Wonder Audio Labs Reference Phono

[Gary Lee]

A friend of mine, William Tam, who is a very passionate audiophile and loves vinyl music in particular.

William is not totally satisfied with most of the phono stage products currently available in the market. He is so committed that he decided to design and build his own phono stage meeting his aspired sound quality and functionality requirements !!!.

I said to William that he should be very proud of this and we should share this with audiophiles in other locations beyond Hong Kong. Hence I posted this for sharing...

William managed to create a very small team of very talented engineers with the required software and hardware skills, like a 'start-up', and with timeless efforts they finally created a phono stage (known as Wonder Audio Labs Reference Phono) with some innovative features and functionalities that are totally unique in the current market.

- Functionality to adjust the cartridge impedance from 1 to 2000 Ohm, with precision of 1 Ohm per step change, ie. 2000 step changes end to end
- Functionality to adjust the cartridge capacitance matching from 0 pF to 1800 pF, with 32 step changes.
- These fine grained cartridge impedance and capacitance adjustment functionalities have been designed to have zero impact on sound quality.
- Patented 'Single Pole Balanced Amplifier SPBA'' amplification circuit with extremely low noise floor yet able to embrace every sonic details of extremely low level.
- 2.4G based remote control who could store and effect multiple user-defined sets of adjustment parameters.
- .....many other innovative and unique features ...

I suggested to William Tam that he should bring this Phono Stage to Thomas Li's place for an audition and do a A/B comparison with his ultra high end phono equipment. Thomas Li is one of the most respected and highly regarded audiophiles in HK, trust many of you have read his posts in this forum before. Thomas has many best-in-class vinyl audio equipment, including TechDas Air Force Zero Turntable, together with his experience and exposures, his place is best for this "benchmark test".

We will share our further feedback after the audition. Please stay tuned if you are interested.

Thanks,
Gary Lee

 

[mtemur]

Too many options mean too many switches and too much degradation. It’s totally the opposite of achieving good sound in my opinion.

 

[Gary Lee]

Too many options mean too many switches and too much degradation. It’s totally the opposite of achieving good sound in my opinion.

Thanks for the feedback mtemur.

You are probably right as per the conventional phono stage circuity design in which the configuration of cartridge impedance is mostly based on wired selectors / switches as part of the signal path.

However, according to William Tam, the configuration of cartridge impedance in his Phono Stage is very different, reportedly in his design, the fine-grained adjustment and configuration of cartridge impedance is based on relays built in the PCB, which are then controlled by a programmed firmware.

Once the cartridge impedance is selected and configured by the user through the user interface, the related impedance configuration circuity will no longer be part of the signal path, ie the impedance selection is not hard wired in the signal path. This design will avoid any degradation of the sound quality you rightfully mentioned in typical phono stage design.

William also said to me that, whilst the normal coarse impedance matching can meet the basic requirements of the cartridge to perform, with more fine-grained the matching, the cartridge will perform even better and according to the personal sonic preference of the users.

Hope this makes some sense to you, at least in terms of design approaches.

 

[jeromelang]

The new version seems to have its front panel changed?

How does this latest version compare to a Pass Labs phono pre-amp like the XP-27 or the Xs Phono?

 

[XV-1]

The remote control looks awesome.

If it sounds like it looks, it's a winner.

How much does it go for?

BTW, The Wonder Audio Labs website says its not secure?