Problem with Stellar Phono

The old Cardas connectors are beefy but really terrible connectors. There are spring like flaps on the outer ground part that breaks off over time and the center pin is split so you pray them apart when it becomes squeezed together. The plating also wears off quite quickly. Their newer connectors are much better.

Well… the high pitched noise is back! I have changed nothing in the system. What the heck could be causing this!?

So I unplugged the cables and put them back. Same thing. High pitched noise. So I unplugged the power cord from the phono stage. Let it sit for 20min. Plugged it back in, no high pitched noise. I’m pretty sure something is wrong with my phono stage. This is very annoying to say the least.

I had a slight hum and high pitch whine come from the turntable rca sitting too close to a high current power cord. Separating them made it go away.

My experience with a REGA turntable and the Stellar Phono have lead me to believe that that the interconnects provided by REGA are excellent antennas when plugged into the Stellar. You a forced to use the REGA interconnects and the Stellar is amplifying a tiny signal which makes the antenna capabilities of the interconnects a potentially huge problem. It would be sweet if REGA offered a solution. I love REGA and the Stellar so I have zero desire to say anything harsh about either.

Hey! Thanks for you reply. If that’s the case why would it stop after unplugging the Stellar Phono for 20min? If I power cycle it off and on quickly the noise is still there.

I still own both Rega RP8 and P10. I used them with Phono stages from Naim, Musical Fidelity, PS Audio (stellar) and Rega with no issues. However, the RP8 had an issue with tonearm cable early on. The sound was cutting. The dealer asked me to remove the tonearm and send it back. They couriered a replacement. It has been running perfectly ever since.

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Thanks for the info. I’m gonna reach out to PS Audio and my Rega dealer today.

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Good luck and truly hope your issue gets resolved once and for all.

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I kinda expected this. I was waiting before I said anything. I had this exact same problem. Turns out that the whistle is caused by your phono cable capacitance/MC input loading.

Super low capacitance cables dictate a higher load resistance. In my case, I eliminated the whistle at an MC load resistance of 800 ohms.

Set impedance to “custom” and play with the impedance. When the whistle goes away, that’s your ideal loading. I then used a DVM to match the channels impedance.

Good luck!

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Hey. This is very interesting. The Rega cables definitely are low capacitance. How does going to 800 ohm change things if your cart has a recommended loading of 100?

Phono cartridges are basically current sources, increasing the load to damp out noise is like putting the horse behind the wagon.

Also it is a connection Problem, as the Noise went away when the connections were re-established. So it is not a loading issue.

Loose connections are the best antennas you can have they are just not reliable enough to listen to the radio.

If the problems are the connections, get the connections fixed and don’t fight the symptoms by damping the current of the current source you just spent a lot of money on.

Most cartridges have a load range. In my case (Lyra Kleos), I’m still within the recommended range (95 - 805). As far as sound, there’s a difference, but it was too subtle to matter (for me — but I’m happy with the sound!)

Check your cartridge paperwork.

Note: I also had the whistle come and go with cable movement, connector cleaning, etc. Fixing the loading ended the problem for good.

Recommended for REGA Apheta is 100 Ohm. Seems like you damp the (total) sound Till the irritating noises are gone, you are sacrificing sound quality for a problem that has to do with connection integrity and not loading.

If that makes you happy that is OK, but it is better to fix the problem than to camouflage the symptoms.

I tested 200 without remarkable difference. As you noted bad connections are the enemies of phono.

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I do not dispute any loading setting not even 800 Ohm, but it should be for the right reasons. Loading is for fine tuning the sound to your liking not too limit the sound to the point you can not hear the noise anymore.

With other words, if fixing the excellent REGA RCA cables to the RCA input of the phono stage does not work in such way that you can not hear ant noise with any load setting, something else is not right. Either the cat got tangled up in the phono cable and you need to send the REGA in for repair, or the culprit is inside the phono stage. Good luck with that. I‘d try to get the phono stage fixed or buy a more reliable unit.

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Blaming the noise on the low capacity of the REGA cable is nonsense. This may come into play for exotic US$ 8000 cartridges on equally hyper budget turntables. But not on a custom engineered turntable + tonearm + cartridge + phono cable package supplied by a company that designed and manufactured more turntables than you have ever been able to listen to. REGA test every single one of their products.

My solution: A screeching whine while playing vinyl led to Google search which led me here. Reading dcaudioguy’s “SOLVED…” post led me to the back of my Project Classic… which led me to find one of my longest interconnect cables (XLR from one of my DACs to listening chair headphone amp) was laying on one of the phono interconnect RCA plugs. Moving that mostly solved (but other such clean-up/re-arranging would also seem to be in order). FWIW. :slight_smile: