikey's system had created a bigger overall picture with bigger individual images, but my modest system was delivering all the tonal color, drama, scale, spatial cues, and smooth, easy flow that I could have hoped for.

I didn't let myself get too excited. After all, I was listening to a mint copy of a new remastering of Deserter's Songs, while Mikey's original pressing was old and well worn. And I reminded myself that the Parasound Zphono•USB was completely new to me. But still! My system sounded better than I could recall ever hearing it. It sounded better than $400,000. What was this Zphono all about?

A little lesson
I walked into John Atkinson's office one day and asked him to tell me about phono preamplifiers. "What the heck do they do, anyway, and what makes one different from another?" Clearly and succinctly, John gave me a little lesson on RIAA and gain. He even drew a block diagram with a couple of triangles and some pretty, squiggly lines. My boss is so cool.

Back in the hip 1950s, the Record Industry Association of America created the RIAA curve, an equalization standard that adjusted certain frequencies at the record-cutting stage, attenuating low frequencies and emphasizing higher ones, in order to fit as much music as possible onto an LP and increase the format's dynamic range. This process is called pre-emphasis. When pre-emphasized records are played back, however, the altered frequencies need to be re-equalized in order to match the original recording. Reapplication of the RIAA curve, or de-emphasis, is the first job of any phono preamplifier. Wild, right? (For an in-depth discussion of RIAA LP equalization, see Keith Howard's awesome "Cut and Thrust.")

A phono preamp's second job is to provide additional amplification, or voltage gain, to the very small signals produced by phono cartridges. While moving-magnet designs like my Rega Elys 2 do provide a stronger signal than the moving-coil cartridges that Art Dudley and most of my other audiophile friends prefer, the signal is still far weaker than that produced by a CD player.

The ways in which an engineer can implement those two goals are limited primarily by skill, imagination, and budgetary constraints. Hence the world sees both a $26,000 Ypsilon VPS-100 and a $349 Parasound Zphono•USB—wildly different components designed to do pretty much the same thing.

From bowling alley to listening room
Parasound introduced their affordable Z series in 1996, the year Lisa Marie Presley filed for divorce from Michael Jackson. I was 19 years old and could have used a good stereo in my dorm room, but I didn't then know anything about hi-fi. If you're reading this in your dorm room, you're way ahead of where I was at your age. If you're reading this in your mansion, you're way ahead of where I am now.

The Z series is now in its third generation. The Zphono•USB measures 9.5" wide by 2" high by 10" deep and weighs 5 lbs. Its appearance is simple, no-nonsense, and, like all of Parasound's Z products, dominated by its front-panel rack-mounting holes, which suggest use in pro-audio environments. I sort of hate those rack-mounting holes. I asked Parasound's president, Richard Schram, about the product's look.

Schram explained that the half-width rack-mount design emerged from a Parasound-engineered, AMF-branded mike preamp installed in all of AMF's bowling centers in the late 1980s. "We've continued the rack-mount design because the products are so popular in custom installations and are often 'problem solvers' where high performance is required and real estate is limited."

Before dropping the needle onto Christine's copy of Sold for Prevention of Disease Only, I shot the record a few times with the Milty Zerostat 3 ($100), a blue, gun-shaped gadget that helps eliminate static. Squeezing the Zerostat's thin black trigger releases positive ions; relaxing the trigger produces negative ions. A complete squeeze cycle results in a neutral static condition—one perfectly in balance, neither too heavy nor too light—and my LPs play quietly. This step in my LP-playing routine grew out of necessity and has become a habit. The process is especially important in the cold winter months, when the air in my small apartment is dry, and debris stubbornly clings to my LPs and my cartridge's stylus.

A couple of years ago, I spent three sad winter months trying to figure out what was wrong with my turntable. Complex passages of music were consistently marred by horrible distortion that made listening to vinyl unbearably stressful. Close inspection of my stylus revealed the culprit: ugly clumps of dust and debris. I blew on the stylus, brushed it, treated it with cleaners, pleaded with it, made promises, said prayers. Nothing worked. Finally, in desperation, I shot my cartridge with the Milty Zerostat 3. Haven't had a problem since. Other products cleaned my cartridge, but only the Milty kept it clean.

At the time, I'd asked Leland Leard, of Music Hall, Milty's US distributor, about the Zerostat's effectiveness with phono cartridges.

"Like Windex," Leard said, "a shot of the Zerostat will cure all that ails: bed sores, acne, H1N1, erectile dysfunction."

To keep the noise of applying the Zerostat from being transmitted through the speakers, Leard advised that users power down their systems before treating their phono cartridges—good advice. He also told me that the Zerostat works on Compact Discs: "CDs develop an enormous internal electrostatic charge as they are whirring around in a warm, sealed environment. A shot of the Zerostat zaps out the static. And tired of those pesky coffee grinds sticking to the side of your grinder's plastic basket? Grind, then shoot. You'll be amazed."

I haven't tried the Zerostat on my CDs or my coffee grinder, but perhaps I can coerce Sam Tellig into using it on his magic gong. Or maybe Art Dudley would like to zap a photo of Mikey Fremer.

Unfortunately, my relationship with static electricity has become even more complicated as my VPI HW-16.5 record-cleaning machine ($650) has aged. The VPI's velvet-lipped vacuum tube doesn't dry my records as effectively as it once did. Whereas two vacuuming revolutions used to do the job, it now takes three or four before a newly cleaned record is completely dry. That's not a big deal, but the extra suction can contaminate an LP's surface with unfortunate static electricity. So before I play any just-cleaned record, I treat it with the Zerostat. It offers a measure of comfort.

But such comfort comes at a cost. To a young music enthusiast who's just getting into vinyl playback, $100 might seem a lot of money to spend on an accessory. After all, $100 can buy three new pairs of Levi's 501s, 10 six-packs of Dale's Pale Ale, or 50 used classical LPs from Iris Records—all great things. But the Milty Zerostat 3 lifted my heavy vinyl depression. It's an accessory I wouldn't want to live without. (For more indispensable accessories, see AD's "List of the Month," on p.47. I also regularly employ his No.9.)

If you're experiencing problems with static and $100 is prohibitively expensive, you can try Static Guard spray ($4.99/5.5oz can). Developed in 1978 by the Alberto-Culver Company, Static Guard works by neutralizing the charges on fabric surfaces and by attracting humidity from the air, thereby increasing the electrical conductivity of those surfaces, eliminating static cling, and reducing the risk of electric shock. I spray it on the rug in my listening room, on the white curtains behind my equipment rack, and on my orange couch. Never spray it directly on your components, however.

None of this is new. Audiophiles have been fighting electrostatic events forever. I thank Michael Fremer for introducing me to both the Milty Zerostat and Static Guard. Stereophile's former senior editor, Jonathan Scull, covered these accessories in his excellent "Fine Tunes" column.

Back in the listening room
Now that Christine's record was clean and static-free, I sat down to listen. As usual, I used my Rega P3-24 turntable ($1295 in high-gloss white; now discontinued), which has a Rega Elys 2 moving-magnet cartridge. The rest of the system comprised my five-year-old PSB Alpha B1 loudspeakers ($299/pair), NAD C 316BEE integrated amplifier ($379), and AudioQuest Rocket 33 speaker cables ($299/10' pair) and Sidewinder interconnects ($65/1m pair; now discontinued). Most important, I'd just swapped out the outstanding Parasound Zphono•USB ($349) for the Musical Fidelity V-LPS II phono preamplifier ($189) and V-PSU II power supply ($249).

As I mentioned last month, this copy of Wilderness Road's Sold for Prevention of Disease Only (Warner Bros. MS 2125), a white-label promo disc, was so badly dished that I could have used it as a serving bowl at one of Natalie and Nicole's parties. Playing the convex side was impossible: The tonearm leapt right from the surface of the record and the stylus couldn't trace the groove—unusual for my Rega, which prior to this had seemed capable of tracking anything. The concave side, however, played fine and sounded surprisingly good. Produced by Jack Richardson, Sold for Prevention of Disease Only, like many rock records from the early 1970s, sounds big, dramatic, and present. But because this was my first time hearing the record, I was careful not to attribute these characteristics to the Musical Fidelity products. After listening to a couple of tracks, it was time to listen to something more familiar, something that would give me a better idea of the V-LPS II's own sound.

Back in the kitchen
I had preheated my oven for 30 minutes at 150°F, as prescribed by the clear and thorough instruction sheet that came with my sample of the Vinyl Flat record flattener ($99.95). I placed Christine's record between the two Groovy Rings, sandwiched the Rings between the Vinyl Flat's two metal plates, screwed the whole thing together, carefully placed it in the center of my oven rack, and closed the oven. Foresight should have told me to first try the Vinyl Flat with a record from my own collection, but foresight tends to be valued only in hindsight. I consulted the Vinyl Flat's table of heating times and found an entry for Reprise albums from the 1970s. According to the table, I would have to bake the record for 35 minutes and allow it to cool for another 45. Good: I would use the time to get to know the Musical Fidelity products. I reached for James Blake's self-titled release (LP, Polydor B0015443-01) and cued up "Limit to Your Love."

