review iPhono 2


I must be slow as I could not find a link to place this as a review. 

So, I have written about the 1st gen iPhono in the past, comparing it to the very fine Coincident phonostage which I believe is about $6k. I preferred the iPhono but I could just as easily imagine someone else going for the Coincident unit. In that review I thought the Coincident had a better sustain, decay and bloom while the iPhono was hands down the winner in the prat department. The iPhono made my feet move, the Coincident, not so much.

Later on I added the iPower to the fray and the iPhono shored up the areas it lacked. As a former owner of the very very nice Graaf GM70 I was a bit surprised and dismayed when I finally received the iPhono and heard it once fully run-in. I would not have shelled out the thousands of dollars I paid for the GM70 and the vintage NOS tubs I purchased to make it sing, oh and the $1600 I had to spend on the Ortofon ST-80SE SUT to use with the MM inputs of the Graaf as I could not get it quiet enough to tolerate with the MC inputs. The very small $400 iPhono basically did everything the Graaf did (with the iPower that is).

My reference phonostage for the last few years (and probably many more to come) is the fabulous AMR PH77 and I’m running it with a set of Bendix 6900 tubes which elevates its performance even more than the already stellar stock configurations performance. In comparison to my PH77, I found the 1st gen iPhono to be a bit thin and during crescendos it could become a little ragged. Still, it remained in my arsenal as a handy and trusty back-up. The PH77 is of course tubed and as we tube owners know all too well, sometimes they fail and you are down for a while.

Compared to most phonostages I have heard, some of them costing up to $9k I found the 1st gen iPhono to be able to hold its own in some cases crazy as it may sound it was just plain better. I believe AMR intended the iPhono/iTube to be used in conjunction as a sort of baby AMR PH77 and I ran it that way for some time and yes, it does share that familial DNA when it comes to sonic signature.

Move forward some years and I have in my possession the iPhono2 and the iTube 2. To say that the iPhono 2 is better than its predecessor is far too simple a statement. Mr. Fremer thought it to be at least twice as good as the original. I would agree with his assessment. Out of the box with the included iPower is shows far more prowess in the areas of bass but otherwise is pretty close to the original. After about 20 hours a bit more fluidity begins to appear. Again at the 100 and about the 340 hour mark big jumps occur in the areas of fluidity and continuousness. When you get to 480 hours forget about it!

This thing sounds like it has a tube in it, and I don’t mean in that classic overly warm soft rose colored sound that I found so fantastic when I was new to high end audio. No, I am referring to a pellucid but meaty embodiment and rendering of the music. A sound one would immediately associate with MUCH costlier gear.

Most of my listening has been done with my second turntable system which is composed of a Technics SL-1200 GAE with a fully broken in Denon 103R on a LP Zupreme 15 gram headshell and my London Reference. The phono stage then feeds the iCan Pro (best pre I have heard and I have owned 2 MFA Ref units, the baby Ref and the full Ref), the Tube Research Labs GTP 2, and many more. I have had in my system for evaluation the Veloce (battery powered) the Allnic L3000 and many others. From the pre it goes to the custom active crossover and then to a Graaf Modena for the mids, a Harmonix Reimyo PAT777 for the Raal Ribbons and a pair of Acoustic Reality Thaumaturges ($25K when available) for the woofers. The speaker is called the Encore and is my own design. I simply got tired of paying for passive boxes made of MDF with wood screws going directly into the glued wood dust and sold for tens of thousands of dollars but I digress :)

The sound is at once flowing and dynamic. It grabs and holds my attention and really gets my foot tapping. The sound is MUCH more refined and fuller than the original iPhono with no hint of raggedness during large scale bombastic music. For instance it scales far more convincingly on some of the more challenging passages in Hans Zimmers wonderful soundtrack to Gladiator. The original could sound a bit blocky if you take my meaning. It did not have the ability to gracefully scale the mountain so to speak. The iPhono 2 does it with much more ease and refinement.

Here is where it gets interesting. As good as the iPhono 2 is out of the box and it is very very good (and especially after 340 hours or more) in fact far far better than the DS Audio optical cartridge system that I auditioned, it can be made to sound a good deal better. Now this is my own thing, the iFi line of SMPS’s are admittedly super quiet and much better than most SMPS such as the ones inside my apple gear, but I hate them ALL.

I do not like green eggs and.., ahem. Sorry, just flashed back to Dr. Seuss when I thought of my aversion to SMPS’s.

I mean I understand why they are used, efficient,  cheaper to ship and inherently regulated. But they still hurt the sound of my system. As an aside I am actually having a custom linear PS built for my SL-1200 GAE to replace the awful SMPS that Technics installed. So to the point, I replaced the iPower with a linear regulated lab grade power supply. I don’t like hyperbole so I offer none but the result was nothing short of breath taking. There is a great deal more that can be had from that little silver box with a good (and I do mean good) linear supply.

