Aria phono preamp - Mike Elliot blog

Jafox,

Whoa there big boy! Just giving my impressions of the blog. I did not mean to disrepect the guy, heck I've owned and liked his stuff. It just seemed to me that he did not have the design very far along when he started the blog and that he is kind of doing it as he goes. Now this doesn't mean the end result will be bad, nor does it mean that the price is too high, nor does it mean to imply that no one else does this. And I said I appreciated his candor with letting us in on the design process.

I'm just giving my impression and that's all I can do. I wouldn't want to have paid the guy to design something as I'd rather spend for a finished product, but others of course trust the guy for something great (for good reason) so have apparently funded the development for a fixed price ...that's certainly fine too. I'm sure it will be a nice product (and expensive) when it comes out in a year or three.

Jafox,

I agree with your words! And I bet that Mr. Elliott will do a great job for our hearing! Mr. Elliott is a genius and in the past with every products he has done(from the simple SA 1000 to more complicated and sophisticated SA 11 or SA 9) he proved to be a guru in the hi-fi, hi-end word! And the others like AR and similar have only to learn from great person like Mike!
Mike.. God bless you and your job!

Jafox, you still there? I read on Mike's site that the preamp is ready. Are you excited? I was surprised that he's also coming out at the same time with a line stage version and a full feature preamp.

From what I read the ARIA phono will use a transformer for MC's.

That in itself will rule out a lot of people that don't like transformers in their phono stage.

me I'll keep my opinions open,

however I have yet to hear a transformer designed MC stage beat an active MC phono stage if you are using various cartridges.

Hello Kub, oh yes I am excited...very much so. I too was surprised of all the variations of the WV. And it was great to see the remote volume will be supported as this was one thing Mike had written that he would not provide.

The line-stage-only option makes a lot of sense for those not into phono and/or who may want a top-notch unit for a HT setup. A very cool design feature here is that when powered off, the WV defaults to bypass mode which is a feature I have been looking for over the last few years for my HT setup. With the TV occupying the vast majority of time with the HT system, I would not want to burn my precious WV tubes. I may have to get this version of the WV for my HT system too!

Downunder, I too have some curiosity about how the transformers will perform. But Mike did go through a lot of effort to evaluate many models, and he came away with liking the Sowters very much with the rest of his tube-based phono stage. For those of us who know his work in past preamps, we have a lot of faith in the possibilities with the Sowters. The noise vs. the dynamics vs. the spatial attributes, all of which people point out as the pros/cons of using step-up transformers, will be heard soon enough when the WV comes out. However, there is a 2nd phono input on the WV (for MM) and this opens the door for an external active MC stage to compare to the Sowters.

I have a heavily modified ARC MCP-33 that is all set to be used into the WV's MM stage to compare directly with the Sowters. Unfortunately the external unit adds great expense beyond the cost of the unit itself as a first-rate power cable (Stealth Dream or Dream State) and ICs (most likely Jade Hybrid) from the ARC to the WV will be far more $$ than the ARC unit itself. The modified ARC is magic but wouldn't it be ironic if the $240 Sowter pair outperformed the ARC and all its added fancy cabling and hand-picked premium tubes! I will find out soon enough.

John