Dear Bobsdevices: To many but I can list some of them. I own/owned of heard it in my system or systems I know very well.
Now before listing: an active stage is not a guarentee that beats a SUT, it's the active device design and design execution what can gives us if it's better or not.
Other important subject is the audio/music reference/standards and own audio system targets we have because on that kind of comparisons that reference/standards we have are the critical issue.
In my case the reference is live music and my targets are: accuracy, very low distotions ( any kind ) and neutral performance to be nearest to the recording adding and losting the less of the cartridge signal.
A SUT is always the best unexpensive choice but as everything in audio items it has its trade-offs.
A well designed active stage almost always is an expensive " answer " and like all audio items is not perfect, it has its trade-offs too.
In the vintage years when appeared the LOMC cartridges almost any single cartridge manufacturer at the same time offered to their customers a SUT because the active designs on those times or were not up to the task or almost no one wont to design that kind of electronics.
Dynavector, Audio Technica, Denon, Highphonic, Audiocraft, Koetsu, Fidelity Research, Ortofon and the like did it that way.
Through my experiences the SUT trade-offs ( everything the same ) against an active high gain phonolinepreamp are at both frequency extremes where the SUT can't even that well designed phonolinepreamp. The external SUT's are more " problematic " because the cartridges signal must pass for aditional IC cables and connectors where that sensible signal suffer from several ways of " attack " as electrical polollution ( EMI, RF, and the like ) and obviously those connectors and solder in the IC cables where these sole cables always degrade the signal.
Now, I'm not saying that a SUT sounds bad, what I'm saying is that can't even or outperform a well designed active phonolinepreamp. Yes and due to those each one audiophile targets and reference/standards an audiophile could likes more the SUT over the active stage but this fact does not means the SUT is better or performs better ( everything the same. ).
These are some first hand experiences with aactive stages: Krell, Boulder, Dartzeel, Halcro, Sutherland, Atmasphere, Levinson, Pass/Threshold, Rowland Whest, etc, etc.
This the ones with SUT's: Audiotechnica, Dynavector, Denon, Audiocraft, Entré, Ortofon, Cinemag, Lunddahl, Jensen, Highphonic, Micro Seiki, Koetsu, Sony, Expressive Tech, Hommage, Audio Note, etc, etc.
Go figure my Denon DL-1000 weight is 10kgs and my AT 1000 T 8.5 kgs. I have on hand some of those SUT's that I modified for a better quality performance.
Btw, my active phonolinepreamp is a self designed one.
Regards and enjoy the music,
R .
