Help: my phono preamp is blowing away my linestage

I'm sure you can do better than the Rouge for $2500 try VTL 5.5

Sure Patrick, I had the Rogue 88 in my system for a while and improved on it greatly when I went to a John Curl designed Parasound P/LD-2000 that I bought used for around $500. It has a lot more detail than the Rogue, much more power and articulation at both frequency extremes, and is quieter. The sound of the class-A circuit has the smoothness of tubes in the midrange. It's a very dynamic and musical sounding piece. It should let you hear what the Io does, and does not do. I prefer it over tube line stages up to the $4000 price point (I haven't tried any more expensive than that). Hey, with the Io, you already have more than enough tubes in the signal path. Good Luck!

I agree that the rouge is holding you back. Since the IO is designed to drive a linestage directly, you can use a passive volume control like the Placette and get a huge improvement. I used mine this way and it was very nice.

You could also send your IO in and get the stepped attenuator volume controls installed. You save on interconnects and probably get the best sound but the disadvantage is no remote.

I've been considering the Bent Audio Noh passive volume control (based on S&B TX-102 transformers), but I've heard that passives are much less dynamic than active preamps. Also I do want to rediscover my CDs again, and I'm thinking a passive might be OK with the Io but not so great directly from my CDP.