Jfrech - The BAT P10 does a lot of things very well indeed. With your more supercharged P10 model, the gap between this and the Io will be narrowed. But I suspect the Io does the magic in the mids like very very few phono stages out there. The strong fundamental and textures puts the Io at a performance level far beyond the P10 that I had. And listening to the Io again this week (after a month of being powered off) into the WV's line stage makes me aware of the Io's unique strengths and incredible midrange musicality.
The P10 like the ARC PH2 I had the 6 years before was a little less bloomy than what I had enjoyed with the ARC SP-10 the 8 years before the PH2. I was looking for the Io to bring some of that back and indeed it did .... incredibly well for that matter. But with the Io came a higher level of background noise than the P10. Getting all that tube magic comes at a price of potentially higher noise level. As I shared, it takes some effort to reduce the Io's noise level. But my memory tells me that the P10 still was a wee bit quieter. The P10 also did the bass incredibly well compared to the Io std. With all the Dynamicaps in the Io Sig, the bass becomes more energized but I still think the P10's bass was more natural, smooth and controlled.
The PH2's 48db gain limited me to cartridges at 1mv or higher. The P10's 55db gain (without using the built-in SU devices) allowed me to use cartridges at .6mv or so but there was not much room left with the (ARC LS5 or BAT 31SE) volume control. The Io with its higher adjustable gain settings from 62-80db in 6db increments made for a huge difference here. As I have changed from one Io gain setting to the other (via internal jumpers), the perception is not so much a louder level by 6db but often of greater dynamics and openness. When I kicked in the P10's SU devices, the level was louder but I did not get that same sense of added openness and dynamics.
Many people talk of SU devices reducing dynamics, and perhaps this is the case with the P10, but I know that at least with the WV and its internal Sowter SU devices, this is not at all the result. Using the WV's MC SU input, or an ARC MCP-33 into the WV's MM input, the Io Sig into the WV's line stage is a distance 3rd here in dynamic contrasts and this includes the midrange .... not just a result of the Io's more mellow top-end. It would be interesting to hear how the Eclipse versions compare in this way.
John
