Phono pre-amp discussion

Have not heard this pre amp, but I really enjoyed their headphone amps. Zach from ZMF headphones runs around with a couple of their amps.

 

I haven't even gotten my Bottlehead Reduction in yet and I'm already thinking about upgrades... Does anyone have any impressions of the Manley Chinook? Seems to be a good deal for a potentially endgame (and extremely flexible) phono pre.

 

I've never heard one but my understanding of the Manley Chinook/Steelhead is that they are awesome with dynamics but weak in noise floor.

 

Chinook is pretty awesome when I heard it with SP10. One of the best vinyl rigs I've heard.

 

This looks interesting http://parksaudiollc.com/budgiepreamp.html

Has anyone tried one? They make some decent looking Cinemag SUT's as well.

 

What solid state designs would you recommend around that price range? Based on your description, it sounds like the Chinook might be the way to go as long as it not too too warm (I tend to prefer a neutralish sound, but a little tubey flavor wouldn't hurt considering that I'll be running it through my Ragnarok for the time being).

My main concern is longevity. If I'm going to drop that kind of money on a phono pre I'd like it to be resolving enough to scale with any future amps I decide to go with, and be flexible enough to pair well with higher end MC carts if I decide to upgrade to something like a Lyra/low output SoundSmith in the future. USA made helps too, but it not required if it hurts the price/performance ratio.

The Zephyr/Classic Signature combo seems to be way beyond what the Mani/stock TC-750 is capable of handling properly in terms of resolution (not a huge fan of the thin sound either, but it paired better with my Clearaudio Virtuoso), but I haven't tried too many other phono preamps to know what to expect from a high-end offering.

 

Once I went to a phono preamp shoot out to a friend's house looking to buy one.
There were a bunch of phono pre's brought by people. I brought a Linn Kairn (wich at the time I used as a line pre), a counterpoint sa2000, a creek obh15 mk2 and two tubes phono pre over the 1000+ Euro, one diy and one was a synthesis. And then there was this cheap diy phono pre with the psu from the same site:
http://sound.westhost.com/project06.htm

Long story short: After having warmed up all the pre's and having balanced the capacitance load the little cheap diy shit was the clear winner. It made my Kairn sound slow and lifeless by comparison. The counterpoint was nice but couldn't prevale. The tube pre owners couldn't believe their ears how dull their phono stages sounded.

I've been looking for one since then, I'm too lazy to build one
Highly recommended for those on a tight budget. The entire build won't cost over 100 eur, case included. So I've been told.
Just my 2cents.

Edit: the little shit had different opamps, not the 5532 from the original project.

 

I was about to say....

 

I can't remember if they were 2134 or double 627 but the 627 don't fit the price tag.

 

Yeah to play off what Marv said, I've been building some different solid state pres (discrete and monolithic) on a breadboard just to see for myself. The simple opamp design is competitive so long as you use the right chips.

 

Found this today as well.. https://tavishdesign.com/products/vintage-6sl7-phono-stage

There seems to be a few nice options for budget tube phono stages out there though I have no idea about the design/sound of these units.

 

I saw that one a couple of days ago. I am really intrigued by it actually! If this is gotten for a possible vinyl preamp loaner program, I can listen to it and provide some feedback about where it fits in the sonic scheme of things. Maybe @velvetx can reach out to the business and see if they would like to participate in a loaner program for their "Adagio", "Classic" and "Vintage" phono sections. The designer's background is really sound and it is clearly a labor of love. I'd be delighted to listen to it and provide some solid feedback for our group here.

 

Wow, I was looking through the Sutherland designs, and the N1 looks like a piece of art. The 20/20 seems like it could be good value as well, and might be a contender against the Chinook for my eventual high-end preamp purchase.

Looking forward to your Ph3D review Marv.

