Your Ultimate Phono Preamp: Which One Would You Choose?


Imagine you’re in the market for a high-end phono preamp (your ultimate, at least for the moment) and have the budget to splurge.

Which one would you get?

Perhaps you've already got it, which one?

go4vinyl

I would pick something quite long out of production: Lyra Connoisseur.  I would then have comparably priced tube and solid state phono stages which might be interesting.

Interesting that the notion is that to achieve a High End Phohostage, there is a need to spend excessively.

This might be the case if the Phonostage is to be sourced from a Brand.

There are other options to achieve a Phonostage that can thoroughly impress, as a result of the design and BOM.

The type of BOM one might just be lucky enough to find is attached to a Branded Phonostage purchased costing between $20K - ,$+++

Mine is the BMC MCCI Signature ULN current injection phono stage. In the end I preferred it over a Simaudio Moon 810LP, Audionet PAM G2 w/ EPS, and ModWright PH9.0X. I don't ever forsee myself wanting a different unit. Current Injection stages work best with very low impedance moving coil cartridges, and I'm using mine with a My Sonic Lab Signature Gold which only has a 1 Ohm internal impedance.

If you have interest in reading on my journey to this stage, here's the thread where I documented it.

https://forum.audiogon.com/discussions/solid-state-phono-stages

I already have a world-beater preamp with phono stage: the RGR 4 from 1980. Designed by Roger Grodinski of RG Dynamics. Mr. Grodinski claims that most phono stages suffer from poor dynamic headroom so he designed his to have superior overload margins. His earlier version was the RG Dynamics Dimension 3. It received a stellar review in Audio in 1979 where it was praised for its outstanding ability to unveil an expansive  sense of 3-D space from recordings. I bought mine on eBay seven years ago for $199 - list price new was $650 in 1980. It has been in daily use with no problems.