PHONO STAGES

The phonostage received a lot of attention and technological breakthrough around 14 years ago and rightly so; it is a component that deals with tiny tiny signals and simply has an enormous impact on the sound quality of a Vinyl chain.

Allnic Audio can claim to have created one of the first ever “super phonostages” the H3000, an ingenious LCR vacuum tube design which set a new bar for the industry and has been much copied since. Nowadays though the upper ceiling for the phono preamp can break £40,000. Our Allnic range nowadays starts with the entry Allnic H5500 at £5000. This is one of our highest selling products and is almost on constant order with the factory. Allnic have 4 further stages after that right up to the newly released H10000 OTL/OCL dual chassis design. All the Allnics give a wonderfully dynamic yet relaxed sound, spacious and free flowing with superb imaging and expression.

Soulnote from Japan is our newest contender in the sphere of Phono preamps. Their E1 is our starter phono which packs at huge punch whilst the E2 is truly standout and might just rewrite the entire landscape of sub £15,000 stages. Incredible sonic performance and with an exhaustive feature set, like most Soulnote pieces, it has no real right to be as low cost as it is. Their current DS-only E3 will thankfully be revised at the end of 2025 to include MC and MM inputs.

Thrax Audio offer LCR Orpheus. This sits just above the H7000 in price and performance and is similar in functionality and specification. It is one of the first products created by Thrax and is now in Mk3 guise having been steadily improved over the last 10 years or so. A very intelligent designs with very good functionality and of course Thrax’s highly transparent and vivid house sound.

We also offer the Brinkmann Edison II. This is another superb phono with lots of functionality and Brinkmann’s extremely balanced and delicate sound. The Edison sports vacuum tubes but is perhaps less intrinsically tube-like that the Allnics. Sixteen gain settings, 3 inputs, mono/stereo, phase and mute control.

The phonostages of Tidal are bundled into the preamplifiers but do not underestimate their might simply because they are part of a linestage. The Preos started life as a no holds barred phonostage with a volume control, the phono stage for the Precensio is a whole separate chassis and the phono input of the new Prisma would need a hell of a unit from another manufacturer to match it in ability. Any Tidal phono operates at the highest level of transparency and purity.