Opinions on Tribute SUTs

[alcarmichael]

do we really need this kind of commercial interference, especially when not true!

btw, there's quite some toroidal step up transformers out there, tribute, luxman, fidelity research are certainly not "nobody there"

Why do you say 'especially when not true'?

[RothwellAudio]

Why do you say 'especially when not true'?

Here's a quote from the link in post #2

"In my experience, every active moving coil input stage degrades the sounds way too much. While it is possible to do active stages today, which have practically no detectable noise, it is the bass region and the bass quality where the problem lies. Active devices are drifting with temperature, operating point and under work, and if input signals are smaller than 1mV, the drift gets into the way of the music. Bass lines are muddy then and drum players seem to play like if they are drunk. So the music is lacking immediateness, and rather sounds hollow, uninvolving, uninteresting."

Convincing people like that that headamps are superior to SUTs is going to be a hard job. Of course, there's been a similar debate for years about valves and transistors, and things like distortion measurements don't seem to have any impact on the debate.
Anyway, to some people it will be true that SUTs are superior to active headamps. To others it won't be.
Personally, I think good examples of either technology can sound great. Bad examples of either technology don't.

[Arkless Electronics]

Here's a quote from the link in post #2

"In my experience, every active moving coil input stage degrades the sounds way too much. While it is possible to do active stages today, which have practically no detectable noise, it is the bass region and the bass quality where the problem lies. Active devices are drifting with temperature, operating point and under work, and if input signals are smaller than 1mV, the drift gets into the way of the music. Bass lines are muddy then and drum players seem to play like if they are drunk. So the music is lacking immediateness, and rather sounds hollow, uninvolving, uninteresting."

Convincing people like that that headamps are superior to SUTs is going to be a hard job. Of course, there's been a similar debate for years about valves and transistors, and things like distortion measurements don't seem to have any impact on the debate.
Anyway, to some people it will be true that SUTs are superior to active headamps. To others it won't be.
Personally, I think good examples of either technology can sound great. Bad examples of either technology don't.

Absolute rubbish to the first highlighted bit.

The second I agree with. The thing that bothers on this is that, to follow on from my last post, "Chinese whispers" from people without the technical knowledge to hold an opinion one way or the other on which is theoretically better, are being propagated, without any comparison with top quality head amps (rare on the ground) and used to build a weight of incorrect opinion that SUT's are better, which is a falsehood.

I'm not claiming any huge superiority for head amps over SUT's, just that when done optimally they are at least as good.

Comparing 30 year old £60 head amps from ebay with £1000 SUT's is not exactly a fair comparison and yes one would expect the SUT to win here.

I have not done any sort of search as to what's available new today in the realms of head amps and the only "high end" head amps I personally know of (I'm sure others will enlighten me on this) are the one I make and an even more expensive one from Paul Haynes designs. I recall in a long phone call from Marco a fair while ago him saying that both mine and the Paul Haynes unit had convinced him that a good head amp can be a least as good as the best SUT's... and this was in comparison with the top of the range Ortofon ST80 at around £1400. Marco actually bought the Paul Haynes unit! (double the £750 which mine costs).

[anubisgrau]

Why do you say 'especially when not true'?

because it's not true that headamps have better performance than SUTs, as stated in a post i referred to.

[alcarmichael]

because it's not true that headamps have better performance than SUTs, as stated in a post i referred to.

Surely that's only your opinion. Have you tried the Arkless head amp in your system against a Tribute SUT? I have and I prefer the Arkless head amp.


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[Arkless Electronics]

do we really need this kind of commercial interference, especially when not true!

btw, there's quite some toroidal step up transformers out there, tribute, luxman, fidelity research are certainly not "nobody there"

I can assure you that the best head amps are easily as good as the best SUT's and in some cases better. As always in our hobby "Chinese whispers" are spread and "urban myths" abound, many of them completely untrue. There are very few head amps around for comparison to SUT's and many of those are not particularly high end. How many head amps have you tried before coming to the conclusion that SUT's are better? Or did you, as is usual in these cases, read it somewhere?

[farflungstar]

I'm happy for arkless to chip in wth his opinion that head amps are better (and even his somewhat shameless plug. grin) as I'm intelligent enough to read up on as many opinions as possible - and of course I read the arkless review but without context (a shoot out) it's impossible to know how it would fair in my system against other contenders. The consensus is in favour of SUT but as all in things it's about system synergy.

Adey

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[sjs]

The Ortofon T-2000 is also a toroidal core SUT, wound with silver wire and originally released to go with the low output MC2000.

[RothwellAudio]

As far as I'm aware there aren't many new headamps around at all. There's the Graham Slee Elevator, the Lounge Audio Copla and of course the one I make, the Headspace. There's also an unbelievably cheap one from Little Bear. A google search for "headamp" turned up nothing but headphone amplifiers until my Headspace on page 4 of the search results.
Jez is absolutely correct that very few people have had the chance to compare directly headamps and SUTs (ie using SUTs and standalone headamps into the same MM phonostage) simply because there are so few headamps around, but many people have used mm/mc phonostages set to mc operation and also tried a SUT into the same phonostage set to mm. That does give some level of comparison but it's when a SUT and Phonostage A is compared to Phonostage B (set to mc) that comparisons start to become tenuous.
Just to add to the confusion some people will say that they have used their cartridge with a SUT and Phonostage A and compared it to Phonostage B and preferred one or the other - then point out that the cartridge load in one instance is (say) 400 ohms and in the other instance is 100 ohms, therefore the optimum load for that cartridge is 100 ohms. There are too many variables there to draw those types of conclusions imo.

[Arkless Electronics]

As far as I'm aware there aren't many new headamps around at all. There's the Graham Slee Elevator, the Lounge Audio Copla and of course the one I make, the Headspace. There's also an unbelievably cheap one from Little Bear. A google search for "headamp" turned up nothing but headphone amplifiers until my Headspace on page 4 of the search results.
Jez is absolutely correct that very few people have had the chance to compare directly headamps and SUTs (ie using SUTs and standalone headamps into the same MM phonostage) simply because there are so few headamps around, but many people have used mm/mc phonostages set to mc operation and also tried a SUT into the same phonostage set to mm. That does give some level of comparison but it's when a SUT and Phonostage A is compared to Phonostage B (set to mc) that comparisons start to become tenuous.
Just to add to the confusion some people will say that they have used their cartridge with a SUT and Phonostage A and compared it to Phonostage B and preferred one or the other - then point out that the cartridge load in one instance is (say) 400 ohms and in the other instance is 100 ohms, therefore the optimum load for that cartridge is 100 ohms. There are too many variables there to draw those types of conclusions imo.

All good points Andrew. Plus of those that have compared head amps against SUT's how many have had access to a similarly high end head amp to compare to the maybe £800+ SUT's?