Audio Note M1 RIAA arrives today... let the SUT wars begin!

Hello all,

After about a five-month wait, my AN UK M1 RIAA phono stage should be in my system this afternoon.

I'll post pictures once I've got it in place.

I've been hemming and hawing on committing to a Silvercore One to Twenty SUT order for my Dyna 20x2L cartridge as I figured I'd have advance notice of the MM stage arrival time (this didn't happen, I got a call from the great gentlemen at Soundhounds the other day "It's HERE!"), and I wasn't fully committed to shelling out more than $800 CAN (after exchange/duty/taxes/shipping) for the Silvercore since I couldn't demo it, plus I was looking at least a six-week wait for a build.

Don at Soundhounds very kindly threw in an older Ortofon SUT for me to use as a stopgap (so I could at least start burning-in the M1 and new AN Lexus cables) while I demo other SUTs in my system and try to reach a conclusion.

It looks like I'll be starting next week with a bespoke Cinemag CM-QEE 3440-A billet-aluminium case SUT.

From there, with some help from friends, I'll try the Auditorium 23, and the AN-S2.

I'm contacting other manufacturers to see if I can demo a Hashimoto HM3-based SUT, and a Lundahl-based SUT as well.

I'll post my impressions here. Any and all SUT suggestions, or advice is appreciated.

Cheers,

–R

 

Congratulations- I look forward to your impressions and experiments. What is the difference between the M1 RIAA and the M1 Phono?

 

The M1 Phono includes a line stage pre-amp.

 

Intact Audio / Emia is pretty keen.

 

Not a bad place to start. Congrats on finally getting your phono stage.

jeff

 

Thanks!!!

 

Cheers Jeff, indeed, should be quite a good SUT to start training my ears for this new approach.

 

You may even get to demo a auditorium T2 homage....

 

Ha!
That would just be cruel my friend.
Mahalo!

 

OK, got the M1 set up yesterday afternoon with the old battery-powered Ortofon MCA-10 SUT which loads at 10 Ohms and has about 34 dB of gain from what I could glean online. So not a great impedance match at all (Dv20x2L needs between 50 and 100 Ohms to sound best IMHO), and more an active MC than a SUT really, but whoa...
Sound straight out of the box with about 30 minutes of warm-up was ballsy. Waaaay bigger sound stage, more depth and monster bass.
I played LPs for about three hours and after two hours the M1 RIAA really started to open up, the difference, even with this mismatched Ortofon is staggering. Any trace of politeness my system had is gone; it's all grunt, muscle, and slam now.
It doesn't even sound like my setup anymore. As the M1 got more warmed up everything just kept getting better and better.
Timbre, tone, detail, 3D imaging, spatial cues of vocalists and instruments were far, far more defined than my previous phono stage.
Vocals, violins, trumpets, saxophones, all took on a living, breathing, organic, palpable in-the-room quality that I had not experienced previously. Piano had attack and decay on notes heretofore unheard on several recordings. Percussion and drums? Phhhtffp!
Holographic definitely is the word that comes to mind for imaging... and just the sheer power of the presentation. I don't know if it's because my previous phono stage was battery powered or not, but everything just rocks. It's like a fire hose to a garden hose if I had to compare the flow.
For the first time ever, the system is pressurizing the room at moderate/higher volume levels. Oh, and what was 1 o'clock on the volume pot is now 10 o'clock.

This unit is a stopgap for a few days until a proper Cinemag SUT arrives, so I don't know wtf that is going to sound like if this $75 Ortofon through the M1 sounds this good after only a few hours. I have had the M1 and the Oto warming up already this morning so I'll do more listening today, but needless to say, IMHO, a SUT into an MM phono stage is an eye-opening experience for what LOMC carts are really capable of. More to come...

 

Nice! Thanks for the pics. I can't wait to hear your impressions with a better matching SUT. Enjoy!

 

That's an awful lot of gain.

 

Pretty standard for SUTs feeding LOMC.

 

I'm continually surprised (and gratified) at how much better the sound can get as you slowly climb up the audiophile path. Just when you think "Oh man, this is the best... how could I beat this sound?" Time goes by and then you go and research, and talk to other more experienced audiophiles and come up with a plan for the next step and "BAM!" you go and exceed all your expectations.

 

Over 90db of gain is standard for a .3mV cartridge?

 

Where exactly are you pulling 90 dB of gain from?
AN UK M1 RIAA - 37 dB
Ortofon MCA-10 - (roughly) 34 dB

Total: 71 (roughly) dB for a 0.3 MV cart... pretty standard like I said.

 

Got it, the previous model "Phono" had much more gain.

http://www.manualslib.com/manual/480697/Audio-Note-M1-Phono.html?page=6#manual

 

Ahhhh...
That's the line stage phono preamplifier.
Mine is the M1 RIAA.
Completely different.
The OP has the link in it.

 

I have an Ortofon MCA-10. It is an active MC pre-preamp, so it is called a "head-amp", not a "SUT". It is quite a good sounding unit. But when you compare it to passive step-up transformers, you'll hear quite a noticeable improvement.

Rafe, I wish you were closer to me, in Southern California. I have two demo Music First Audio step-ups (the Classic and V2) and a few demo Audio Note step-ups, that are available to anyone to borrow for listening at home. Once you start comparing step-ups, each sounds startlingly different, and one or two always stand out as best sounding. It is quite easy to choose a favorite. Unfortunately, there is not one "best" that suits anyone's cartridge and phono stage.

If anyone wants my advice about how to choose the ideal step-up ratio (or dB gain) for a particular cartridge and phono stage, please ask me. There is some simple math involved, to optimize (1) loading for the cartridge and (2) resultant input mV level for the phono stage.

 

Can I ask what an SUT is ?

 

Step Up Transformer

There is a good explanation here:http://www.vinylengine.com/step-ups-and-mc-cartridges.shtml

 

I'm glad that your AN M1 RIAA is sounding so good right away. It will be an interesting adventure for you, figuring out which one sounds the best for you and fits in the budget.

It also makes me happy to hear how much your system improved, as I can't wait to hear what my AN-S2L will do once it arrives. Hopefully I end up just as pleased with the improvement it has brought to my system. I suspect that it will be a big step up from my Phenomena II.

 

I suspect you will be very pleased indeed at the difference over the Phenomena II, which I believe compares favorably with my previous Sutherland Ph3D.

 

Some very good math here for help with SUT and cartridge matching/loading.
The key to SUTs seems to be the load the cart sees as opposed to stated gain or the cart's voltage output that the MM stage sees.
At least, as far as I can tell from spending the last hour doing the math.

 

Warren,
I wish I lived in California too
I agree, the little MCA-10 is a surprisingly good sounding Active MC preamp, but as you said, I too think I'll hear quite a noticeable improvement with a SUT.
Thanks to some friends here in Vancouver, whom I'm very lucky to know, I'll be able to compare at least the AN-S2 and the Auditorium 23 (Denon version) to the Cinemag I have coming.
Looking forward to the adventure of it!