Stand out phono stages

You can definitely spend more money and maybe exceed the performance slightly in one or two areas, but the Einstein phonostage is quite good. It is quiet, dynamic, transparent and very detailed with very good bass. It also embodies a nice combination of tube and solid state virtues and is reliable and very listenable. Ultimately, what you choose will depend on the money which you have to spend, your sonic priorities and the remainder of your system.

I hate to sound as if I am pounding the same old drum, but the Einstein phonostage is silly good and shows up on Audiogon used for a really low price. It comes with a varirty of loading resistors and can be improved by using HiFi Tuning fuses and the right power cord.

The real problem with athread like this is that other than a Michael fremer, most of us will never hear anywhere near the full range of phonostages available and the number that we will hear in our own systems is even fewer. Add to this the rarety and expense of some of the contenders and it becomes even more difficult. I have often thought that when we moved from integrated preamps which contained a phonostahe to separates we may well ahve lost something as there are clearly synergies involved. I intend to test that out later this year when I will have an Audionote M9/S9 in my home system for an extended period. The M9 is that rarest of beasts, a preamp with a phonostage designed to complement its functioning.

I just had the opportunity to audition the Ypsilon step up transformer and phono stage in comparison to the balanced version of the Einstein phono stage. As good as the Einsrein is, the Ypsilon was in a different class, lovely tonality, excellent depth and dynamics.

I have owned the Einstein The Turntable's Choice phono stage for the last four years and have been quite happy with it. It easily beat both the hotrodded Vendetta SCP2T and the Blowtorch which I had previously owned. About two years ago, I began to hear rumblings about a phonostage from a Greek company Ypsilon, the VPS-100. About a year ago, there was an extremely positive review by Michael Fremer. Again, I am a fossil and tend to move very slowly on these things. Last night, a friend helped me install the VPS-100 in my system. It is seldom that when you install a new piece the improvement is so major as to be instantly obvious even when the unit is cold. This is by far the best phonostage that I have heard by quite a wide margin. For context, I use a Rockport Sirius with an Ortofon A90.