What @Crazyhorse11 said. Parkes Audio makes Puffins in batches. They’re never out of stock for long, and backorders are filled first.
I’ve been using mine quite a bit due to some moving around of equipment and new pieces I’ve added this year. I just put this system together and was running the debut carbon into the the internal phono in the Fisher that has some nice original tubes. I was getting a buzz and a generally low gain kind of sound that was bothering me quite a bit. I just put in the puffin to do some trouble shooting. The puffin sounds much better and the buzz was from cheap RCA’s I was using.
I was on the fence about the puffin but I pulled the trigger and got one back in early July. I’ve been using it in a second system. A Yamaha HT receiver, Dual CS5000 with a micro Benz silver cartridge, Vandersteen 1b speakers. Morrow audio mc3 interconnects. I’m a tube guy and was against the puffin on principle. Damn it! I like my little glowey things when playing vinyl. But the more I read about the puffin the more intrigued I became. Not one to dismiss something without trying, I gave it a try. I am amazed and stupefied! Maybe stupefied is just my normal state but I am amazed. I’m a set it and forget it type. I adjusted the gain and started using it. After a bit I fiddled with some of the settings (very easy). I liked that the audible changes when messing with various settings were all very subtle. I felt every change was very tasteful. I never had the feeling of, ‘yikes! That ones horrible’. I haven’t changed any setting in over a month and I play more records now in the family area than I ever have. The puffin is so much fun to listen to. It’s light years ahead of the old Rotel I was using. Big sound, spacious and detailed. Dare I say tube like. Everyday I find myself bringing records into the family area because I want to hear it through the puffin. That’s always a good indicator in my book. I’d easily recommend it to anyone. One of these days I’ll try it in my main system and see how it does. In the second system a quick comparison to the Eastern Electric minimax I use in my main system, with some very nice Telefunken glowey things, the comparison was very favorable. (I gave the Eastern Electric a quick try to see if changing the phono stage would even make a difference in this system before getting the Puffin.) I still cringe slightly when I think of dsp and vinyl in the same sentence. But having the puffin I just forget about that part and listen and enjoy.
Looks like this might be something added in the future. This was posted on the Parks Audio Facebook, instructions to add your own for cheap if you can solder ... http://www.parksaudiollc.com/spdif/spdif.html
...due to PLL clock limitations, the Puffin's 96kHz sampling gets downsampled at the SPDIF port to 48kHz... Don't like this.
I just hooked the Puffin up tonight. Turn up the air setting and started to hear the brushes swishing on the snare drum that were barely audible before. Turn up the gain and got that extra bit of power my system had been lacking. Really couldn't find a negative comment on this product from anyone but those of the analogue only mindset. Very pleased with my purchase. Kind of pricey but I think it was worth the money.
I'd be interested if you could expand on this. Currently a happy Puffin user and considering the digital out mod. Thing is I'm lacking in experience of downsampling - only time i've used it is when I use ROON to stream to a Chromecast Audio. I downsample to the half or quarter value - 192khx to 48khz, 96khz to 48khz, 88.2khz to 44.1kkh and so on. I think that's the 'best' way to do it, and I also think I've read somewhere - maybe on the ROON forum that ROONs various DSP implementations are well done too. So maybe you're concerned with downsampling in general or something about the Puffin specifically?
With Puffin it won't be possible to make vinyl rips in higher resolution than 48 khz through the digital out. That was my above comment about. However, many think it's sufficient and makes no sense to go higher.
For Puffin owners in the Seattle/Tacoma area, Shannon Parks will be visiting Gig Harbor Audio this Saturday to hang out—he can do on site firmware updates if you bring in your Puffins.
Ok thanks for clarification - can understand why you might be concerned. I'm less concerned about the absolute last word in performance these days, mainly due to some minor hearing probs. For others reading this who're maybe similar to me in lacking knowledge around sample rate conversion, found this interesting- Sample Rate Conversion can't vouch for it but I feel I know more than I did before...
Had it on a AT-Lp120, now a Schiit Sol. Love it. Adjustments are there to tinker or to "fix" some bad pressings.
It sounds great. I haven't compared a whole lot of phono preamps but it beat the Schiit Mani and Mofi StudioPhono in my system. Some of the most useful features I've found are the channel balance and signal levels. Easily monitor your noise floor or imbalanced channel noise floors (which could isolate shielding issues), and correct for cartridge channel imbalance or speaker imbalance (two separate features - the fine balancing for the cartridge doesn't affect output to the speakers when set to mono, but the other balance setting does). It's a lot in one box- but even if it's just the phono stage that matters to you, it's still pretty great. And given the Amazon return policy, it's undoubtedly worth trying out.
I recently sow, that some of my posts were canceled and also same had happened to the others members posts. I do not know where is the reason for canceling the posts, but anyhow I think we deserve some sort of explanation. About Puffin! I have it now few months in my poses and all what I can say to persons looking for low budged high performans phono pre, that Puffin is blind way to go. Idid also some modifications in my set up, regarding tonearm rewiring, speakers cable chainching and also in power supplay to Puffin. I wil now put down my findigs about power supplay! I used some old PS from an old PS of PC monitor, where I do have possibility to change supplied power cord with mine and chainging the cord from PS to Puffin. Those changes did not bring to so big differences like I had received on JASMINE LP2, but they are substantional. The biggest improvement I rceived connecting Puffin directly to my PA. Those, who are like me dedicated to analog source, go over pre amp, you do not need it. Thats said is my oppinion finding out on my sistem where pre is 2,5 k€ worth pre. And to answer some questions before about MC LO. I am using SUPEX 901 Retiped by SOUDSMITH with ruby cantilever. I will test it vith DENNON 302 MC stepup, but with output cable VH Audio Pulsar CU coax cable and KLEI pure silver bullet.
Puffin is worth every penny. But those, who are using LO MC I would suggest go with MC transformers in. And for few dollars anybody can find on ebay 12V battery pack. I am using 12V 20000mA LiIon pack on my Puffin.
