AQVOX Audio Devices Phono 2Ci phono preamplifier

The German company AQVOX Audio Devices has produced an innovative moving-coil/moving-magnet solid-state phono preamplifier, the Phono 2Ci, that's as intriguing for its technology and performance as it is for its relatively low price: $1400. The zero-feedback, op-amp–free circuit uses a compact switch-mode power supply that's built into the chassis and features conventional voltage gain for moving-magnet cartridges via its RCA jacks, and current gain for moving-coil cartridges through the balanced XLR inputs. Rear-panel switches select between RCA or XLR inputs and offer a convenient ground lift. Either the single-ended or the balanced outputs can be used with either input. Unfortunately, the tight spacing of the RCA input and output jacks, which are mounted on the circuit board, will somewhat limit your choice of cables: Pairs of thick-barreled plugs will have difficulty fitting.

Rega P3-24, RB301, & Elys 2 turntable, tonearm, & phono cartridge Associated Equipment

COMMENTS
davip's picture

"...when a lacquer is cut, the cutter head exhibits a controlled and consistent "overshoot" of its intended path, thus making the resulting inscribed waveform "bigger" than the original signal, and in turn increasing its dynamic range".

Hmm, 'interesting'. It's certainly a subject that I have thought about often -- principally ever since I bought my first CD, and spent the next twenty years wondering why digital sounded so much worse than records on my STD / Hadcock set-up back in 1980. Now that my new hobby is giving CDs away to charity shops and repurchasing my vinyl here's a forum filled with like-minded individuals to moot such issues with.

So, here's one possibility for the fact that a poorly-measuring and dynamically-constrained mechanical analogue source can sound so much better than a superbly-measuring and effectively unconstrained PCM source: I suspect (or at least suppose) that the difference lies in the three words "mechanical analogue source". Consider that a 12" LP running at 33 1/3 RPM has the same effective transcription speed as the 15 ips reel-to-reel tape used for mastering most music (and as we all know from our cassette recording days, transcription speed is everything -- Nakamichi or otherwise), so, all else being equal, the format is dynamically transparent to the source. That's the "mechanical" bit, and not too contentious. Now, for the "analogue source" bits, which are treated together because because they are related (I think). Consider that a vinyl-cutting rig (at least for non-digital delaying varieties) is simply an analogue chain that does nothing to the audio signal other than amplify it: in this I mean that the audio is boosted to cause the cutting head to vibrate in an analogous way to that of a loudspeaker to cut the signal into the lacquer. Thus, this dynamically-transparent (to the master tape) vinyl medium is not 'processed' at all -- it is not subject to any real change in the way that digitised audio is. Moreover, I suggest that because of the unmolested nature of the master tape to vinyl path that the vinyl -- not the turntable -- BECOMES the source. Not only is the A2D-D2A cycle of digitisation not present, but the source component itself is removed from the signal chain. The vinyl 'soutce' still needs to be rotated at the right speed, with rumble kept at bay and tracking distortions minimised, but is it any surprise that the purity of this analogue signal chain knocks dgital into a cocked-hat despite the superior measurements of the latter?

Anyway, that's enough for my first Analog(ue) Planet post. If anyone would like to hear my experience with the vinyl that is the fly-in-the-ointment here  -- Peter Gabriel IV -- do let me know!

Thanks to Mikey for this venue, and for his stalwart work as totchbearer for the cause of musical fidelity.

cheers,

Dave

Killoe's picture

Thirty states allow their citizens to vote for several weeks. At least 19.4 million Americans have already done so, according to the Elections Professor Michael McDonald Project, against 19.1 million in 2010.

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HT Guy's picture

This is a great review but we need to see a review of the new RP-3 and the RP-6 with the Exact 2 cartridge.  Thanks.

qwerty09's picture

Specifically, it comes to choosing a civilization (English, Roman, Chinese, German, French, Japanese or Greek) and then build a village and an army, joining an alliance and go loot the villages of other players.
clash of clans hack

qwerty09's picture

This should start at the age of stone throwing sticks on his opponents to finish the space age and use satellites to atomize the opposing army.
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Pages

Rega P3-24, RB301, & Elys 2 turntable, tonearm, & phono cartridge Specifications

COMMENTS
davip's picture

"...when a lacquer is cut, the cutter head exhibits a controlled and consistent "overshoot" of its intended path, thus making the resulting inscribed waveform "bigger" than the original signal, and in turn increasing its dynamic range".

