Classic Audio MC Pro Phonostage Review

[AudioSceptic]

This is way overpriced for what it is. Components for this are dirt cheap.

I'm looking forward to your bargain-price giant-killing MC phono stage.

 

[thyristor]

I used to make this mistake, just looking at a supposed bill of parts! I did a bit of assembly for a UK niche maker and soon came to realise the hidden costs in a self-employed little business. My benefactor didn't make enough per box to seriously make a living either (he was basically retired so the audio business topped up his pension) and when the business was sold after his passing and moved to northern England, assembly in a proper small 'unit' and costed out professionally, prices first all but doubled and have gone up since due to UK sourced boards (not Malaysia or wherever and all but smuggled back in a suitcase) and better cases with more reliable transformers and better regarded supply caps and so on. The poor chap here's got to make a living - and how many a week do you think he sells? This aint a computer motherboard made in the tens of thousands in a far eastern sweat-shop you know

Take a look at the Spartan 5 model if you want a seriously cost effective MM stage (or the Mani 2 if in the US!). For us in the UK wanting a more than adequate MC stage 'on the cheap,' then a Rega Fono MC possibly, although I'm shocked to see it's now £275 in current stylee form, so a bit of a hike over the previous one with curvy front moulding

I'm looking forward to your bargain-price giant-killing MC phono stage.

Component pricing is a smallish portion of this particular business model.. You understand this, right?

Obviously the design is great as the measurements show. But this has very basic electronic components. Resistors, caps, 7xxx regulators, NE5532 opamps. The parts including connectors are about 30-40 € for a diyer. For volume production much cheaper. Case is probably the most expensive part.

750 € price is still a very high if you consider labor and other costs of running a business.

 

[JeffS7444]

There will unit to unit variations based on component tolerances. Some will test better than others, although the differences will be small if low tolerance components are used. If I were the manufacturer and had several units on the shelf, I would be tempted to review their test data and send the best one to the reviewer.

IME, variances are pretty low when you use modern, not-too-expensive, film capacitors and resistors from the same batch. Your typical Panasonic film capacitor or Xicon 1% metal film resistor is really very good.

 

[thyristor]

IME, variances are pretty low when you use modern, not-too-expensive, film capacitors and resistors from the same batch. Your typical Panasonic film capacitor or Xicon 1% metal film resistor is really very good.

I just don't understand why these THT designs are still a thing. SMD parts are so much better. You can get 0805 SMD thin film resistors with 0,01% tolerance for the same price as 1% THT metal film resistor.

And you can get very high quality acrylic and PPS SMD film capacitors with 2% these days.

 

[DSJR]

Obviously the design is great as the measurements show. But this has very basic electronic components. Resistors, caps, 7xxx regulators, NE5532 opamps. The parts including connectors are about 30-40 € for a diyer. For volume production much cheaper. Case is probably the most expensive part.

750 € price is still a very high if you consider labor and other costs of running a business.

May I please add the psychological aspects of pricing?

Too cheap and it'd stand a good chance of being ignored, the mono-ing facility on this particular product all but laughed at by the 'armchair experts' who know very little in real terms about vinyl and the compromises some of us love about the medium.

Too expensive by far as in serious superbly-clothed hi-end gear bestows perceived status on the owner and admiration from their hobby friends (I'm reliably informed a lot of the far eastern market is price led, the more expensive it is the better it's perceived as). It's a delicate tightrope to traverse, honestly it is, but some products need to have a gold price tag attached that the owner can display to his envious audiophile friends! You think I'm joking here?

Oh, I must add something else. A good pal of mine needed to sell something on eBay. Starting low, he got a few bids but nothing reaching his reserve price. On a whim, he placed a Buy-It-Now at HIGHER than his reserve and it sold almost immediately!!!

Those of you in the US can get the Mani 2 at a very good price and I suspect that'd be fine for 90% of users (I'd be tempted but I need a dac first and already have a half decent old preamp which has a quiet MC stage and is run from the tape outs so hopefully bypassing a bit the noticably band-limited line stage it was all but hobbled with back in the 80's).

 

[DSJR]

I just don't understand why these THT designs are still a thing. SMD parts are so much better. You can get 0805 SMD thin film resistors with 0,01% tolerance for the same price as 1% THT metal film resistor.

And you can get very high quality acrylic and PPS SMD film capacitors with 2% these days.

I'm not disagreeing, but these things ideally need a machine to fill the boards, thereby wiping out any enthusiasm the maker of this stage has for doing it himself and making a not outrageous living from it...

Just get a Mani 2 or the Cambridge Duo and cease griping

 

[JeffS7444]

I just don't understand why these THT designs are still a thing. SMD parts are so much better. You can get 0805 SMD thin film resistors with 0,01% tolerance for the same price as 1% THT metal film resistor.

And you can get very high quality acrylic and PPS SMD film capacitors with 2% these days.

Probably not worth the $ investment for the automated assembly equipment that SMD implies.

 

[Endibol]

Obviously the design is great as the measurements show. But this has very basic electronic components. Resistors, caps, 7xxx regulators, NE5532 opamps. The parts including connectors are about 30-40 € for a diyer. For volume production much cheaper. Case is probably the most expensive part.

750 € price is still a very high if you consider labor and other costs of running a business.

That very much depends on the number of units you sell…. And still much lower than “boutique“ products showing worse measurements.

 

[VQR]

Obviously the design is great as the measurements show. But this has very basic electronic components. Resistors, caps, 7xxx regulators, NE5532 opamps. The parts including connectors are about 30-40 € for a diyer. For volume production much cheaper. Case is probably the most expensive part.

