Great great post from Mike.
I too have the Io and fully agree with Mike on the issues of the Io's higher noise floor. Some of the treble detail deep in the music is a bit lost compared to some of the more highly resolving phono stages out there. But if your Io has the stock Sovtek tubes, you are not hearing even close to the potential of this product. Do a search on A'gon for the Io and Callisto threads as there is much discussion on tube rolling with these. With every pair of Sovteks removed, the musicality of this unit increases significantly.
This all sounds like a pain but in a month or so of time, and for under $1000 or so, you can have the std Io singing to a whole new level. Not having heard the Io Signature, I suspect the "tube-upgraded" std Io would outperform the Io Sig in some key areas such as dimensionality and dynamics.
So before you pass on the Io, try some other tubes. The one nice thing here, you can play a lot to "tune" the sound to how you like it. It may not be as ultra-refined as the Dartzeel or others, but with a little effort, you may be quite surprised with the musical result.
John
I too have the Io and fully agree with Mike on the issues of the Io's higher noise floor. Some of the treble detail deep in the music is a bit lost compared to some of the more highly resolving phono stages out there. But if your Io has the stock Sovtek tubes, you are not hearing even close to the potential of this product. Do a search on A'gon for the Io and Callisto threads as there is much discussion on tube rolling with these. With every pair of Sovteks removed, the musicality of this unit increases significantly.
This all sounds like a pain but in a month or so of time, and for under $1000 or so, you can have the std Io singing to a whole new level. Not having heard the Io Signature, I suspect the "tube-upgraded" std Io would outperform the Io Sig in some key areas such as dimensionality and dynamics.
So before you pass on the Io, try some other tubes. The one nice thing here, you can play a lot to "tune" the sound to how you like it. It may not be as ultra-refined as the Dartzeel or others, but with a little effort, you may be quite surprised with the musical result.
John