I think a good power supply, preferably linear is crucial. I’ve just upgraded my SMPS to a linear SBooster supply on my Qutest Dac and even out of the box the difference was there to hear, it can only get better.
On owning and trying out different phono-stages over the last couple of years with and without SMPS I’m convinced linear is best. Earlier this year I owned a Whest phono-stage and I couldn’t get it to sound as good as I had hoped but a friend and I spent a day playing about with different ways of getting power to it, and were surprised to find that plugging straight into a wall socket with the standard cable gave the best result but no matter what it was not a keeper.
SOURCE:OPPO UDP-205 BluRay, SkyQ, Technics SL1210M5G/HexMat Eclipse/MN Bearing/Origin Live Gravity One puck/Isonoes with Boots/Jelco TK-850S Tonearm/Hana Umami Blue, PS Audio Stellar Phonostage. I also have an AT-OC9XSH as a spare cartridge.
AMPLIFIER: Bryston BR-20 Pre/DAC/Streamer & Bryston 4B3 Power Amplifier
SPEAKERS: Spendor D7 on Iso-Acoustics Gaia III’s
HEADPHONES: OPPO PM-1 with Atlas Zeno cable, B&W Pi7 S2 and B&W C5 v2.
CABLES: Analogue: Speaker Atlas Mavros Grun. Interconnect - Atlas Mavros XLR x3, MCRU Silver Tonearm cable
Digital:Audioquest Carbon Ethernet x 4, Audioquest Carbon digital, English Electric 8Switch, Chord Optichord, Atlas Optical.
Mains: PS Audio Perfectwave AC-05 x 5, Isol-8 Powerline Extreme with Quantum Science yellow fuse on input cable, Sounds Fantastic 6way Mains Blocks.
STORAGE: Synology DS216J NAS with 2 x 3Tb WD Red hard-drives. Samsung 500Gb SSD.
TV LG55B7 OLED