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Is 60dB gain enough for Kleos?

At age 52, after years of technological philandering, I am once again courting my old vinyl flame. I just bought a VPI Classic 3 because it looks like it was built in the fifties, like me. Now I am obsessing over the selection of cartridge and phono-amp. Every man needs his irrational, unsubstantiated religious beliefs, and mine include vacuum tubes (very fifties-ish) and a transformerless signal path.

So let's say that for the moment I am enamored with the Fosgate Signature phono-amp, which having a 60dB gain without any input transformer. Now I have read that this works best with a high-output MC in the 0.8 to 1.0 mV range.

Here's the rub ... I am very intrigued by the Lyra Kleos, my fascination with which is due in no small part to the musings in these pages of J Carr himself. Alas, the Kleos has an output of only 0.5 mV. So I seek the advice of those who might have pertinent experience!

Dave
david_pully
almarg's avatar
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almarg
9,670 posts
 
I would be cautious extrapolating from experience with the Linto. In addition to the fact that it is solid state, as indicated in its manual it is a very unusual design in that it drives the input signals directly into the amplifying transistors, with no loading network (the intent being to reduce noise); and it has an unusually high input capacitance of 4700pf (which may further reduce noise). The Fosgate differs in all of those respects, and also provides 4db less gain.

Regards,
-- Al
david_pully OP
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Regarding downstream compatibility, I will at first be feeding output of the phono amp into a Marantz AV7005 pre/pro. I could not find a line stage gain spec for this unit. Input sensitivity is claimed to be 200 mV / 47k-Ohm and pre-out is 1.2 V unbalanced, 2.4 V balanced … I don’t know how to translate that into gain. I’ll be using the balanced output into a Parasound Halo A51, sensitivity = 1 V for 28.28 V. Down the road, barring insolvency, I’ll insert a nice preamp with a threatre bypass mode into the stream, probably a Parasound JC-2 (gain 14dB) or a Rogue Audio Athena (gain 15dB balanced.)
almarg's avatar
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almarg
9,670 posts
 
Dave, those numbers all seem reasonable to me, and I don't see any issues with them.

Gain, btw, is calculated as 20log(Vout/Vin). For the AV7005, that would be 21.6db for the balanced outputs, and 15.6db for the unbalanced outputs.

Again, as I see it the main spec-related question in this case is s/n performance, not gain.

Regards,
-- Al
david_pully OP
29 posts
 
Al, thanks! Since the reviews I have read of the Fosgate, albeit sans actual measurements, consistently cite quietness for its genre. So far, then, so good! If I've read it once, I've read a thousand times in this forum and others, that meaningfully auditioning of high-end gear, especially for vinyl playback, is a very tough thing to pull off. All the more so for me, who lives hundreds of miles from a major city.
-- Dave
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theo
2,699 posts
 
David
No step up transformer, just the Linto between my Kleos and LS26 and as mentioned it works fine together.
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