Keith G wrote:


OK, in case anyone is interested, a bit more information:

The object of the exercise was to check Phil's suspicions that the Ming Da
phono stage was a bit 'bass light' and to compare it directly with my
EAR834P phono which has a rep for being a bit fat-arsed and is generally
despised by one here who shall remain nameless. (Won't they Nick? ;-). This
was using a Shure V15 V xMR into B&W DM2As which have got a good bass if
well fed, can be a bit woolly if not and the bass from the Shure can bend
iron bars, if needed..... :-)

Must be a usage of "nameless" that I have yet to come across :-)

I was about to start with "despised" being a bit strong, but, no, you
are right, I think EAR phono stages are crap. That ok ?

When I mesured yours, it had a unneeded rumble filter, well that, or the
50hz EQ was wrong, and the response above 10k, fell like a stone.

IMHO, save your money, buy or build the WAD phono.

With all that, having not heard the stage in question, I have no opinion
on that, and how it compairs. There does seem to be two schools to valve
phono stage design, the "sod the RIAA, but it sounds nice to me" school,
or the (one I fit into), "get the RIAA as close as you can, design so
valve changes dont effect this, or can be dialed out, and then look at
the best sound" (valve op points, CCS, component choice, MC loading
values, power supply quality, RF rejection, all that sort of stuff).

However, not being a devotee of the modern, universally compressed 'digital'
music that is so popular today, I don't subscribe to the theory that 'one
size fits all' and have been in the business of selecting amp/speaker
combinations to suit the various sources for a little while now. (What else
can you do, now that Tone Controls have been phased out...??) My suspicion
was that the phono stage was wanting to do finer things than rattle my
pictures with Bjork's 'Headphones' (which, bless it, it do to a degree!! :-)
so I put it onto the 2A3 SET to try summat 'completely different'....


Out of interest, what the input impediances of the amps in question ?
That could well be making a difference. And maybe input capacitance,
depending on the circuit of the phono stage.

--
Nick