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Is a Lyra Kleos good with a current-mode phono preamp?

Does anyone know whether the Kleos, or Lyra's in general, work well with current-mode phono preamps?  

MF "highly recommends the $2500 Channel D Lino C2.0 phono preamplifier", but only if, "your cartridge has a super-low internal impedance."     I have a Lyra Kleos, which has an "internal Impedance: 5.4 ohms." Is that in the ballpark of, "super-low internal impedance?" What is?    

I might be tempted to try one, given the glowing reviews, which you rarely see at this price point. On the other hand, I have not had good luck paying attention to MF's reviews, educational though they sometimes are. His taste and mine do not often seem to coincide, but then, I like tubes, and don't have $100K amps or turntables or $50K preamps. Never will!  
Are there less expensive cartridges with low output impedance?   The Kleos is terrific, and dealing with Lyra was a delight, but it isn't likely I'll ever be spending over $3.7K on a cartridge again.   In a review of the Little Loco by Sutherland, also touted as a great bargain (although $4K is far from trivial, to me) I recall that one of those guys was surprised that it didn't work very well with a Lyra Delos, which has an input impedance of 8.2 ohms.  Is that not considered, "low output impedance", or was something else going on?  

What is the downside (unavoidable, given the art of trade-offs, a/k/a/ engineering) of current-mode preamps, compared to "normal" voltage amp phono preamps?  

for reference, I'm currently (hah!) using an AR PH3 SE ungraded by Great Northern with teflon caps.  Hard to improve on at a reasonable cost. 
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Showing 1 response by mijostyn

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mijostyn
8,159 posts
 
The Lino is a great preamp. Team it up with Pure Vinyl and something like an Apple Mini and you have an unbelievable record playing system. You can record records to your hard drive. You type in the record's PL # and all the data will pull down automatically. If you want to compare cartridges and you can record a sample of each then AB them. The RIAA correction is done in the digital domain with accuracy and a lack of various distortions not possible in the analog domain. Everything is done in very high resolution. You can also use the Pure Music part of the program to download digital files to your hard drive and the program includes a stream through option. Your Apple becomes a music server, actually a media server as you can also stream movies. The program automatically up samples everything to 24/192 pushing the anti aliasing
filter up away from the audio spectrum. Check out Channel d's web site    http://www.channld.com/
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