Thanks for the responses so far. Let me give you some background to why I think this is an important issue. I believe (right or wrong) that the phono section is the hardest part to get right in a preamp. I am also a strong believer that analog is still better than CD and the new formats. At least my analog set-up is better than my SACD player. Maybe if I spent $ 10,000 on the SACD (which is hard to do in a technology that improves so fast)it would be at the same level as my analog setup. However, as I am looking at replacing my current pre-amp I am finding that are virually no state of the art phono/line preamps that could be my pre-am,p for the next ten years. That is at least my ambition that it will last a while when I purchase a new unit.
Why is the trend to make separate phono stage
Why is the trend to make a separate phono stage. Say a high end pre-amp such as Audio Research Reference 2 you need to spend $ 10,000 for a line stage and another $ 7,000 for the reference phono stage. Almost every manufacturer has started to separate the two components. Is this to make more money selling two boxes or has technology gotten so sophisticated that it needs to be separate or lastly maybe only 25 % or less of the buyers want phono, so the manufacturer focuses on the 75 % population that need a line pre-amp. For us oldies it used to be easy to add a MC/MM board to the pre-amp to add the phone section. What happened??