Member Waltersalas (Chris) has owned both, formerly the Herron and presently the Allnic. The change occurred during the course of some unrelated major system changes, and was not due to any dissatisfaction with the Herron. His system description threads include the following comments:
Re the Herron: "Just a fantastic phono stage."
Re the Allnic: "Right there with the Herron VTPH-2 as one of the great-sounding values in phono preamps. Very musical, very quiet."
I am a VERY happy owner of the Herron, but I have not heard the Allnic. I presently use it with an Audio Technica AT-ART9 low output moving coil cartridge, and I initially used it with a Soundsmith re-tipped Grace F-9E Ruby moving magnet.
Regarding the comment by Chris about the Allnic being "very quiet," I would have to say that I am continually amazed at how **totally** silent the Herron is in my system, even in LOMC mode when listened to with my Stax Lambda Pro electrostatic headphones firing directly into my ears with the volume control at max!
Also, as has been widely reported, Keith Herron is an absolute treasure to deal with.
Some additional considerations:
The manual for the VTPH-2 states that for optimal performance the input impedance of the line stage it drives should ideally be 50K or more. Apparently the 400 ohm nominal output impedance of the 64 db version of the VTPH-2 (which is more frequently chosen than the 69 db version that is also offered, which in turn has a 500 ohm nominal output impedance) rises significantly at low frequencies, presumably as a result of its output coupling capacitor. However I recall that in a post here some time ago a member quoted Mr. Herron as saying that 30K should be high enough.
Regarding the Allnic’s output impedance, I’m not certain but I believe its output is transformer coupled, which would mean that its specified output impedance of 1.2K is probably fairly constant over the frequency range. Therefore it may have a bit of an advantage vs. the Herron when driving low impedances.
On the other hand, the Herron provides **much** greater flexibility with respect to loading of LOMC cartridges. Its FET-based LOMC input stage has an intrinsic input impedance that is essentially infinite, so the load impedance presented to the cartridge can be set to any desired value by inserting loading plugs having resistors of the desired value into RCA jacks that are provided on the rear panel for that purpose. Mr. Herron can supply nicely done loading plugs in any desired value. In contrast, cartridge loading provided by the Allnic is fixed at one of four possible values, depending on which of its four possible gain settings is selected, with the four loading choices all being within the range of approximately 30 and 280 ohms. And since it can be expected that for a given LOMC cartridge one specific gain choice will often prove to provide better results than the other three, it could reasonably be argued that as a practical matter the Allnic provides only one loading choice for a given cartridge.
Good luck. Regards,
-- Al