Back in the day
Sam Tellig wrote a little bit about the original V-LPS in our May 2009 issue. He liked it, especially for its detail retrieval, but acknowledged its limitations: "This was not the most dynamic, expansive phono sound around," he wrote, and concluded, "If you decide to upgrade later on, the V-LPS will make a splendid backup. Or use it in a second system."

The RCA input and output jacks are chassis-mounted, as you'd expect to find in products costing far more. There are also single input and output XLR jacks, because the B2B-1 can also be used as a fully differential mono phono preamplifier (though time and circumstances prevented me from auditioning it in that configuration).

Jumpers under a hatch in the top plate offer five choices of resistive loading (100, 221, 332, 499, and 47k ohms) and the inclusion of a 220pF silver-mica capacitor for the MM input. Another jumper sets the first of two cascaded amplifiers to either 20 or 40dB of gain. The second amplification stage provides an additional 24dB of gain as well as the RIAA bass boost, while an RC network between the two amps implements the RIAA curve's 75µs rolloff.

Sound Quality
Among the LPs used for this review were: a double 45rpm reissue of Ella Fitzgerald's Ella Swings Lightly (Verve/ORG MG-VS 6019); AC/DC's Back in Black, remastered by George Marino and issued in a boxed set (Epic); and a stupendous 45rpm set of Falla's The Three-Cornered Hat, with Ernest Ansermet and L'Orchestre de la Suisse Romande (Decca/London/ORG 102). The Falla has everything: depth on a huge soundstage, three-dimensionality, and timbral richness. It opens with a stage full of castanets, shouting male voices, then a solo mezzo-soprano (Teresa Berganza) way in the distance, and strings, winds and brass.

In MM mode, the Audio B2B-1 delivered as advertised: It was extremely quiet, fast, and ultradynamic. It produced the "blackest" backdrops of any phono preamp surveyed here, from which sprang the widest dynamics.

If you listen mostly to rock, the Liberty is your ticket to paradise without spending crazy money. It's a mini Boulder 1008, I found myself thinking-a big compliment, considering the Boulder costs $12,000! AC/DC's "You Shook Me All Night Long" (which is about sex, though car nut and lead singer Brian Johnson recently insisted, on The Howard Stern Show, that it's really about an automobile) showed that the Liberty had deep, ultratight, rockin' bass, clean high-frequency transients, and fast top-to-bottom attack. It carved out instruments in 3D space with surgical precision.

However, if your tastes run more to Ella Fitzgerald and acoustic jazz in general, and depending on the rest of your system, you might find the B2B-1's sound a bit too surgical, and not quite liquid or "fleshy" enough. In that case I'd go for one of the Kinkajous-um, Lejonklous-but I don't see how you can go wrong with the Liberty, especially as it comes with a two-week home trial. If you don't like it, send it back.

Switching to MC Mode
With a Lyra Helikon SL cartridge mounted on the tonearm of VPI's Classic 3 turntable, my first job was to listen through a known, reasonably priced phono preamp. I used Einstein Audio's Turntable's Choice ($5400). This combo produced finer detail and image resolution, and a noticeably wider and deeper soundstage, than did the Shure through any of the MM phono stages surveyed. The Lyra-VPI-Einstein's transparency, too, was far superior, but most noticeably better were the combo's textural and timbral delineation. For the most part, you pay more, you get more.

That said, and without a minute's warm-up, the Liberty Audio B2B-1 ($1749) was clearly superior to and more authoritative than the PTE ($1595). Fitzgerald's voice was more focused, compact, and just plain believable, with cleaner sibilants and less electronica. Backgrounds were blacker, and images were projected out of that black in the way you'd expect from more expensive phono preamps. The horns sounded more natural, and the drum kit behind Fitzgerald had greater transparency and clarity, particularly the cymbals. The Liberty "slowed time" in ways that one usually expects from more expensive gear, and bass lines were deeper and tauter, improving the rhythmic drive.

Did the Liberty Audio B2B-1 sound a bit drier and darker than the PTE MMMC? Yes, but in my system this was all to the picture's overall benefit, particularly in terms of focus and surgical precision of images. If you need more midrange envelopment, you might prefer the PTE, but in my system it created more haze than bloom.

Summary
The Liberty Audio B2B-1 is a tremendous value, and if you're a rocker, you'll love it. The PTE's MC section is good, but for only a few hundred bucks more, the Liberty is better.

The Aqvox's designer was a hired gun: Carlos Candeias. Now he's back, this time with the Phono MCCI balanced phono preamplifier ($3890), another current-input design, and this time with his own brand. Candeias founded B.M.C. Audio GmbH in 2009, to design (in Germany), build (in China), and market (worldwide) his creations, including the Audio Amplifier C1 integrated amplifier, which I reviewed in the May 2012 issue.

