I got this Rega Fono MM for my son. Cost me £130 delivered, about $170. It’s $260 new.
I searched it and found an ASR review. They basically shove in a 5mV sine wave and measure what comes out. They say it resolves 17-bits, which is the same as the DSD DAC. Well, I plugged it in to my hifi system and I sincerely hope the DSD DAC sounds better than this phono amp. It’s well worth the money, but it’s a bit grainy, not the smoothest sound imaginable. The gain is lower than expected. Probably sounds better with a much cheaper less resolving pair of speakers.
So another clear-cut case of listening rendering measurements academic.
Curious to learn what you think. I added a Teddy Pardo a while back. I personally heard zero difference. Is your Nucleus networked or is it USB into your DAC?
Seeing my son has a very old pair of Ruark bookshelfs, I reckon it will fit the bill.
I bought the EAR Phonobox about a year ago, and changing from Harbeth to Wilson has been quite spectacular. It’s a pretty cheap unit, no dip switches, just RCA in and out, and just keeps on giving. Dead quiet with a 0.22mV MC cartridge. Top of my list of audio bargains.
The nucleus is run USB into a Matrix Spdif 2 then I2S to DirectStream. The Matrix is also on a sbooster. I will give it a couple weeks and let it burn in a little before I make any judgement. Both Sboosters are plugged into my P10. The sound so far is the best I’ve heard in my streaming/server setup but a lot has happened in the past 2 weeks with the addition of the P10 and the Nucleus.
I had a long conversation with Tim last night and he explained in detail how much attention went into the USB input and why it is so good. I also ordered the Intona USB filter and a .5m USB cable. Herb Reichert was very impressed with that combo used with his May DAC. Use whatever cable you feel like into the Intona device, then the short Intona cable into the DAC.
I also ordered a 10Mhz clock device with power supply and cable for my EtherREGEN. It is supposed to make a MONSTER difference in sound. We shall see.
Ditto. Added a Teddy Pardo to my Small Green Computer Roon server and the improvement was not really audible. First upgrade in a while where I was left scratching my head (and empty wallet).
I can easily hear lPS differences to my SGC server I also found a audiophile ethernet cord between it and the router helps as does placing isolation between it and the surface it is on.
Perhaps your ethernet cord or isolation devices are too noisy to make LPS relevant.
Have my networking gear and server on the other side of the room from audio gear. The audio gear is on a P3, but the networking and server devices are plugged into in a v1 Hydra conditioner from Shunyata. Gasp, stock cords! I wouldn’t dream of it!
The audio gear is on a dedicated 20 amp outlet. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to do the same for the networking gear.
I sincerely appreciate all your effort and very smart suggestions. If it was practical and within my budget, I would apply all of them. Unfortunately there are limits, especially within a 100-year old home in Brooklyn.
I think, given the high level of engineering in some of these devices, tweaks don’t always make a different. Even Andrew Gillis, who designed the Small Green Computer server, suggested that a linear power supply wouldn’t do much. Who knows…
If you make a tweak and you hear it, that’s great. If you make a tweak and you don’t hear it, move on. There’s no way any one of us can judge another’s sound without actually experiencing it first hand. The dragon I chase is most likely not the dragon most of you are chasing.
Sure there are best practices, sure there’s all sorts of measurements that may indicate a components frequency response. But none of that takes into account each of our snowflake setups. Take for example cable routing hygene. How many of us have had to make compromises on routing power and audio cables? How many of us are stacking units on top of one another or have them side-by-side? Do we know how much electrical interference the boxes themselves are spewing? Most if not all the measurements I see are taken on a signal path, I’ve not seen an analysis of how quiet a component is to it’s surrounding. Does the nVidia Shield Pro I have sitting on top of my Oppo 205 interfere with it? I have no idea. Sure there’s some shielding, but how effective is it in a sub $200 box? Does the Oppo have enough shielding to compensate?
I don’t make a living with these products, some here may. At the end of the day, this is a hobby. Hobby away!
