GoodSoundClub - Romy the Cat's Audio Site

In the Forum: Analog Playback
In the Thread: The last phonocorrector: “End of Life" Phonostage

Post Subject: How my phonostage shall sound.Posted by Romy the Cat on: 9/1/2011

Romy the Cat wrote:
Also do not forget that the phonostage that you built has very lash and very polite sound.

I would like to stress the politeness and lushness of 834PT-AIR phonocorrector. This characteristic of this phonostage sound is in way unique from the sound of most phonostages. I surely can’ not claim that heard most of the phonostages out there but from what I heard I recognized the general tendency to make better sounding phonostages to sound a bit too punchy and too demonstrable of own quality. Those phonostages sound “impressive” and they push “quality” out of themselves right in your face. Most of the phonostages out there that I heard were what I call hard-reading phonostages and they deliver very abrupt reflex of events that happens in groove. How bad would it be? That shall be good – a good phonostage shall be very responsive to the micro voltage events in a cartridge. There is however a bit more to it and now we need to think not about the audio bumper sticker but about USING audio as an intelligent tool.

Audio in a way like designing of cars if the comfort of ride is the only objective. You need to have a proper combination between the car weight, the distribution of masses and stiffness of suspension. The most sophisticated cars do not use juts a regular single spring but a variety of different type of springs, dampers and non-liner springs, making car to react non-liner to different type of external forces. The best phonostages out there in my view have very hard car suspension. You might enjoy to ride the older type BMW, particular the 3X series but they present to hard drive compared to let say 1979 Chevrolet Caprice Classic. Perhaps the Bimmers are fine for driving and to feel each road paddle on own ass is not bad for DRIVING but with music it is more complicated.

Most phonostages are cars with very hard suspension, which is fine. You do not want to drive on roads with bump in 1979 Chevrolet Caprice Classic as you will hardly note the road paddles. However, music is not just riding he bumps. If you feel your Caprice well then you can’t register the depth of the bumps but you can recognize HOW the Caprice’s suspension is slowly reacting to the bumps and how the car is comforting itself after it was exposed to the bumps’ annoyances. Would it possible to combine the hardness and control of Bimmers with softness and elasticity of Caprice? Here is where my “End of the life” phonostages comes.

The 834PT is very elastic and very harmonic-overwhelmed sounding phonostage. The voltage-starving use of the 12AX7 make it to sound not only very soft but also very “yellow”. Then we add to the mix the air capacitors. The air capacitors are absolutely unique. Do not forget that they sit in the feedback circuit and they are constantly get recharged, they have no DC from one side (like coupling caps do) and their dialectic is not polarized by DC. No capacitor sound good in feedback applications as AC constantly jerk back and force the dialectic, smearing all sound. However, the air capacitors have no dialectic (well, air is dialectic), it means that anything that might be negative in capacitors does not exist in this case. The use of air caps gives to the phonostage the incredible punch, almost a brutal punch. It is like the very first instance when your car hit the paddle the car has hard driving BMW suspension and in a few micro-second the suspension begins to act like Caprice, slowly releasing and reacting to the tension.

Then we have the Expressive Technology transformer that give to sound besides everything some amassing accretion of dynamics. The total taste of that soup is remarkable and inimitable in my observation. It able to show the insulting granularity of any micro and macro events but at the same time the “memories” of the those micro events keep living in sound for some times, making Sound very smooth and very “macrobiotic” sort of speaking

Rgs, Romy the Cat

Rerurn to Romy the Cat's Site