People who love music and appreciate sound quality, have some bit of experience with reproduction chains and won’t be deterred or even intimidated by fashion trends, will still favour results that can only be achieved with a turntable at the chain front. In this context the love of the analogue listeners often goes so far that de facto existing drawbacks of the medium are turned into positive qualities. Would you like to have some examples?

A record player has no comfortable skip function, »track zapping« is therefore not possible. The good thing about it: that way you will be able to experience the artist’s work in the order as it was supposed to be heard. Then there are also the crackling and hissing noises. Those disturbing sounds are important to the followers of analogue culture, for they give the LPs a character and render certain tracks unique. After all, we humans do grow older, too, and our lives consist of phases. Who wants to look always the same?

Let’s not talk about the emotional fascination of a turntable versus a digital source here. Nowadays this kind of musical reproduction, this way of listening is something for ambitious connoisseurs who also love to spend a pretty penny on this hobby. Apart from the combination of drive, tonearm and pickup system, which has a tremendous influence on the sound, it’s first and foremost the part of the phono preamp that matters. Whereas formerly it used to be built into every pre or integrated amplifier, today those devices mostly hit the market without such a dedicated input. And if, contrary to expectation, the input is indeed present, its sonic quality rarely exceeds the verdict “sufficient”.

The golden bridge

This makes a phono preamplifier an essential and soundwise decisive connecting link between record player and pre or integrated amplifier. As a consequence quite a few manufacturers are also active in this market sector today: some are taking their chances with simple standard circuits, others have nice packaging boxes, and then there is still the third group of truly respectable manufacturers who take this topic very seriously. To the last-mentioned representatives belongs the Audionet R&D team whose PAM V2 phono preamp has been an indispensable and absolutely reliable implement for the i-fidelity.net editorial team until now.