Phono stages belong to which tier?

Has anyone heard the Walker Audio Reference Phono Second Edition or the ASR Basis Exclusive 2010 model? If so, how do they compare. Thanks

Hey Curio,
Thanks for quoting me in your response! I'm sitting here listening to some great jazz right now. The whest is wonderful...and the rest of my system....well it gets me through the cold winters here in Chicago. I'm a big fan of Sonus Faber! Since they're made in your back yard, have you spent any time listening to them? I've owned the Cremonas and now I have the elipsas. Would enjoy hearing from you.
Cheers,

Erik

If one is serious about the goal of having a hi fidelity, high performance, transparent system no component or part should be underestimated or given more or less importance in its contribution to the final experience you have at your listening chair.

From the cartridge to the woofer each component is interconnected to the other in a sophisticated cryptic web and chain.

In every system there must be thousands of parts and chemistry is one of many important factors.

How each of these thousands of parts, especially how one component with its thousands of parts, built by a different design circuit topoglogies/ designer , perhaps built on the otherside of the world, how it will interact with another designers design/ parts is extremely difficult to predict. An average system probably has components from more than 5 different companies and when they created their products it was within the context of their own set of contigencies, ie (room, speakers, amp, preamp, wire, cartridge, tonearm, personal tastes) and in isolation from the components you are presently using in your system.

Some people want to say the phonostage is the most important, others the speaker and so on, i say each and every single part is essential to the whole and no component should be overlooked or should be deemed more important than the other.

If you have a 10 link chain and one of the links was extremely expensive and made with state of the art metals and production processes how much will that matter when you begin using all the links to try and lift a very heavy weight when one of the links is make of a inferior metal and with inferior production? How well will the lift be executed? did it matter that the high quality component was in the chain if the weak leak was there as well?

>>02-11-10: Vertigo
......and no component should be overlooked or should be deemed more important than the other<<

Not true.

The amplifier/speaker interface is more important than any component or combination thereof.

That pairing is (or should be) the foundation of a well designed audio system.

I think it is fair to say that my opinion that no one item should be should be deemed less important than the other is uncommon and probably will fall into a minority group but i still maintain it. I can see how one component that is physically larger than another say for example a phonostage compared to a interconnect, the former having more parts and the cable being smaller, having less parts and by comparison therefore seems less significant but i think not. Yes, from a designer's perspective a phonostage will provide a greater challenge than a cable but nevertheless the cable, especially today, with what is at the disposal to the designer in terms of materials and advanced technology, the cable too, though a apparently simple part does impart a very important influence whether good, bad, medium in the web of parts in a playback system. (you could substitute what i just said for cables, "phonostages" or "speakers", this isnt a post about cables vs. phonostages etc, etc, but about all components interdependence and importance as a whole)

All analogies breakdown at some point but...consider these two components of a farrari race car. Its motor and its rubber tires. Which of these two components has more parts? which is more complicated and sophisticated to conceive of and execute? yet which is more important to reach 250km per hour? In terms of the goal (reaching a speed of 250km per hour) arent they both AS important and dont they both depend on each other? To answer my own questions, the motor has more parts and is more sophisticated to conceive of and design, the tires though seemingly simple need to be able to grip the highway and not disintegrate or blow at high speeds. So all the value of the _____(insert any "complicated" component here) Lets say "phonostage" is potentially wasted or possibly not fully realized because of how another component interfaces with it. I would venture to say that some will come on here and say, the cartridge, table, tonearm and phono is the most important, others will argue , no, the amp/speaker is more important than x or y and others, will say ,no, the room is THE most important thing but if you stop, clear your mind and take the time to think of my analogy i think you will see that even simple parts have essential and vital jobs to components that have difficult tasks and MIGHT be a choke, or "weak point" to allowing these more complicated components to perform to their potential. Again as i posted above in my previous post, getting an entire system, to pull together in perfect execution, unison and ideal performance is a cryptic task. You can have 5 digits right on a 6 digit combination lock but if the sixth digit is wrong it doesnt matter if the other five are right, the lock wont open. We as audiophiles dont know the combo so what do we do? we guesstimate and just keep spinning its dials, once in a while we get lucky and the lock pops open (we find a degree of synergy.)

Within the playback chain, ease of design, apparent simplicity/sparse parts of one component compared directly to another does not necessarily diminish influence, importance or relevance on the final sound. That is why i think all components are equally important.