Went to listen to some tunes in MR2 today and found Darren Myers testing his prototype of the Stellar Pre. Sounded awesome, and dead quiet. And it isn’t even voiced yet!
The awesome thing for vinyl fans is that Paul’s TT is set up : )
The board is sitting on top of the DMP (which is off):
Awesome, Mark. Thanks for posting!!
Go Darren!!
And why does it need all those surface mount blue LED’s? I assume they won’t be on production boards, right?
Nice board! (as long as boards can be nice). Now that I’ve seen the circuits I can DIY it … not unfortunately 
Blue LED‘s in a closed cabinet somehow are a non issue, but if they’d shine through somehow I’d like it…blue is my favorite LED color.
Interesting it’s dead quiet even with an open transformer lying near the cartridge…but those toroidal ones radiate vertically afaik.
What’s the empty large IC socket for?
Will it just have balanced outputs, no balanced in?
Very exciting, thank you for sharing the pictures. Yes, Darren is very flashy with the blue led lights. I like his style. Will the box have the same dimensions as the Stellar GCD?
Mark, thank you so much for posting this. It was great to meet your brother yesterday!
The LEDs are used in my ultra low noise discrete voltage references that are throughout the design.
Yes, it will.
That’s correct, unbalanced in only. If balanced in is a must for you, you’ll have to wait for the BHK Phono 
The circuit has extremely low noise and the ability to reject a lot of external interference. I’m well under a nanovolt of input noise and literally can’t measure further down until I have this thing in a chassis.
The board has rediculous amounts of regulation and filtering. The rails are 155dB down in reference to 1V! Due to this, it lets off some heat so there will be vents for the blue light to escape 
I wonder how it would sound with better cables?
Good point! I just had to cobble something together yesterday but today I’ll be listening with better interconnects.
I wonder what the PSA folks are currently creating. So far I am aware of,
TSS
AN1,2&3 speakers
Stellar Speakers
Stellar power regenerator
Stellar Phono pre
They are busy little beavers.
Can you tell me what else.
Is there a BHK level Phono Pre in the works
a Stellar CD transport
Having this and more information will help pass the winter. BTW it was 9 degrees here this a.m. Thankfully no wind, not a good day for the old Gloucester fishermen.
Than you,
Chas
I thought the blue LEDs would be right up your street considering the underside of your Halcro power amplifiers are lit up like a disco…
Do you live in Gloucester? Fam used to have a place there.
Similar to the (now discontinued) noise harvesters, right?
Born and lived in Gloucester for a few years, spent most of my years in NH. We discussed before. Fond memories, I believe your uncle owned the drive through Dunckins near Washington square.
Don’t have a turntable, but the lack of balanced interconnects is… not good.
Riiiight, sorry forgot. My brother owned the old rental store, and he sold the building to the guy who tore it down and built the Dunkin Donuts Drive-Thru.
