Do they make a quiet great sounding phono pre amp??


Hi, I have purchased and listened to 3 phono preamps which are: A musical surroundings phonomena, musical surroundings Nova II, and a Manley labs Chinook. The Manely labs Chinook is by far bettter sounding then the first two (double the cost too). But, All three have given me nothing but trouble (noise,noise,noise even terrible clipped signals!), and 2 of them basically failed on me. So before I go DIGITAL, can someone please tell me who makes a phono preamp in the $2,000-$3,000 range (tube or solid state) that I can rely on, and sounds as good or better than the Chinook?? Thanks.


Matt M                                             
128x128mattmiller
Raul explained that he did not do a direct comparison nor did he hear the Herron in his system.  See his post from this morning. 
Charles,
Matt, You really ought to take one or both of your troublesome phono stages to the home of an audiophile friend or to a local dealer, and listen to them on a completely different system.  That way, you may figure out that the problem lies downstream from the phono stage, which very well could be the case.  Likewise, you might borrow a known good working phono stage from a friend or dealer and see how that goes in your system.

That said, I have to agree with you that the fact you are having no problems with digital sources is puzzling.  For a shot in the dark, you might check out what is going on with the interconnect cables you use between the phono stages and your linestage.  Swap in some completely different cables, and try switching to a different pair of input jacks on your linestage; you may have a bad solder joint somewhere on the linestage side. Also, check whether said cables are passing near a source of EMI or RFI.  

Further, if all else fails, based on the rave review of it by Michael Fremer, which I just read on-line, you might consider the iFi iPhono2 for only $499.  You can tell when Fremer REALLY likes something, and I think that is the case with this unit.

Pursuant to checking out the Klyne 6LX, I did install it into my Beveridge system last night and listen to it for about 2 hours.  It had been completely out of service for many months, so it took a while to "bloom", but when it did, the sound was excellent, as Raul predicted.  It has the expected virtues of solid state: very low noise (actually no audible noise at all, even between tracks of an LP with stylus in groove), very good clean bass response, very good articulation of separate instruments.  Plus it had virtues of good tube gear: huge sound stage, very good sense of depth, good retrieval of decay.  Compared to the best tube phono I have heard on this system, there was a very teeny tiny slight bit of dry-ness.  Not offensive, just different.  But the trade-off was in favor of the virtues.

Dear @mattmiller : Re-reading again it's really " funny " what is happening in your system with 3 different PS. It's almost imposible that the 3 PS were " damaged "/out of specs.

I know that for every one of us is to difficult to stay in " focus "(right with your system sympthoms and only can " figure " it.

If you can try to bring to your place ( from a friend or an audio distributor. ) a line preamp and make tests with looking how things goes.
I give you this advise because for an unknow reason the Manley line preamp could ahs a problem with the signal coming from the Chinnok. Sounds ridiculous but you have to try it. It sounds ridiculous too but you have to test connecting the PS signal to the CD input and through the AUX one too.

Other thing that could happen is that in all those PS ( almost imposible it can happen in the 3 units. ) exist extremely high/low frequency oscilations that can produce different kind of anomalies. These kind of oscilations are not easy to detect even for manufacturers.

Btw, """  noise,noise,noise even terrible clipped signals! """.

which kind of noise and how do you know are " clipped signals "?


Regards and enjoy the music,
R.




Hello everyone, After much snarling and growling and talking to different people I was able to place two 3to2 adapters on all components EXCEPT the main amplifier, I think by doing this the system is now funneling the grounds down to the one outlet, and now its quiet as a mouse!! So, I take back what I said earlier in this post about the phono preamps being noisy, it was a problem in my system. Thanks to all for posting! Really... there are too many of you too list, all of you made great points!! :-)

Matt M