If you are paying out hundreds of pounds on setting up a music system, either for your home pleasure, or for professional reasons, it is imperative to invest in the right kit. The days when you could simply purchase any old gramophone are gone. With the exceptional improvement in quality in recent years there has been a corresponding growth in the amount of different components and options which must be debated. One of the most critical of these is the phono stage, also sometimes known as the phono preamp stage or the phono amp stage.
In this arena many components are identified by the name phono. Phono is short for the word phonograph, which literally means ‘sound writer’. The word ‘phonograph’ is in fact a combination of two Greek words. The first, transliterated from the Greek alphabet as phone, means ‘sound’ or ‘voice’, and the second, transliterated as graphe, means ‘writing’. The original author of the word was F. B. Fenby, an inventor in Worcester, Massachusetts in the middle of the nineteenth century. In 1863 Fenby was allowed a patent for a device described as the ‘Electro-Magnetic Phonograph’. It must be said, however, that no working model was ever completed.
Nowadays, there are many terms employed to describe the equipment for playing records, for example: stereos, hi-fis, record players, turntables, and, when used in conjunction with a mixer as part of a disc jockey’s set-up, decks. Many of these have built-in phono stages, but these are almost universally of distressingly poor quality. The output level from a turntable is lower than from a CD player or cassette desk (so called ‘line level’ equipment) and phono stages are necessary to boost the amplification of the signal received from the turntable. Specialist outboard phono stages can offer huge improvements in sound quality. A specialist phono stage is responsible for 95 per cent of bass amplification when using a moving coil cartridge and for 80 per cent of the signal amplification for the mid-range.
The next time you are investing in a record player, make sure that you invest in a specialist phono stage. Ask any dedicated music connoisseur about the benefits of a specialist phono preamp stage (also sometimes called a phono amp stage) and you cannot fail to be convinced. A stand alone device allows a clean and unimpeded power supply and means that settings can be adjusted for different record players. It is considered indispensable by most serious lovers of vinyl records.
Please visit http://www.whestaudio.co.uk/ for further information about this topic.
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