Current “Best Bet” SOTA Phono

If a room is heavily damped, the reverberation time is around 0.3s, then you lose a lot of energy. You can then hear louder but you need a lot more power. i lose 2-3db per meter distance to the speakers. if you want to listen loud, the Klipsch RF 7(~100db/1watt) also goes above 125 db / 1m permanently under 5k€,
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Don’t care about loud...
 
Don’t care about loud...
Especially "that" loud. And if my room were heavily damped, I'd want to do something about that if possible. I recently installed a number of high end panels, both diffusion and absorption and at 85-90 decibels, it was bordering on too much.
 
Jadis now is the pits. A disgrace. Shoddy and embarrassment to their previous good reputation. Avoid like the plague
Jadis is a brand I've always looked at, when dreaming about my future second system, which I hope to make tube based + monitors, a smaller system. For that I thought Jadis might be a contender. Can you elaborate, on why they've become the pits?
 
Destination Audio has a new tube phono stage coming that's supposed to be the real deal and should mate well with your Zanden. Call Fred at Prana Distribution to find out more. Fred knows tubes and phono stages for sure. Good luck.

Gardener, no doubt the HSE Reference is one sexy beast!
 
As I am always interested to try out gear, today the new EMT 128 arrived,
will be a direct competitor to the Phasemation EA-1200 or the RCM THERHIAA,
looking forward to listen to the EMT 128 over the weekend.
This is several years old now, but what were your thoughts on the EMT 128?
 
Hi,
There is no best phono stage.
Whatever meshes with your system is best for you.
Simple as that.
Robert
 
It’s a good sounding phono.
Thanks for the response! Are you using it with EMT cartridges or other, lower gain and impedance cartridges? I'm just curious how it performs with cartridges outside the "recommended" range of 12-30 ohms that's listed in the manual.
 
Thanks for the response! Are you using it with EMT cartridges or other, lower gain and impedance cartridges? I'm just curious how it performs with cartridges outside the "recommended" range of 12-30 ohms that's listed in the manual.
To compare the 128 more easy, the comparison was done with a Koetsu cart.

This worked very well with the EMT.

In my set up the EMT (different carts) had in general the most full body bass

If your system is ion the lean side, this would be a perfect match,
if you have too much bass in your room, you should try the EMT first
 
Thanks for the response! Are you using it with EMT cartridges or other, lower gain and impedance cartridges? I'm just curious how it performs with cartridges outside the "recommended" range of 12-30 ohms that's listed in the manual.
It’s belong to a friend and he is using with EMT and/or high impedance cartridges.
 
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Sota

SOTA level?
How do you define SOTA. What is it and who decides. Is it a consensus? If it is then leave well alone. The parable of the five blind men and the elephant springs to mind. Far better for you to define the audio goals you want to achieve and assuming every one shares the same understanding of what you want to achieve then you might get some relevant and helpful answers.
 
This is an important topic. What do we consider to be the best phono preamps currently available on the market? The Soulution 757, the Boulder 2108, the CH Precision P10 Phono, the D'Agostino Momentum Phono Stage, the HSE Phono Stage preamp, or something else? I am looking to upgrade from a Boulder 1108 and am interested in any suggestions (for me it will need to be two sets of Balanced inputs from the turntable to the phone preamp (I run two turntables) and balanced outputs from the phono preamp to the line stage preamp).
 
This is an important topic. What do we consider to be the best phono preamps currently available on the market? The Soulution 757, the Boulder 2108, the CH Precision P10 Phono, the D'Agostino Momentum Phono Stage, the HSE Phono Stage preamp, or something else? I am looking to upgrade from a Boulder 1108 and am interested in any suggestions (for me it will need to be two sets of Balanced inputs from the turntable to the phone preamp (I run two turntables) and balanced outputs from the phono preamp to the line stage preamp).
Does that mean you are running balanced to the amplifiers as well?
 

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