As the LP has faded from the mainstream market, a new business has opened up: black boxes for adding a phono input to a resolutely digital amplifier.

With a lot of amps and preamplifiers, plug ging in your turntable is no longer a matter of finding the jacks marked "phono." There aren't any. Bummer! On the other hand, this is another opportunity to do some more mixing and matching. No matter what other electronics you have, you can buy someone else's phono stage.
     Just don't forget the interconnect cable. And if you're looking for top quality you had better make it a good one.
     For this review we brought together four phono stages, all of them below $1000 Canadian. We used a Wireworld Equinox E1-W to connect each one to the Copland CTA-301 preamplifier in our Alpha system. The point of reference was of course the Copland's excellent triode phono stage. For the Copland and one of the Creek preamps, we used a Bryston TF-1 stepup transformer.
     For all of the tests we used two LP's. The first is West of Oz, the famous direct-cut disc by singer Amanda McBroom, pianist Lincoln Mayorga, and a number of other musicians. The song Dorothy (preceded by a segment from Over the Rainbow) is especially challenging, because McBroom's voice is very smooth, the choral introduction is complex and fragile, and a number of instruments sound glorious when they're reproduced right, not so good otherwise. The second disc is Trittico, the first of the Reference Recordings discs with Frederick Fennell and the Dallas Wind Ensemble (RR-52). The title composition, by Vaclav Nelhybel, is a powerhouse of a piece, with brass, percussion, woodwinds...and a lot of things happening at the same time that can easily go wrong.
     And they sometimes did, as we shall see. Let's proceed in approximate order of cost.

Creek OBH-8 MM Phono Preamp
     Creek is a familiar brand to those familiar with the better British amplifiers...and that takes in a lot of audiophiles. We last reviewed a Creek product (the A52se amplifier) in UHF No. 54, and we liked it. Indeed, a number of previous Creek products have offered a lot for a relatively small investment.
     Which is of course the rationale for Creek's series of small modules, which include two headphone amplifiers (to be reviewed in our next issue) and three phono preamps (two of them reviewed here). The OBH-8 costs just $299 in Canada, much less than most others. It comes in a pleasant little box, with the (somewhat cheap) input and output jacks at the rear, and a power switch and LED indicator at the front. Because it is designed for a moving magnet cartridge, we ran our low impedance moving coil cartridge through the same Bryston TF-1 transformer we use with our reference preamplifier.
     The OBH-8 does not contain a power supply, we should mention. It comes with a little "brick" supply like the ones supplied with desk calculators, but Creek recommends the OBH-2 accessory power supply, which is much larger but costs an extra $149. A first listen confirmed that a difference exists, though the small "free" power supply performs better than we had feared. However we carried on the main listening tests with the better supply.

Creek OBH-9MC Phono Preamp
     We photographed it "going the other way," otherwise you would have suspected us of using the same picture a second time. The OBH-9 looks and works exactly the same way as the other, and it has the same $299 Canadian price tag...but it is extra sensitive, for use with a low impedance moving coil pickup. For this listening test, therefore, we didn't use our TF-1 transformer.
     Because the two Creek units look alike and cost alike, we also expected them to sound alike. They don't. The OBH-9 is considerably better.

The Lehmann Black Cube
     This plain black box is from Germany, the work of Norbert Lehmann. The first time we heard it we figured it was going to be a sales sensation. Of course it was supposed to be much cheaper then, but even at its new price ($995 in Canada, $695 in the US) it is the sort of bargain that audiophiles dream of running across before everyone else does.
     The metal box is not tall enough to be a cube, of course, and it's quite large, even though the power supply is outboard, linked to the Black Cube by a nondetachable cord. The power supply itself takes a standard IEC power cord.
     The input and output jacks are adequate but no more. They are somewhat recessed, like those on some Bryston gear. We were still able to put on the WBT locking connectors we use on our Wireworld Equinox E-1W cable, but only just. Some very plump connectors may present a problem. The Black Cube may be set to accept either an MM or an MC cartridge. The changeover can be done only internally, however, by opening the case (which requires an Allen wrench) and by resetting tiny DIP switches like the ones on computer motherboards. If you lose the instruction sheet you're out of luck. The same switches can be used to vary the load resistor. We set ours to 20 ohms with moving coil sensitivity, to match our pickup.
     While the case is open you may notice something disconcerting: the amplification is done with integrated circuits, not discrete transistors. Is this a bad sign? Well, that's less certain that it once was. A few clever designers have gotten good sound from chips before so...who knows?
     The RIAA equalizing circuit does not, however, use feedback. The equalizing network (necessary to compensate for the treble boost applied in cutting records) is entirely passive, placed between two stages of amplification. That arrangement is risky, often causing noise and distortion. Fortunately, in this unit it causes neither.

The Audiomat Phono-1
     This is a French product, and a relative newcomer in North America. Audiomat is known for high-quality tube equipment, but this small phono stage is of course solid state. Its Canadian price is $1500, equivalent to about $1000 US.
     It is at once attractive and discreet, easy to hide, but by no means ugly if you choose to display it. The case is black and sleek, and the connectors--all of them at the rear--are of good quality. The power supply is in a sealed "brick" permanently attached to the power cord, which is also attached to the Phono-1 itself.
     At the front is a small switch and two light-emitting diodes. The switch chooses between low sensitivity (about 2 mV, for moving magnet pickups and some moving coil types) and high sensitivity (about 0.4 mV, for low impedance moving coil cartridges). The appropriate LED lights up. There's no more to it than that.
     Since its MC input turned out to have very low noise, we put aside our transformer and plugged our Goldring Excel cartridge directly into it.

Would you like to read the full review of these four astonishing phono preamplifiers? Click here to order the print edition of UHF No. 56.