Hmm, 'interesting'. It's certainly a subject that I have thought about often -- principally ever since I bought my first CD, and spent the next twenty years wondering why digital sounded so much worse than records on my STD / Hadcock set-up back in 1980. Now that my new hobby is giving CDs away to charity shops and repurchasing my vinyl here's a forum filled with like-minded individuals to moot such issues with.

So, here's one possibility for the fact that a poorly-measuring and dynamically-constrained mechanical analogue source can sound so much better than a superbly-measuring and effectively unconstrained PCM source: I suspect (or at least suppose) that the difference lies in the three words "mechanical analogue source". Consider that a 12" LP running at 33 1/3 RPM has the same effective transcription speed as the 15 ips reel-to-reel tape used for mastering most music (and as we all know from our cassette recording days, transcription speed is everything -- Nakamichi or otherwise), so, all else being equal, the format is dynamically transparent to the source. That's the "mechanical" bit, and not too contentious. Now, for the "analogue source" bits, which are treated together because because they are related (I think). Consider that a vinyl-cutting rig (at least for non-digital delaying varieties) is simply an analogue chain that does nothing to the audio signal other than amplify it: in this I mean that the audio is boosted to cause the cutting head to vibrate in an analogous way to that of a loudspeaker to cut the signal into the lacquer. Thus, this dynamically-transparent (to the master tape) vinyl medium is not 'processed' at all -- it is not subject to any real change in the way that digitised audio is. Moreover, I suggest that because of the unmolested nature of the master tape to vinyl path that the vinyl -- not the turntable -- BECOMES the source. Not only is the A2D-D2A cycle of digitisation not present, but the source component itself is removed from the signal chain. The vinyl 'soutce' still needs to be rotated at the right speed, with rumble kept at bay and tracking distortions minimised, but is it any surprise that the purity of this analogue signal chain knocks dgital into a cocked-hat despite the superior measurements of the latter?

Anyway, that's enough for my first Analog(ue) Planet post. If anyone would like to hear my experience with the vinyl that is the fly-in-the-ointment here  -- Peter Gabriel IV -- do let me know!

Thanks to Mikey for this venue, and for his stalwart work as totchbearer for the cause of musical fidelity.

cheers,

Dave

Killoe's picture

Thirty states allow their citizens to vote for several weeks. At least 19.4 million Americans have already done so, according to the Elections Professor Michael McDonald Project, against 19.1 million in 2010.

humans alimentation

HT Guy's picture

This is a great review but we need to see a review of the new RP-3 and the RP-6 with the Exact 2 cartridge.  Thanks.

qwerty09's picture

Specifically, it comes to choosing a civilization (English, Roman, Chinese, German, French, Japanese or Greek) and then build a village and an army, joining an alliance and go loot the villages of other players.
clash of clans hack

qwerty09's picture

This should start at the age of stone throwing sticks on his opponents to finish the space age and use satellites to atomize the opposing army.
clash of clans gems cheats

Pages

Rega P3-24, RB301, & Elys 2 turntable, tonearm, & phono cartridge Page 2

COMMENTS
davip's picture

"...when a lacquer is cut, the cutter head exhibits a controlled and consistent "overshoot" of its intended path, thus making the resulting inscribed waveform "bigger" than the original signal, and in turn increasing its dynamic range".

Hmm, 'interesting'. It's certainly a subject that I have thought about often -- principally ever since I bought my first CD, and spent the next twenty years wondering why digital sounded so much worse than records on my STD / Hadcock set-up back in 1980. Now that my new hobby is giving CDs away to charity shops and repurchasing my vinyl here's a forum filled with like-minded individuals to moot such issues with.

