This is a review and detailed measurements of the ART Precision Phono Pre. It was kindly drop shipped to me by a member and costs US $81.
The look reminds of Radio Shack equipment of 1970s! So outdated but I guess it keeps their costs down. You get variable gain which is handy together with a low cut rumble filter. Support is provided for both Moving Magnet and Moving Coil cartridges. Power is provided through a 9 volt AC transformer:
A bit of loading choice is provided in the back as well (25 vs 100 ohm).
ART Precision Phono Pre Measurements
As usual we start with our dashboard in MM mode:
This ranks the unit above average with respect to noise & distortion:
It could do better if power supply noise was kept in check more. Here is the Moving Coil performance:
Power supply noise dominates even more here.
Most important test here is RIAA equalization implementation:
There is a shelving down below 3 kHz or so but rather small. There is channel imbalance though courtesy of that gain potentiometer. Low-cut filter is doing its job but causes a bit of boost before rolling off steeply.
Next important bit is headroom so that pops and clicks don't get amplified due to amplifier clipping:
This is better than many phono stages. Finally, here is a rather new/optimized measurement of distortion alone:
Normally THD+N is dominated by noise due to high gain of these preamps. Above graph isolates just the distortion so we can keep a handle on it. It has a slope down because due to RIAA equalization, gain is increased in lower frequencies and hence rise in distortion.
Conclusions
The ART Precision Phono Pre gets the basics right at a very attractive price. Flexibility of variable gain is there but you lose some channel matching (mine was set to "0" for above tests). Not much to ask for other than a nicer looking enclosure in a future revision.
---------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
Any donations are much appreciated using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
The look reminds of Radio Shack equipment of 1970s! So outdated but I guess it keeps their costs down. You get variable gain which is handy together with a low cut rumble filter. Support is provided for both Moving Magnet and Moving Coil cartridges. Power is provided through a 9 volt AC transformer:
A bit of loading choice is provided in the back as well (25 vs 100 ohm).
ART Precision Phono Pre Measurements
As usual we start with our dashboard in MM mode:
This ranks the unit above average with respect to noise & distortion:
It could do better if power supply noise was kept in check more. Here is the Moving Coil performance:
Power supply noise dominates even more here.
Most important test here is RIAA equalization implementation:
There is a shelving down below 3 kHz or so but rather small. There is channel imbalance though courtesy of that gain potentiometer. Low-cut filter is doing its job but causes a bit of boost before rolling off steeply.
Next important bit is headroom so that pops and clicks don't get amplified due to amplifier clipping:
This is better than many phono stages. Finally, here is a rather new/optimized measurement of distortion alone:
Normally THD+N is dominated by noise due to high gain of these preamps. Above graph isolates just the distortion so we can keep a handle on it. It has a slope down because due to RIAA equalization, gain is increased in lower frequencies and hence rise in distortion.
Conclusions
The ART Precision Phono Pre gets the basics right at a very attractive price. Flexibility of variable gain is there but you lose some channel matching (mine was set to "0" for above tests). Not much to ask for other than a nicer looking enclosure in a future revision.
---------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
Any donations are much appreciated using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
