My vote goes to Einstein "The Turntable's Choice" phonostage. My wealthier (or crazier) audiophile friends have played with IO, Rhea, ARC PH7, ASR Basis Exclusive, ART Audio Reference. We had in term listened to all of the above in various systems, and compared them side-by-side at various times. They all had different flavors and really came down to system synergy and personal preference. The Einstein is probably the most non-descript of the bunch. It's really laughable when you look at it. It's a tiny, light-weight soda can on a stand. On the marketing material, it says it is made of some premium selected "aged" transistors. Pound by pound, this would be the most expensive of them all. But once we gave it a listen, we were all surprised how good it is. My friend started with a single-ended version and had just recently received the balanced version which sounded even better. The wait was like 8 months.
It may be due to component synergy as two of these guys were using ARC linestages (Ref 2 Mk II and Ref 3), but the ARC PH7 also sounded phenomenal. My beef with it is that the output is just too low to be used with low-output MC cartridges, and that it does not have balanced input/output.
FrankC
It may be due to component synergy as two of these guys were using ARC linestages (Ref 2 Mk II and Ref 3), but the ARC PH7 also sounded phenomenal. My beef with it is that the output is just too low to be used with low-output MC cartridges, and that it does not have balanced input/output.
FrankC