The crazy expensive Audionote M-10 phonostage is a MM stage that is intended to be used with, presumably, their own external step up transformers (also crazy expensive). I have heard this setup in a nice sounding system, but, I have never had it at home. If I were interested in that setup, I would actually prefer that the preamp come with my choice of step up built into the unit (one less set of interconnects and RCA jacks, presumably ideal location/orientation of the step up to minimize hum and RFI issues).
I did get to try the top end Audionote stand alone step up in my system, but, I cannot really comment on how it sounds. Not too long ago, I bought a custom-built preamp. Although I did not really want a phonostage built into it, the designer convinced me to get it that way because the addition would not be really that expensive. To try out the phono section, I borrowed the top-of-the-line Audionote step-up from my local dealer. Unfortunately, the combination of the external step-up and the built-in phonostage resulted in a slight bit of hum. I was too lazy to exhaust all ways to kill the hum and simply resorted to just using the new preamp as a linestage and using my phonostage(Viva fono) which has a built-in step-up transformer.
As a general note, I like systems with tube-based phonostages fronted by step-up transformers. I have not any sort of rigorous and exhaustive comparisons with other approaches so this is a general observation.
I did get to try the top end Audionote stand alone step up in my system, but, I cannot really comment on how it sounds. Not too long ago, I bought a custom-built preamp. Although I did not really want a phonostage built into it, the designer convinced me to get it that way because the addition would not be really that expensive. To try out the phono section, I borrowed the top-of-the-line Audionote step-up from my local dealer. Unfortunately, the combination of the external step-up and the built-in phonostage resulted in a slight bit of hum. I was too lazy to exhaust all ways to kill the hum and simply resorted to just using the new preamp as a linestage and using my phonostage(Viva fono) which has a built-in step-up transformer.
As a general note, I like systems with tube-based phonostages fronted by step-up transformers. I have not any sort of rigorous and exhaustive comparisons with other approaches so this is a general observation.