750 € price is still a very high if you consider labor and other costs of running a business.

The BoM in electronics often isn't the largest cost: labor often is, especially skilled labor like hand soldering or engineering. If you take up the sum of the materials, market labor value and other costs, I doubt the margins are crazy, even for a one man operation.

 

[Roland301]

Have you ever considered that such thing can be actually benificial for some recordings? For example, it can create a sense of weight, bring fullness, etc. and it's a mixing engineer, who decides whether to cut or leave it

Indeed, some of my favorite high fidelity albums are those from MA Recordings, where there is simply a pair of omni-directional microphones recorded directly to digital, and pressed as such, usually in larger rooms without extensive sound dampening.

I'm a headphone listener, so having properly recorded ambient sound present in the recording is very beneficial to creating a sense of immersion.

 

[AurelioMCX]

You should ask yourself why so many devices send in by the manufacturer fail on Amirs work bench.... So no, I don't think that a manufacturer (especially not one who is capable of "composing" such a beautiful PCB) takes the extra effort to produce a unicorn for testing purposes.

And if so the risk of getting caught in case of customers measuring their own gear is much too high nowadays thanks to Amir, VintageFlanker, Archimagos and a lot of other folks out there. So I don't think that we can't trust this review...

I can't speak for audio manufacturers but for PC OEMs's the devices are pre-tested and if needed fine-tuned (some have dedicated 'experience labs' for that) before being sent to large/popular reviewers. So, I wouldn't discount the possibility.

 

[Angsty]

My point of view: The build looks like old school, neatly done. Obviously only standard industrial components are used, perhaps some R's and C's are selected for low tolerances to achieve a low RIAA deviation. 850$ would not be worth this simple box to me.

To each his own - I don't find $850 excessive for a phono stage of this quality of performance. This is literally a boutique, hand-made product. One of my favorite phono manufacturers, Ron Sutherland, priced his "entry-level" KC Vibe above this one (at dealer price, not direct to consumer). You can see the reviews here of how this unit compares to the KC Vibe (albeit the KC Vibe is measured only with a MM input level). Ron uses similar construction techniques for low-volume sales.

I'm quite impressed by the technical knowledge of the manufacturer and his understanding of both the medium and the transducer limitations. I'm not in the market for another MC phono right now, but I will be watching this manufacturer.

 

[Angsty]

I must agree with the manufacturer and @Frank Dernie (whose expertise far exceeds my own), that filtering out the output below 30 Hz makes sense. The physics of recording and reproduction does not lie, even if one wants to believe that there is usable information on the vinyl between 20 - 30 Hz. Below 20 Hz can really only be a subsonic mess with this medium.

There also seems to be a discounting of what the mixing and mastering engineers decided to put on a disc versus what was on the original recording. Keeping above 30 Hz on an LP seems to lend itself to a more "accurate" reproduction of the recording versus worrying about what is lost below 30 Hz.

 

[Endibol]

To each his own - I don't find $850 excessive for a phono stage of this quality of performance. This is literally a boutique, hand-made product. One of my favorite phono manufacturers, Ron Sutherland, priced his "entry-level" KC Vibe above this one (at dealer price, not direct to consumer). You can see the reviews here of how this unit compares to the KC Vibe (albeit the KC Vibe is measured only with a MM input level). Ron uses similar construction techniques for low-volume sales.

I'm quite impressed by the technical knowledge of the manufacturer and his understanding of both the medium and the transducer limitations. I'm not in the market for another MC phono right now, but I will be watching this manufacturer.

I would love to see Classic Audio's MM Pro being reviewed to be able to compare it to this KC Vibe and other MM-phono stages.

 

[manisandher]

Just received my MM Pro. Will report back once I've had a chance to try it. (It'll be up against an expensive valve phono stage.)

Mani.

 

[EJ3]

According to tests in the 80's, the T4P mount offers a fair amount of lower midrange colouration as the joint isn't very good (as tested and it's enough to show on cartridge response traces). The trend for solid tonearms from pivot to headshell does have some advantages.

Interestingly, the Dual shell-carrier arrangement in your 1229 (and my 701/601/1214/1019/1009SK2 - Gawd I'm sad), gives these tonearms a lively structure above 1kHz, but fitting a metal mount pickup (AT20SLa back then and VM740 now, as well as a few MC's I've tried - EEK!!) seems to mute this aspect nicely...

P.S and off topic - make sure the 'rubber tubing' around the 1229's tonearm height assembly locating balls underneath is replaced as if not, the height lever will jam and the infamous 'dearing ring' on the bottom of the arm outer gimbal will fracture - it can be repaired now but it's a royal pain and needs fine engineering skills.. Forgive me if you know this already

So that is why the German's (I was concieved in Charleston, SC, USA but I was born in Salzburg, Austria) frequently called the DUAL 1229 kept calling it the German Engineers Turn Table?

 

[Angsty]

I would love to see Classic Audio's MM Pro being reviewed to be able to compare it to this KC Vibe and other MM-phono stages.

Additionally, I’d like to see all phonos designed for both MM and MC (like the KC Vibe) tested at both 5.0mV and 0.5mV. The extra +20 dB of gain needed for MC carts typically has an impact on SINAD performance.

 

[ban25]

Very impressed with the reviewed performance and so I just put in an order with Michael.

 

[Angsty]

Very impressed with the reviewed performance and so I just put in an order with Michael.

Will love to hear how you like it.

 

[ban25]

Will love to hear how you like it.

Yep I'll be sure to post impressions and comparisons relative to my current SUT setup.