Originally Posted by
Reffc
There's a world of difference between core materials used between some SUTs, the interleave windings for bandwidth, parasitic capacitance effects and the like. This can make a surprising difference, audibly, between good and poor designs. It is easily audibly discernible. It's no surprise since such effects usually result in an SUT's performance deviating from their design ideal characteristics. I worked on the development of an SUT a few years back, and for such a simple concept, it was surprisingly difficult to have one made which performed as expected. In my case, the core material was saturating rather unexpectedly so had to be redesigned and re-specified. Andrew is the real expert here though so you may be better addressing the same question to Andrew for a more comprehensive answer.
There are worlds of difference between various MM RIAA/gain amplifier designs as I'm sure you're aware being someone with the experience and knowledge to build them, so forgive me, but it seems a rather odd thing to suggest by inference that all SUTs or phono stages should sound the same? Forgive me if that is not what you meant, but it is how it comes across. Even things like the implementation of the power supplies matters, a lot. The proof of the pudding is in things like measured distortion and S/N performance. Designs that measure well in this respect usually sound the best to my ears too.
I agree completely.
Designing a really good phono stage is no easy task, especially one for MC carts.... When you're dealing with signals of < 0.0005 Volts then everything matters! Off the shelf voltage regulators for example cannot be used to directly power an MC stage as they are too noisy.. They may have only 10 millionths of a Volt of noise (hiss) but that's far too much!
Both head amps and SUT's also need very careful design if matters which would be irrelevant in a line stage are not to completely ruin performance at so much lower a signal level.
Arkless Electronics-Engineered to be better. Tel. 01670 530674 (after 1pm)
Modded Thorens TD150, Audio Technica AT-1005 MkII, Technics EPC-300MC, Arkless Hybrid MC phono stage, Arkless passive pre, Arkless 50WPC Class A SS power amp, (or) Arkless modded Leak Stereo 20, Modded Kef Reference 105/3's
ReVox PR99, Studer B62, Ferrograph Series 7, Tandberg TCD440, Hitachi FT-5500MkI, also FT-5500MkII
Digital: Yamaha CDR-HD1500 (Digital Swiss army knife-CD recorder, player, hard drive, DAC and ADC in one), PC files via 24/96 sound card and SPDIF, modded Philips CD850, modded Philips CD104, modded DPA Little Bit DAC. Sennheiser HD580 cans with Arkless Headphone amp.
Cables- free interconnects that come with CD players, mains leads from B&Q, dead kettles etc, extension leads from Tesco