I picked up the ios yesterday and while I'll wait for it to break in before making any comments on the sound, I can say that it is dead quiet. I've been through several phono stages, all modest for the most part. All of them had trouble with EMI, RF interference so I went to a Sutherland PH3D battery powered unit. Which solved the interference problems but still has a bit a hiss from the high gain required for a MC cartridge. It's very quiet with a MM cart.
My first test with any new phono stage is simply to turn up the volume with no signal going through. In the case of the ios, I checked that everything was connected properly because there was nothing of any kind coming out of the speakers other than the usual bit of tubiness from the Rogue amp. Even switching sources, to tape for instance, which has nothing connected to it at all, there was no difference switching back to phono. I might add that this is with the gain switch set to it's higher position, 70db.
Already I'm very pleased just to have a quiet phono section. Those of you with super high end gear may be familiar with this notion, but for me it's a little bit of audio nirvana even with no music playing.