 

Opinions please!

http://www.enjoythemusic.com/magazi...ign_Adagio_Vacuum_Tube_Phono_Stage_Review.htm

 

I met this guy back in the 1970's named John Koval. He, among many other things, introduced me to Decca cartridges (more on that later). He was like a prototypical sound science guy, except his mind was actually open perhaps 20% or so. He had a schiitload of CBS test records, a chart recorder, and a life goal to measure every stereo cart that had ever existed on the planet. He believed that all audible difference in phono systems were due to phono cart errors in the frequency domain and RIAA errors in a variety of preamps, also in the frequency domain. Both of those really sucked back then, and aren't much better today in the limited sample size of phono stages I have measured recently. I did then, and still do today believe there are many other factors other than frequency response which determine sonic accuracy. That said, I am certain that it is stunningly lame to make value judgments of phono sections without correcting frequency domain errors. It leads to random conclusions based on random squared tone control presentations which are of positive or negative euphonic value. This sonic matrix can then react with the variations of the cartridges frequency domain performance to produce an amazing array of random variability.

Deviations of up to 3db and more are common in phono preamps – that is inexcusable unless your designers are simian; I still in my late 60s can hear differences of less than 0.2db. Making definitive judgments on competing units is futile without correcting one or both units under evaluation.

The Schiit Mani was designed to be an intro level phone preamp. It is not intended to be the best possible. But is is a real fuckin' RIAA flat one. It may add or take away euphones according to the cart, cans, or speakers used.

There is an amazingly simple test I learned from Peter Moncrieff 40 or so years ago – with one simple test you can see how fubar your RIAA eq is in your preamp. First you build an accurate Inverse RIAA network. If you are interested PM me and I will send you a link. Make sure you series and parallel the r's and c's to get the exact values. (Even the Mani uses multiple C's for RIAA accuracy.)

You then series first your inverse RIAA and then phono section. Get a 1 KHz square wave and drive the inverse RIAA network/preamp under test. Hook up a oscilloscope and check out the squareness of the output wave. The RIAA deviations can be easily seen.

Back to John Koval and Decca cartridges; John showed me his cartridge frequency response sweeps and they were all randomly dipped/ripply in the midrange, bass and treble boosted, with the moving coils being even more boosted in the highs. Then he showed me the Decca cartridge sweep which was a straight line that looked just like the phony sweeps included with today's kilobuck and over carts. He then invited me to listen to his Decca Mark V in his system and I was just floored. Then I bought one, got it hooked up at home, and kicked back. In awe I experienced a whole new range of emotions as I re-heard my tunes for the first time. Chills, tears, and exhilaration. Faaaawk. Kinda like the difference between sex with yourself and sex with a woman. Also, the Mark V is conical.

So the lessons for me are that:

1. D/A converter frequency differences are trivial; phono preamp frequency domain differences are significant. Any phono preamp comparisons without adjusting for frequency domain variations are howling at the moon.

2. Decca cartridges rule. Ellipticals aren't as good as conicals, but still blow away MMs and MCs.

3. Conical styli rule. Ellipticals and all sharper edged styli are for two groups of people:
a. Dogmatic, hierarchical, disciplined, and utterly unimaginative sound science types.
b. Progressives who always believe that industry always qualitatively improve their products.

 

Anyone heard the Minimax? http://eeaudio.com/eeaudio_004cc.htm

It gets a lot of love from guys on an Aussie forum I visit.

 

I ended up finding a good deal on a dealer demo Manley Chinook so I jumped on it and got it on Friday.

I'm still acclimating to it, but I'm pretty happy with it so far. I'd say Purrin's impressions were spot on. It's lacking some slam in the bass & a bit of edge in the treble, but the mids are phenomenal and sounds extremely smooth top to bottom. Resolution is a big step up from the Mani/TC-750 and the noise floor is very low. I might play around with rolling some new gain tubes to see if it has an impact. I'm also on the lookout for some super low capacitance interconnects (might go with Blue Jeans for now since it's what I use for everything else) so I can test out the capacitance loading options on the Chinook to really dial it in.