It's always astonishing how strange the subject of vinyl records can be when it comes to reporting or adverts. A Danish hi-fi retail chain is marketing a record player on the Instagram platform. You can see and, above all, hear the needle plunging into the groove and then the expected annoying crackling noise. This makes the toenails of experienced connoisseurs curl up. At the very least, you feel physical pain. Anyone who wants to enjoy music from a record in a high-quality form will find the campfire atmosphere distasteful. The needle dips, the basic level caused by the scanning is created - and beyond that there is silence. If not, then the LP needs to be washed or replaced. High analogue sound culture is always associated with care and consistency, at least that's how it is for us in the i-fidelity.net editorial team.

Only if the conditions are right is it worth using high-quality equipment, and Canor's Asterion V2 tube phono preamplifier is without doubt one of them. Its appearance suggests that it must be an integrated amplifier, given its weight of 18 kilograms and height of 17 centimetres. These are record values for the exclusive amplification of phono signals. As usual from the Slovakian manufacturer, the housing is available in silver or black. Our model is as black as the night, which really brings out the orange colour scheme: the company logo and the corona lights around the rotary control, which can be used to select different input impedances. The brightness of the display can be adjusted in five stages. In Off mode, the display only appears when settings are changed and then goes out again a short time later.

The Asterion V2 is a monument of a phono preamplifier. It has three inputs, two for moving coil and one for moving magnet cartridges. One of the MC inputs is balanced, which not only makes sense due to the current fashion, but also for technical reasons. The signal can be sent to the preamplifier via an RCA or balanced connection. If there are any difficulties with low-frequency vibrations, the subsonic filter provides a remedy. The Asterion V2 can be muted at the touch of a button to avoid having to turn down the volume on the downstream amplifier when changing the disc.