Pass Labs Xono vs. Aesthetix Rhea

Also consider your pre amp. My understanding is that Aesthetix has rather highish output impedance (true of most tube phono) and it does not like solid state preamp very much ( at least those with 10k input impedance like Spectral, ASR etc). I recently tried Io Signature with my ASR integrated and they did not match well at all. If you have solid state pre with 10k ohms input impedance, most likely Aesthetix will not be for you. Recently I tried Fosgate Signature phono and it works very well with ASR. In the Fosgate manual, it stated that its output impedance is low enough to drive solid state pre with 10k ohms input but did not say what the actual output impedance is. In fact, it sounds better than Io Signature that I tried but this does not mean that Fosgate is better than Io Signature, just that Io Signature just does not like 10k ohms input impedance very much. I believe Rhea has similar impedance pattern to Io Signature.

I have owned the Rhea and auditioned a recent Pass phono (XP15 I think).

I found the Pass very detailed but tonally thin and sterile. electric guitars were just wrong.

The Rhea was pleasant, on the warm side, but a little noisy.

First of all, as an as owner of the Xono, I do not find it to be lean or thin or sterile sounding. I do agree with the word "authoritative" and it does well with Pop and Rock. Extremely quiet phono with superb build.