Dream/upgrade list: rogue ares

Phono stage is pretty important, so you may be able to hear more with an Ares right now. Having owned the Ares a few times now over the years, including the Magnum, my sense it that it’s a good stage that will hit its stride with a table in the 3K / 4K range (e.g. SOTA Sapphire, VPI Scoutmaster / Aries, etc) and a good MC cartridge in the > 0.5mV output range, e.g. Ortofon Cadenza Red / Blue / Bronze. Beyond that, exploration of even better phono stages would be fruitful. In fact, I was way "over serving" my Ares Magnum a couple years ago with Koetsu, etc. The noise floor of these Rogue units will being to work against the lowest output MC cartridges, so I recommend sticking with 0.45 mV and higher output levels there.

The main weakness in the non-Magnum Ares was the red-label CineMag 3440A SUT (I feel it’s a poor performer) in the box, which could be bypassed by running in MM mode with your own outboard SUT (many to choose from). The Magnum version fixed this with a much better blue-label SUT built in.

You should also keep an eye out for the older Sonic Frontiers Phono 1 SE stages, which are excellent sounding units with MC cartridges in the 0.5mv - 1.0 mV range.

Yeah, just to reiterate - I would expect you to hear a nice difference with an Ares (or that quality of phono stage) in your current system. I didn’t mean to infer you must have that $6K rig before getting the Ares. Used deals do pop up, and it’s worth keeping an eye out. Used Ares can be had for $1K, which is a great deal.

Another nice tube stage I’ve liked in the past is the Hagerman Trumpet, though it’s MM only so will require an outboard SUT (and extra set of cables) to handle MC cartridges.

VAC's built-in phono stages are amazing, even better than the Ares in my experience. They aren't cheap add-ins, though. But yeah, the Ares should be playing at a much higher level than both the Pharaoh's built-in stage and the Schiit box.