The Phono MCCI is built to a far higher, more complex standard than the Aqvox, and is MC only. Like the other B.M.C. electronic components, it sports a large, round something at the center of its front panel. On the C1, that something is a power meter; on the Phono MCCI, it's a big On/Off switch. The user can adjust little on the MCCI, so the controls are simple: On/Off, Mute, front-panel Dim—that's it. Well, not exactly. A plethora of internal jumpers is found inside; more about them shortly.

The basic difference between the Phono MCCI and virtually all other phono preamps is its current-injection input, which takes advantage of an MC cartridge's very low impedance, its inherent current-generating capabilities, and its balanced, floating-ground architecture.

Instead of a traditional voltage-gain stage, the Phono MCCI's input stage is a current-to-voltage converter. According to the Candeias, the cartridge directly injects its current into a system of "balanced DC currents," creating an amplified output voltage. The resulting amplified voltage is claimed be made "directly of the original cartridge's current" with virtually no loss, and certainly less loss than is claimed for any voltage-gain circuit.

While a few other designers of phono preamplifiers have used a similar idea, Candeias claims that they use an op-amp or similar circuit to simulate, via a feedback loop, the required low-impedance input.

The CI circuit is different
The B.M.C. Phono MCCI's Current Injection input circuit uses a variation of a common-base or grounded-base topology often used in microphone preamplifiers, where the input is applied to the emitter of a bipolar transistor. This sort of circuit turns out to be equally useful for MC cartridges and is said to produce ultrawide bandwidth and very little noise.

Because the an MC cartridge's source impedance and the phono preamplifier's input impedance determine the current produced, cartridges with a surprisingly wide range of voltage outputs can be used. While a high-output MC generates a higher voltage, its higher impedance results in reduced current output. So despite wide variations in voltage output among MC cartridges, the Phono MCCI's input stage can deal with many of them, including high-output MCs with outputs similar to those of typical MM cartridges.

The Phono MCCI's entire signal chain consists of two very short, fully balanced gain stages with zero feedback. Because the second gain stage sees a relatively high voltage from the current-to-voltage stage, it's easier to correctly implement than one required to deal with the ultralow MC cartridge voltage output. And because there's no global-feedback loop, RIAA equalization is accomplished passively in two stages decoupled from one another. The first pole is in the current-to-voltage stage, while the second is part of the second voltage-gain stage.

Carlos Candeias claims that this sort of circuit has the advantages of passive and active equalization, minus the disadvantages of either. You can choose either the standard RIAA equalization curve or the controversial Neumann-corrected version preferred by Candeias, though not by John Atkinson and others (footnote 1).

The Phono MCCI's output stage is a fully balanced, Load Effect Free (LEF), single-ended, class-A design similar to what Candeias uses in his B.M.C. C1 integrated amplifier. The claimed advantage of the circuit, when applied to a single-ended class-A design, is that it avoids distortion by allowing the transistors to work only within their linear operating range.

The class-A balanced circuit is said to widely reject even-order distortion, and Candeias claims that because it presents the power supply with a consistent load, the musical signal does not modulate the power supply. In addition, the balanced design rejects common-mode power-supply disturbances. Because the input uses current instead of an MC cartridge's ultralow voltage, the input impedance is very low, less than 3 ohms. There is no need, therefore to damp the cartridge's ultrasonic resonance with energy-destroying resistors in parallel with the input.

The Phono MCCI's high-quality parts include: 10 ultralow-noise transistors in parallel for each "functional group"; "balanced-current" capacitors; inductance-free polystyrene capacitors; thin-film metal resistors with 0.5% tolerance; fully gold-plated, four-layer printed circuit boards; and a shield of copper-plated iron.

The insides of the Phono MCCI look impressive by any standard, but particularly for the price. And inside is where you'll have to go to find the various jumpers that let you select among three levels of gain (Low, High, and Very High, standard or Neumann RIAA, a subsonic filter, and Low End Corrections consisting of Linear, Bass Boost, and Bass Boost and Warmer Sound. More about these below.

Mono cartridges with common grounds need not apply, RCA-to-XLR adapters not recommended
While all of these design features sound ideal, we don't live in an ideal world. I can't speak to the possible technical disadvantages of a current-injection circuit, but the practical ones became apparent as soon as I opened the B.M.C. Phono MCCI's owner's manual.

The manual is clumsily translated from the German, with syntax sure to flummox many. It would be relatively easy to rewrite for easier comprehension and better flow; and given the many danger cautions given, clarity is of utmost importance. The main caution is that you must maintain "ground free" connections from your turntable. The shield must not be connected to any of the four cartridge wires. That means that Rega Research turntables (and Rega's separate tonearms) will need the ground connection broken between the arm and the cartridge's blue "earth" pin.