Rerurn to Romy the Cat's Site

Gregm wrote:

"ASR do not use the regular ICs but the ICs that they removed form the demilitarized Russian nuclear missiles console and fallen Chinese satellites" . ..which means that they use cheap, used ICs. So, the dealer has a better margin & can discount w/out going out of business... However, unlike your dealer, I was referring to the entry level asr: I checked & it's called "mini-basis". I know the one yr dealer is trying to push to you & it's most of what you don't want: apart from the price (which puts it outside the scope of what you're looking for anyway), it's a very large two boxes product; the riaa box has to be on a top shelf to allow access to loading & gain controls; and it's heavy... There's no point in my suggesting 15 products that look OK but I haven't heard (one ex: http://www.customanalogue.com/jlti_phono_stage.htm) -- but remembered that pass-labs publishes plans for a ~60dB phono called "pearl": http://www.passdiy.com/projects/pearlono1.htm which shouldn't cost much. I've heard the Xono but not this. At least they come from the same stable. The Pass uses jfets rather than denuclearised Russian military ICs...

- OK, how does it cost?
- Around $7K
- How came that a cheap and small IS-based unit could cost $7K
- It uses everything from military
- What “from military”?
- I do not know.

I really do not feel that it might be more idiotic then that and particularly knowing that whatever this dealer sells, able to sell, or even able to understand is completely primitive.

Thanks for pitching me the different options I will certainly give it consideration. One of the problems of mine that I can’t use the commonly accepted definition of “good sounding phonostage” for myself. People out there, form my perspective, looking for very specific sound in phonostages. I would characterize it as sharp, impressive, bold, shmaltz-like with excessive sentimentality and showy transacted harmonics. When they get this form a phonostage (99.9%) of them then they feel that they get “quality” or at least have a “conformation of quality”. I really really really hate this sound and I looking in phonostage (beside everything else) musical softness, tonal none-aggressiveness, space, elegance and grace. I do not need to get form phonostage the analog chic – I have the rest elements of my system to do the necessary thighs. A visitor of my suite suggested in private email that my “system matches best with a front-end that is overly warm and euphonic”. It is might be so in a way but I would not use warm but rather “soft”. Warmth describes tone but softness describes contrast. I would make a parallel with printing photographs during the “old” silver technologies. You may have negative of excessive contrast (Gamma >.065) and use a soft phonographic paper. You might get a reasonably normal final image but the problem is that a trained eye will detect that the negative with excessive contrast has “burned” detail on the max and minimum and minimum optical density. Also the stricture of the film’s grain will be “deferent” not to mention many other thighs…

In my past during my phonographic times I have invented a very interesting and very original developer that did many interesting thing with the stricture of negative, relationship between density and it’s shadow, geometry and border effect of the grain and many other thighs. In addition the developer had developed film to the quite low numbers of Gamma (contrast). The key to handling that contract was use very different type of the light in my enlargers with wish the negative was magnified. I did not use that defused light as usually but rather a super contrast light of the light source that was located in the optical infinity of my enlarger and had it’s geometry infinitely small for a given optical configuration of the enlarger. It produced very different result and demanded very deferent things from the optically system of enlargers but the final result was very gratifying. I feel that in audio I subconsciously do the same and I do tent to have “soft start and strong finish” instead of dealing with opposite. In away I feel that a “correctness” should be approached gradually by “adding” that thing that do not exists instead of “removing” the things that too much.

Gregm, retiring to your post: it would be fun if those JLTi people provide even some very minor specification for their phonostage.  The statements like “we used it with extremely low 0.22mV MC cartridge and it was fine” with mention the dB gain sound too foolish. What was the sensitively of their speakers, gain in this power amp, gain in the preamps if it was used, the size of the room and so on and so on. Not to mention that 0.22mV is not extremely low output for a cartridge but quote an average….

Rerurn to Romy the Cat's Site