Next I added the iTube 2 to the fray. As I mentioned before AMR always sorta intended this combo to be a baby PH77 as was or may still be mentioned on the iFi site. How to put this; everything I have said about the iPhono 2 up to this point; multiply it by 2 times again. Now you have that sorta living presence that the performers are in your vicinity. Things are rounder, more palpable and it breathes much easier. Again I powered the iTube 2 with a linear supply along with the iCan Pro. Please don’t misunderstand me, I lived with these units powered via there very good SMPS’s for quite a while and they made beautiful music BUT I knew there was much more to be had.

Like Mr. Fremer (paraphrased) stated, to get better than the iPhono 2 you are going to have spend much more and you still may not surpass this unit. I auditioned a $16K current phono stage that people rave over and my ears tell me that it cannot compete with iPhono 2/ iTube 2 combination.  I will not call this a reference phono stage. It is great and I listen to it daily but I reserve titles like reference for the likes of Ypsilon, VDH Grail SB and my AMR PH77. The little combo does far more than I could have imagined. It capable of truly astounding musical reproduction on a grand scale.  

Remember to let it run in for at least 100 (and I suggest 300) hours before you really start to judge it but my guess is it won’t take most people that long to know that this is special gear designed by some super gifted engineers who also happen to actually be able to HEAR. Thanks for reading and I hope this helps someone make a decision one way or the other. Happy listening.


audiofun
mantis:

So, thats a lot :) 

I suppose if your recording device is sensitive enough capture the miniscule signal coming from your cartridge you could do what your attermpting. Just remember that most consumer level recording devices are looking for a line-in level of around .447volt(peak) -10dBV, which makes sense as it would most likely be recording from a consumer type device. 

Those CD's you are referring to have been professionally prepared for this sort of task. I don't like the CD's because it your player does something atypical like skips on a scratch you are going to get a full level signal to the inputs of your phonostage having no passive attenuation in series to subdue the signal. 

You are correct in that while the output electronics would be broken in for mm/mc simultaneously most likely if your ran-in the MM input for example the MC input would be left in the cold so to speak. The MC input in many phonostages is an additional amplificaion stage before the MM stage (i.e. Ypsilon's phono stage s a MM phono stage that makes use of SUT's to facilitate MC Cartridges).

I would not sugget th route you are attempting. Others may disagree with me and if they do I humbly invite them to chime in. ]

I hope this answered more questions than it may have created :)
Sorry about the lack of commas in the preceding post. I need more coffee, was up way to late playing with the new tape machine.
No worries, I appreciate you taking the time to respond to my amateur questions. I am attempting the recording right now, just to test it out, and it is recording fine. I agree there are other things that could go wrong, which crossed my mind as well - you mention the cd reading a skip or scratch a certain way, and I'm thinking if the media player I'd be using might make a weird noise when being powered on or off, or being attached to a power source. You also have to be careful about plugging in connectors while the thing is on. All things I'll test out in the next few hours, but I figure I'll try it and see how it sounds just playing it through my system, and if it sounds similar enough to my turntable and not making any weird noises, I'll go ahead with it. I am leaning towards this method more so out of impatience than anything else, as the burn in device would take about 3 weeks to arrive. 

Are you leaving your Pyramid on 24/7, or are you only powering it on while listening? When I was using the wall wart I just kept it plugged in 24/7 but reading the reviews for this Pyramid, some people complain about it not lasting very long, so I am hesitant to keep it powered on 24/7. I'll probably use the wall wart again for the burn in.
mantis:

I am gladd it seems to be working out for you.

Concerning the Pyrmids, I leave them powered up 24/7 as the iPhono draws almost no current hence no real power to speak of is being wasted. I also leave it powered up for the iCan Pro and mac-mini but I actually power the iCan Pro down when not in use as it does consume about 20 watts even when in full solid state mode and I put the mac-mini to sleep as those little things can be thirsty. 

I have not so much as experienced a hiccup from any of my Pyramids and I have disabled the fan in all of them as I knew I would not be drawing any substantial amounts of current. I am not suggesting this to anyone, this was my choice as I monithored the current draw and found it negligible in my use cases. 
Yeah I am thinking pulling the fan out of mine as well. It's dead cold even after hours of use.

I might still buy that burn-in device so I can run in the MC stage. I wouldn't feel as comfortable using this DYI method on the MC input as I am on the MM input.

I recorded a few LP sides over the past couple of hours, a compilation album with multiple genres on it, some orchestral stuff, some bizarre electronic music with lots of weird sounds, and the frequency sweeps from the Cardas test record. Hopefully playing these on loop will give it lots to chew on.

Just curious if you would recommend any a/c power line noise filtering devices, right now I am not using any power conditioning, but I have considered things like the Blue Cirle PLC Thingee. Now that I have seen the difference clean power makes, I am wondering about what other noise there might be in my power lines.