So, here's one possibility for the fact that a poorly-measuring and dynamically-constrained mechanical analogue source can sound so much better than a superbly-measuring and effectively unconstrained PCM source: I suspect (or at least suppose) that the difference lies in the three words "mechanical analogue source". Consider that a 12" LP running at 33 1/3 RPM has the same effective transcription speed as the 15 ips reel-to-reel tape used for mastering most music (and as we all know from our cassette recording days, transcription speed is everything -- Nakamichi or otherwise), so, all else being equal, the format is dynamically transparent to the source. That's the "mechanical" bit, and not too contentious. Now, for the "analogue source" bits, which are treated together because because they are related (I think). Consider that a vinyl-cutting rig (at least for non-digital delaying varieties) is simply an analogue chain that does nothing to the audio signal other than amplify it: in this I mean that the audio is boosted to cause the cutting head to vibrate in an analogous way to that of a loudspeaker to cut the signal into the lacquer. Thus, this dynamically-transparent (to the master tape) vinyl medium is not 'processed' at all -- it is not subject to any real change in the way that digitised audio is. Moreover, I suggest that because of the unmolested nature of the master tape to vinyl path that the vinyl -- not the turntable -- BECOMES the source. Not only is the A2D-D2A cycle of digitisation not present, but the source component itself is removed from the signal chain. The vinyl 'soutce' still needs to be rotated at the right speed, with rumble kept at bay and tracking distortions minimised, but is it any surprise that the purity of this analogue signal chain knocks dgital into a cocked-hat despite the superior measurements of the latter?

Anyway, that's enough for my first Analog(ue) Planet post. If anyone would like to hear my experience with the vinyl that is the fly-in-the-ointment here  -- Peter Gabriel IV -- do let me know!

Thanks to Mikey for this venue, and for his stalwart work as totchbearer for the cause of musical fidelity.

cheers,

Dave

Killoe's picture

Thirty states allow their citizens to vote for several weeks. At least 19.4 million Americans have already done so, according to the Elections Professor Michael McDonald Project, against 19.1 million in 2010.

humans alimentation

HT Guy's picture

This is a great review but we need to see a review of the new RP-3 and the RP-6 with the Exact 2 cartridge.  Thanks.

qwerty09's picture

Specifically, it comes to choosing a civilization (English, Roman, Chinese, German, French, Japanese or Greek) and then build a village and an army, joining an alliance and go loot the villages of other players.
clash of clans hack

qwerty09's picture

This should start at the age of stone throwing sticks on his opponents to finish the space age and use satellites to atomize the opposing army.
clash of clans gems cheats

Pages

Rega P3-24, RB301, & Elys 2 turntable, tonearm, & phono cartridge

It's now been eight years since a Rega P3 turntable passed through my listening room. While the new P3-24 superficially resembles the P3 (and virtually every other Rega 'table), the company has made some significant changes, including upgrading to the high-quality, low-voltage (24V), electronically adjusted motor used in the more expensive P5, P7, and P9. As in those models, an electronic circuit trims the phase angle of the P3-24's motor coils, thus substantially reducing motor vibrations. In 1998, during a factory tour, a Rega engineer demonstrated the circuit's effectiveness to me. As he adjusted the circuit board's pot, vibrations from the motor dramatically decreased, until it was difficult to tell if the motor was spinning or not. Back then, this "hand-trimmed" motor technology was available only in the P9. The P3-24 uses a less sophisticated version of the same basic idea.

Lee Morgan Leads Jazz Supergroup

Let the Blue Note reissue riot continue! Fans of the cool, bluesy, gospely Blue Note sound can’t help but feel blessed at the output, whether from Classic in mono or from Analogue Productions and Music Matters in stereo.

Primary Category: 
Category: 
Artist: 
Lee Morgan
Album: 
Lee-Way
Cred Label: 
Blue Note/Analogue Productions ST-84034 2 45rpm 180g LPs
Cred Prod: 
Alfred Lion
Cred Eng: 
Rudy Van Gelder
Cred Mix: 
Rudy Van Gelder
Cred Mast: 
Kevin Gray and Steve Hoffman at AcousTech

Let the Blue Note reissue riot continue! Fans of the cool, bluesy, gospely Blue Note sound can’t help but feel blessed at the output, whether from Classic in mono or from Analogue Productions and Music Matters in stereo.

Jackson Hits All the Right Notes On Return to Roots

Give Jackson two or three and he’s got an exquisitely turned pop tune fitted with a great hook (or two). Give him a few more and he can produce something more majestic.

With his debut Look Sharp, Jackson rode in on the angry young auteur wave along with Elvis Costello and the terribly underappreciated Graham Parker but he quickly moved on to big band, reggae, swing and whatever musical fruit he felt was ripe for his picking.

