I generally don't talk purely about objects on this blog but I have the odd time talked a little around my stereo system and the last time I wrote a piece was in January this year when I talked about the Tangent II VHF FM/DAB+ tuner.
Today I'm talking about a phono stage at which point you'll say and what is that?
Mounted in your record deck is a cartridge that put simply converts the ups and downs of how the groove on the record is cut to a low level electrical voltage, much lower than a regular amplifier circuit can use to fill your room with sound.
It will also sound tinny with little bass even if you tried to turn the volume on it right up because to make the music fit on the record when it is cut they take out the bass and boost the high notes to reduce any noise.
A phono stage is an additional circuit that boosts the level so an amplifier can reproduce it as well as any line level source such as a tuner or compact disc player and restore the bass and treble levels to how they were in the original recording.
In the heyday of records amplifiers often had that circuit built into them and the shoe box shaped record player you had did too but in the age of the compact disc many took them out.
Even when they were fitted, they tended to be good enough to give good sound to get you going but being designed to a price didn't reveal everything your record deck and cartridge was capable of.
That is where the stand alone Phono Stage comes in, bypassing that being connected to the amplifier via a line input and improve on sound apart from being kept away from any electric noise from the amplifiers mains circuit.
The built in stage in my Rotel amplifier tends to be be a bit noisy with hiss so I always used an external phono stage.
I had that Rotel unit for a good number of years but while it was very good, my system had improved and it was getting in the way of what it was capable of.
That is where the Pro-ject DS3 B comes in which offers better facilities for the more expensive moving coil cartridges to get the best sound from them and even on regular moving magnet one such as my Ortofon Concorde 30 with its fine line nude stylus has the ability via the loading settings to tweek the sound to its best
There is a subsonic filter which reduced by some 18 decibles at 20hz the effects of any warps on records while leaving the music intact.
Users of Moving coil cartridges wired in balenced mode on their turntables have the option of balenced inputs to reduce noise pick up on long cable runs and more expensive amplifiers that used balenced inputs can be wired in that way for similar benefits.
It does take traditional unbalenced RCA inputs with a grounding tag (Brit Eng: Earthing) and with the left and right channel circuits being seperate for the best stereo the inputs and outputs are symetical in layout.
There is a silver version available and from the inside you will notice there are no intergrated circuits amplifying but instead a very high quality circuit with transistors and top quality components instead based on the high end and super expensive RS2 phono stage.
What you do get with this is a extremely high standard of reproduction from your records with no noise and lots of subtle details when the music gets busy coming their clearly.
Comparing my original 1986 Talk Talk's The Colour Of Spring cd and original UK record, the record offers superior low level detail with lots of space between the different instruments and vocals leaping at you from beyond the speakers.
It is simply stunning for the money.
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