We can't improve on what's on the record. What you may or may not be hearing in the concert hall is irrelevant to this.
Phono Stage - The great analog tragedy
In the world of analog playback, there is an interesting observation. There has been tremendous innovation in the field of
Turntable - Direct, Idler, Belt
Cartridge - MM, MC, MI
Tonearm - Gimbal, Unipivot, Linear Tracking
For all of the above designs we find some of the best reference components designed in the 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s. Most of the modern products are inspired from these extraordinary products of the past. But when it comes to phono stage, there is hardly any "reference component" from that era. They just standardized RIAA curve for sanity and left it. Manufacturers made large preamps and amps and allocated a puny 5% space for a small phono circuit even in their reference models, like a necessary evil. They didn’t bother about making it better.
The result? It came down to the modern designers post 2000 after vinyl resurgence to come up with serious phono stages for high end systems. Unfortunately they don’t have any past reference grade designs to copy or get inspired from. Effectively, just like DACs, reference phono stages is also an evolving concept, and we don’t have too many choices when we want a really good one which is high-res and natural sounding. Very few in the world have figured out a proper high end design so far. And most of the decent ones have been designed in the past couple of decades. The best of the breed are probably yet to come.
It is a tragedy that our legendary audio engineers from the golden era didn’t focus on the most sensitive and impactful component, "the phono stage"
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- 147 posts total
@newton_john i am not suggesting a high end phono can cure a poorly setup distorting TT system. I am merely saying dollar to dollar, a cheaper cart and a rega arm on a high end TT will sound much better than a high end cart and tonearm through a basic phono. That’s why i place phono as the 2nd most important component in the analog chain. I know people who would use a VPI + Lyra on $500 phono. For them phono is just an additional box that needs to be there. Their logic is cartridge is doing all the work, phono can be anything. They are lost forever. |
@pani For reference I use an LP I recorded, which is a live recording. No compression or limiting of any kind was used in the tape machine or the LP mastering, which was done directly from the master tape. Since I was there I know how this recording (Canto General) is supposed to sound. So- not a fantasy. You just need to get out there and do it. |
@atmasphere for once I don’t feel the need for a live music uncompressed recording to tell which equipment sounds more correct. And most of us anyway don’t have access to such recordings. 99% of our listening is based on a general studio mastered recording. At max we look for a well mastered recording if available. I don’t need to listen to Knopfler live to tell which system is sounding more natural. It’s a simple thing. The best hifi is after all the one which reproduces the source well. It is not about creating additional effects which isn’t in the recording. The word we are looking for is probably “natural”, not “live” |
- 147 posts total