Phono Stage upgrade to complement Dohmann Helix One Mk 2

Dear @dover : " this was posted by @lohanimal and I said agree with his post:

" Many a reviewer has very specific loves/prejudices - Martin Colloms loves Naim and Linn - Roy Gregory anything stocked by Audiofreaks (he had to answer letters about this in hi fi plus) - Michael Fremer (anything new and stupendously expensive) . "

That gentleman always does that and is in " love " with the " week audio item " till discover the next " marvel ".

Why don’t ask him to make a comparison between the amps he has rigth now against the JC1+ and ask too for absolute honesty about.

Expen$ive is far away to be a synonymous of quality in audio items as the ones we are talking about.

There is a CH P1 issue that @mijostyn mentioned and that I already was thinking before:

" The CH was also on my list but it fell off due to price and the admission that it’s stock power supply is not good enough. They will be happy to sell you a second one so now you have paid for two power supplies instead of the one you should have had ...."

When we are talking of first rate quality design what happened with CH should not be happened through the original design and specially in the power supply that is designed and calculated extremely carefully to cover all " fundamental and not fundamental issues ". Power supply is the most important characteristic in a SS phonolinepreamp specially at that $$$$.

CH ask all the P1 unit owners to spend additional 17K dollars for the power supply that should be came in the original design and when the owner spend those 17K for the new power supply the original power supply that the owners already paid for is totally out of operation. Incredible and more incredible is that owners are so happy only because are gentlemans with a lot of money to spend. Such is life. Of course CH are really happy with.

Btw, there is one critical and way important issue in audio that $$$ can't buy and it's KNOWLEDGE top levels.

R.

Dear @mijostyn : "" has way more features than I will ever need or use. It looks beautifully made. It's "Hum and Noise" spec is very misleading. "Equivalent input noise below full output 22 Hz - 22kHz: - 137 dBu." I have no idea what that means. "

Yes, me neither and about the spec figure I posted because you posted before the same kind of noise figure for the L20 and that's all.

In the other side and talking of the L20:

" By virtue of his feeling that digital RIAA correction is superior to analog filters "

With today digital technology I agree with him. You can outperform easily RIAA deviation accuracy in the digital domain and you can " do " anything you want it with digital that you can't in analogue because you have to pay the " price " doing in analogue.

Problem with inverse RIAA eq is that the anlog lovers just can't digest that the beloved LPs be listened through a DAC in the phono stage. A really complex whole audio industry issue for say the least.

R.

I, for one, would welcome the opportunity to audition a top quality phono stage that does RIAA in the digital domain.  There's nothing inviolate about the precision capacitors, resistors, and/or inductors that are necessary for accurate RIAA in the analog domain. But I need to hear it.

Still wondering whether Mijo directly compared the Hyperion to the JC1.  I owned a pair of JC1s and ran them on my Sound Lab speakers before I later made a major change to the SL input circuit.  In the original configuration of the SL crossover, my Atma-sphere amps had a tough time with the very low impedance offered by the old SL crossover at midrange frequencies (2 ohms minimum at about 2kHz and only 5 ohms at around 500 Hz).  Also, the resistor in the hi pass filter sucked amplifier power at those very frequencies.  In that condition, the JC1 had no problem, but I did not care for the overall gestalt. (This goes back to Dover's statement that you choose an amplifier to suit a speaker; I totally agree.)  The JC1s were better suited to drive the old SL backplate than were my Atmas, in the midrange.  When I later modified the crossover drastically, I eliminated that impedance dip, and the Atmas sounded far better than the JC1s.  Just my personal experience. Presumably, drbond owns SLs with the later revised version of the crossover, which was implemented by Dr West in response to this same problem. I can say nothing about the sound of the Hyperions; I never even saw a pair.  But the JC1s are good but not transcendent, in my particular experiment.

@lewm  : You can listen the Devialet  audio electronics. I don't know if today still handled phono stage unit but I heard it and was really good.

Exist other manufacturers that have a digital RIAA in its design.

Btw, the today JC is really different to the old ones and every body knows that you are married with tubes in that specific sytem link. Nothing wrong with me.

R.

Specifically, I have found that I favor OTL tube amplifiers to drive full-range ESL speakers.  This category does not include conventional transformer coupled tube amplifiers.  Why add another coupling transformer where it is not needed? A further qualification is that I made my original judgements based on ESLs that were available in the 70s and 80s, to include KLH9s and Quad 57s, and a few others.  Later on in history, several speaker makers, SL included, made a decision to design crossover networks or input stages for their ESLs that made them a more favorable load for solid state amplifiers.  I have not liked such speakers as much as I liked the early high impedance ESLs, whether driven by tubes or by SS amplification.  For another example, the very first M-L ESL, the CLS, with a 16 ohm impedance, was made in heaven for the Futterman amplifiers I then owned.  I enjoyed them for several years. Then M-L messed with the input stage to lower impedance for SS amplifiers, and the resulting CLS IIs lost all the glory of the original, regardless of how you drove it. I am very happy having removed the crossover parts from my SL speakers that wasted amplifier power across a resistor and that artificially lowered input Z to favor SS amplifiers.  I am quite happy with what I have now in my PX845s, and I commend Dr West for modifying his speaker line in accordance with solving the problem they had.  I plead guilty to all of the above.  Now, will you admit that the very thought of a vacuum tube makes you have conniptions?  The JC1s plain and simple do not hold a candle to the Atma-sphere amplifiers I own for driving my current version of the 845PXs; if they were better sounding, I would have kept them.  Believe it or don't.