Primary Category: 
Category: 
Artist: 
Joe Jackson
Album: 
Rain
Cred Label: 
Rykodisc RLP-10921-1 180g LP
Cred Prod: 
Joe Jackson
Cred Eng: 
Julie Gardner
Cred Mix: 
Sean Slade and Paul Q. Kolderie
Cred Mast: 
Bob Ludwig at Gateway Mastering

Joe Jackson is like one of those balloon magicians, only instead of producing elaborate figures from a simple form, he does it with notes.

Charlie Haden Birthday Party Gig Open to All!

From the NAIM archives comes this triple LP/double CD set, originally issued as two, long out of print, individual CDs, featuring Charlie Haden’s Quartet West, featuring Saxophonist Ernie Watts, pianist Alan Broadbent and the late, great drummer Billy Higgins on one session and the great, not late Paul Motian on the other.

Primary Category: 
Category: 
Artist: 
Charlie Haden
Album: 
The Private Collection
Cred Label: 
NAIM LP 110 3 180g LPs/CD
Cred Prod: 
n/a
Cred Eng: 
Ken Christianson
Cred Mix: 
Ken Christianson
Cred Mast: 
Ken Christianson

From the NAIM archives comes this triple LP/double CD set, originally issued as two, long out of print, individual CDs, featuring Charlie Haden’s Quartet West, featuring Saxophonist Ernie Watts, pianist Alan Broadbent and the late, great drummer Billy Higgins on one session and the great, not late Paul Motian on the other.

Blind Pig Re-enters Vinyl Market With Eyes Open

Recorded live on June, 28th at the 1974 Montreux Jazz Festival, this hot session features Wells and Guy backed by a last minute “pick-up” band consisting of ex-Rolling Stone bassist Bill Wyman, Otis Spann’s Muddy Waters band replacement Pinetop Perkins, ex-Manassas drummer Dallas Taylor, best known for peeking (or peaking) out the door on the back cover of Crosby Stills, Nash (on which he also played) and his brother Terry Taylor on rhythm guitar.

Primary Category: 
Category: 
Artist: 
Buddy Guy and Junior Wells With Bill Wyman, Pinetop Perkins, Terry and Dallas Taylor
Album: 
'Drinkin' TNT 'N' Smokin' Dynamite
Cred Label: 
Blind Pig BPLP 1182 180g LP
Cred Prod: 
Bill Wyman
Cred Eng: 
n/a
Cred Mix: 
Bill Wyman and Paul Libson
Cred Mast: 
Roger Seibel, SAE Mastering

Recorded live on June, 28th at the 1974 Montreux Jazz Festival, this hot session features Wells and Guy backed by a last minute “pick-up” band consisting of ex-Rolling Stone bassist Bill Wyman, Otis Spann’s Muddy Waters band replacement Pinetop Perkins, ex-Manassas drummer Dallas Taylor, best known for peeking (or peaking) out the door on the back cover of Crosby Stills, Nash (on which he also played) and his brother Terry Taylor on rhythm guitar.

Donaldson and the 3 Sounds Epitomize the Bluesy Blue Note Sound

Lou Donaldson playfully skids into a few bars of David Rose’s “Holiday For Strings” mid-solo during a cover of the Kelmar/Ruby standard “Three Little Words,” indulging himself in a bit of shtick popular back when jazz could be lighthearted, studious and physical. Sonny Rollins was and is a deft practitioner of the off-handed musical quote as are and were many of the other jazz greats of a bygone era. It’s rarely done today. Jazz is more serious and cerebral, unless it gets goofy as the drummer Matt Wilson sometimes can get.

Primary Category: 
Category: 
Artist: 
Lou Donaldson With the 3 Sounds
Album: 
LD+3
Cred Label: 
Blue Note/Music Matters MMBST-84012 2 180g 45 rpm LPs
Cred Prod: 
Alfred Lion
Cred Eng: 
Rudy Van Gelder
Cred Mix: 
Rudy Van Gelder
Cred Mast: 
Kevin Gray and Steve Hoffman at AcousTech

Lou Donaldson playfully skids into a few bars of David Rose’s “Holiday For Strings” mid-solo during a cover of the Kelmar/Ruby standard “Three Little Words,” indulging himself in a bit of shtick popular back when jazz could be lighthearted, studious and physical. Sonny Rollins was and is a deft practitioner of the off-handed musical quote as are and were many of the other jazz greats of a bygone era. It’s rarely done today. Jazz is more serious and cerebral, unless it gets goofy as the drummer Matt Wilson sometimes can get.

Pages

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