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Is 60dB gain enough for Kleos?

At age 52, after years of technological philandering, I am once again courting my old vinyl flame. I just bought a VPI Classic 3 because it looks like it was built in the fifties, like me. Now I am obsessing over the selection of cartridge and phono-amp. Every man needs his irrational, unsubstantiated religious beliefs, and mine include vacuum tubes (very fifties-ish) and a transformerless signal path.

So let's say that for the moment I am enamored with the Fosgate Signature phono-amp, which having a 60dB gain without any input transformer. Now I have read that this works best with a high-output MC in the 0.8 to 1.0 mV range.

Here's the rub ... I am very intrigued by the Lyra Kleos, my fascination with which is due in no small part to the musings in these pages of J Carr himself. Alas, the Kleos has an output of only 0.5 mV. So I seek the advice of those who might have pertinent experience!

Dave
david_pully
david_pully OP
29 posts
 
Regarding downstream compatibility, I will at first be feeding output of the phono amp into a Marantz AV7005 pre/pro. I could not find a line stage gain spec for this unit. Input sensitivity is claimed to be 200 mV / 47k-Ohm and pre-out is 1.2 V unbalanced, 2.4 V balanced … I don’t know how to translate that into gain. I’ll be using the balanced output into a Parasound Halo A51, sensitivity = 1 V for 28.28 V. Down the road, barring insolvency, I’ll insert a nice preamp with a threatre bypass mode into the stream, probably a Parasound JC-2 (gain 14dB) or a Rogue Audio Athena (gain 15dB balanced.)
almarg's avatar
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almarg
9,670 posts
 
Dave, those numbers all seem reasonable to me, and I don't see any issues with them.

Gain, btw, is calculated as 20log(Vout/Vin). For the AV7005, that would be 21.6db for the balanced outputs, and 15.6db for the unbalanced outputs.

Again, as I see it the main spec-related question in this case is s/n performance, not gain.

Regards,
-- Al
david_pully OP
29 posts
 
Al, thanks! Since the reviews I have read of the Fosgate, albeit sans actual measurements, consistently cite quietness for its genre. So far, then, so good! If I've read it once, I've read a thousand times in this forum and others, that meaningfully auditioning of high-end gear, especially for vinyl playback, is a very tough thing to pull off. All the more so for me, who lives hundreds of miles from a major city.
-- Dave
theo's avatar
theo
2,699 posts
 
David
No step up transformer, just the Linto between my Kleos and LS26 and as mentioned it works fine together.
jwpstayman
405 posts
 
HI Dave - the phono stage should be fine, BUT - I have tried both the Delos and Kleos in my JMW arm ( SuperScoutmaster) and have not been impressed with either. I have tried the same cartridges in gimbled tonearms and they are excellent, so I have to attribute my results with some sort of incompatibility with a unipivot ( or this particular unipivot) arm. I do know what I am doing with setup and have all the requisite tools to check and recheck the setup. Work with a dealer that offers you some recourse in case you do not care for the results on your Classic, which is an excellent table, by the way.
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