I believe he stated in an early post that there is something loose inside the SPP. I would return it.on that note, my SPP is dead quiet whether it is plugged into my power plant or directly into the wall the distortion level of my incoming AC is absolutely terrible but yet the SPP
is dead quiet.i believe something is wrong with it.
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If I recall correctly, Michael Fremer reported some noise problems in his report on the SPP that some folks from PS Audio helped him eliminate.
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Wow, that’s some of the worst power I’ve ever seen… Sorry about that.
The P 20 fixed that, all good I did not know how much I needed regeneration until I got one.
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I reported noise that I eliminated by moving a wall wart away from it. So I’m not saying it is not possible for it to pick up noise. Assuming that’s what you’re sayin’.
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I don’t think Michael Fremer described exactly how the noise originated or how it was fixed.
High-quality, well-shielded cables and careful cable positioning and grounding solved every issue I encountered, including an alarming “whistle” when I tried Luminous Audio’s super-low–capacitance interconnects (which I really like!) between the VPI HW-40 and the Stellar Phono. (Substituting Analysis Plus Silver Oval, which I also really like in spite of its being less open on top, solved the problem.) I also encountered motor noise pick up using the SAT CF1-09 tonearm’s hard-wired cables—adjusting cable placement cleared that up—and buzzing that I solved by running a ground wire from the VPI’s ground lug to the Stellar Phono’s. My point: If you audition this phono preamp and run into these issues, don’t fret and don’t blame the Stellar. They are solvable
From the review
Best,
-JP
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Geez i thought i was replying to Jamesh in a pm sorry about that.
The Sutherland is the Little Loco its a current mode preamp and its dead quiet with the A95, Lyra Delos and my old Benz Glider.
Maybe mine does have an issue need to send it back first I guess
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No apology necessary. It’s fostered some useful discussion.
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Hah, well everyone knows it’s awesome and wants you to keep it. 
I do think something is a bit weird here. It is by no means an inherently noisy pre, so I do wonder if something is up with it. Certainly worth sending in to see what the fellas find.
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The other day I heard a very faint radio station noise and thought it was the neighbors. Went over to the speaker and found out it was coming from there. So I went over to the rack and noticed that the tonearm cable had dropped down and was hanging vertically among the other interconnects. i placed it horizontally behind the turntable and the stellar phono no longer picked up the radio signal. So simple cable dressing can make a big difference.
Dan
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In my experience it is actually very touchy. Easy to get wrong sadly. I know we are dealing with small signals but I am not finding it difficult at all with my gear.
A friend owns a Stellar and he uses a Rega P8. I use a Rega P10 and a NBS Universal 2 Preamp that has a very nice phono stage in it. I hook up the P10 and I don’t worry about cable routes. Perhaps I am just lucky. I had the Stellar here and compared it to my Preamp. The Stellar sounds wonderful, my Preamp a tick better. I was worried.
I will not be borrowing BHK Monos to test against my amps. No sir.
The last time I was at his house we heard odd noises from his system when using the P8 Stellar combo. It was like alien space noises sadly not too far down in the mix. We thought we isolated it to the P8 itself. What finally got rid of the noise was to unplug power to the P8 speed control box and leave it unplugged for a few minutes. After that, silence returned. Dang.
As a follow up on my Stellar I decided to send it back 
I think it had great potential but I do feel mine was damaged when I took it off my rack I felt what I think was the transformer moving, I never took the cover off to look. I could not get the hum to be low enough. When I touched the rca input jacks they would hum got worse.
The reason I bought is because I bought a Ortofom MC A95 cartridge which is .2mv output and I read that Darren used a A90 with it when being designed. My Modwright PH9.0 worked but my volume on the BHK was close to 90 on certain music and I was not comfortable with that.
I did try a Luxman E-250 and that had no issues, also tried a Sutherland Little Loco and that worked fine also. I recently got a Bobs Sky 30 and bam I am good to go plenty of gain and excellent sound.
Here is a picture I have a weight on the Bobs because my cables want to pull it down
Even with the noise it was competitive with the 9.0 and the other ones, I would say what stood out to me was the sound stage and imaging
Thanks PS Audio and Kevin Jackson for the opportunity
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Living with the SPP now for a few weeks, I’m finding the muted startup kind of annoying (turn it on, drop a needle, and nothing 
).
The SPP has no volume control; so, it can’t be used without a preamp, which will almost always have a mute function. So, not only is the SPP mute function redundant, but it adds an unnecessary step when playing vinyl.
I would leave it on and unmuted all the time, but the Xmas tree light effect is also annoying — another story.
Why the muted startup?
So you can drop the needle, then unmute after it hits.
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Always good practice, and there are bound to be folks passing the spp via a passive volume direct to power amps, a preamp is not a given anymore 
Needle drops in particular are of course always “traumatic” so it would make perfect sense to me to have auto mute as the default.
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Ok. Guess I’m old school. Always in the habit of using my main preamp mute for vinyl playback management. The “extra” mute function bothers me. Most phono preamps I’ve owned over the years were “set and forget” devices.
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Fair comment it’s a different approach, I feed my phono preamp into an ADC as the “preamp” (i.e. selector and eq) is all digital. (disclaimer, not a stellar phono owner, maybe one day).
What would be nice of course is if the switch-on behaviour were configurable, but that would mean firmware, something I try and avoid in analogue devices, though a necessity evil with digital of course
At least with mute you can hold in the logo button for 3 seconds to unmute, vs having to use the remote. (At least this is what I remember when I had the SPP.)
Kudos to them for this.
(I always find it frustrating when components can be ONLY be controlled with a remote that could go missing or have a dead battery, etc…)
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Nowhere near three seconds, despite what the manual says - at least on mine. Closer to a second, would be my guess.
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