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Parks Audio Puffin Review (Phono Stage)

Balle Clorin

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The 10k+ peak is common for almost all MC cartridges. No measurement artifact or preamp error. The peak is also present in the performance documentation that came with the cartridge. Take a look at this 5500 USD cartridge it also has a peak
 
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watchnerd

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I'm surprised to see that resonant peak above 10kHz. Not that I know the background very well, but is it from the interaction with the preamp? Is it a measurement artefact?

That's from the cartridge.

Old school analog way to attempt to manage that would have been via varying the loading, but with the Puffin you can just do it via the DSP EQ settings (e.g. Air).
 

pozz

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That's from the cartridge.

Old school analog way to attempt to manage that would have been via varying the loading, but with the Puffin you can just do it via the DSP EQ settings (e.g. Air).
I'd expect that with MM, but for MC I thought that all that really changed was the roll off.

Thanks both.
 

Balle Clorin

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@amirm Are we really seeing a 1kHz overload at just 20mV for a typical MM gain set to 40dB? That's unbelievably poor for any phono stage, regardless of price. Even that little Realistic 40 year old horror-show had an 80mV overload.

Here's a block diagram I found in another review:

(audioXpress)View attachment 108457

And the RIAA deviation is shocking above 14kHz where it drops like a stone to end up nearly 3dB down at 20kHz. Is there an issue with feeding the front end with such a low source (AP ~20R)? Are you sure there was no filters or rolloffs set into it?
The detault setting for the Low and High cut-of are set too low. I use 48kHz for high filter and 20Hz for low. Then two different test records look like this ( including the MC cart high frequency resonance peak)
1634390547681.png
 

JiiPee

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I'm interested in Parks Puffin as I plan to use active speakers with digital crossovers, so the AD-conversion will happen anyway. The question is where to do it. With Puffin, the ADC would be done at earliest opportunity and the audio signal would stay in digital domain all the way through the crossovers and then finally converted back to analog for amplification and drivers. This would also mean that for my other source - network streaming - I would not need a separate DAC. Both source selection and volume control could be done in digital domain. To connect headphones, I would use a headphone amplifier with its own DAC.

What do You think of this plan? Would it be better to use a normal analog phono preamp feeding an ADC? Or even reversing the whole idea of maximising the usage of digital domain, and simply build the system with a conventional architecture?
 

watchnerd

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I'm interested in Parks Puffin as I plan to use active speakers with digital crossovers, so the AD-conversion will happen anyway. The question is where to do it. With Puffin, the ADC would be done at earliest opportunity and the audio signal would stay in digital domain all the way through the crossovers and then finally converted back to analog for amplification and drivers. This would also mean that for my other source - network streaming - I would not need a separate DAC. Both source selection and volume control could be done in digital domain. To connect headphones, I would use a headphone amplifier with its own DAC.

What do You think of this plan? Would it be better to use a normal analog phono preamp feeding an ADC? Or even reversing the whole idea of maximising the usage of digital domain, and simply build the system with a conventional architecture?

Sounds good to me
 

LTig

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I'm interested in Parks Puffin as I plan to use active speakers with digital crossovers, so the AD-conversion will happen anyway. The question is where to do it. With Puffin, the ADC would be done at earliest opportunity and the audio signal would stay in digital domain all the way through the crossovers and then finally converted back to analog for amplification and drivers. This would also mean that for my other source - network streaming - I would not need a separate DAC. Both source selection and volume control could be done in digital domain. To connect headphones, I would use a headphone amplifier with its own DAC.

What do You think of this plan? Would it be better to use a normal analog phono preamp feeding an ADC? Or even reversing the whole idea of maximising the usage of digital domain, and simply build the system with a conventional architecture?
That's a good plan.
 

watchnerd

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Have any other Puffin users played with the Azimuth Test using the proscribed method?

@BDWoody ? @Helicopter ?

After tweaking as best I could (twisting cart), the ART-9XA is giving:

Left: -29 dB
Right: -32 dB

That's as high as I can get both channels at the same time.

Which seems to average out to a bit above spec:

 

engie490

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I'm a little confused about this chart:

best digital phono stage review.png


How did the Project Pre DS2 end up with the SINAD listed here (68)? The review says the following about the phono stage performance:

"Nice. We don't see any distortion product and performance is strictly dominated by the noise level giving us a nice SINAD of 80 dB, likely way better than the source it is dealing with (LP)." (My emphasis added)
 

engie490

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It's vinyl, though.

72 vs 80 dB are both going to be better than the noise floor of LP
That’s not the point. The chart is wrong. It is supposed to show comparative SINAD goodness from left to right, but the Project DS2 should be listed as 80 db (not 68) and moved up significantly in the rankings. This error has been propagated for quite some time.

I don’t own the Pro-ject (or any of the other phono stages listed) so I don’t have a dog in this fight other than correcting a simple oversight.
 

mash

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So, I made the jump and decided to get back into Vinyl (mainly to keep up with my kids). I went with a VPI traveler (new old stock from VPI direct) combined with a Hana SL cartridge and the Puffin phono preamp. The main reason for going with the Puffin was that I use my Topping D90 DAC as a makeshift preamp and I wanted to run a digital input from the Puffin into the D90 (Coax)....then switch digital inputs and use the volume control of the D90.

I just completed the initial setup (including new cartridge install) and everything is working fine. Now I'm going into fine tuning and/or testing of the setup...which is raising some questions.

First area......speed variation. I started out using the Puffin feature to assess this and got some unexpected numbers. Basically, the Puffin is showing a 33 variance of around +.6% (table spec is .1%). I doubled checked this using the RPM app on my iphone and got even worse results (+.9%). Does anyone have an opinion on how accurate the Puffin is at gauging speed? Any tips on verifying speed?

Second area....Azimuth check. Using the Ortofon test record I got results of 33db and 29db. Spec on the cartridge is 28db, so I'm assuming that is good but didn't know if I needed to worry about the 4 db difference between channels. I'm hoping that I can live with that because the VPI arm does not provide for Azimuth correction which means I'd likely be looking at some type of shim solution to adjust.

Any comments would be more than welcome!
 

watchnerd

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So, I made the jump and decided to get back into Vinyl (mainly to keep up with my kids). I went with a VPI traveler (new old stock from VPI direct) combined with a Hana SL cartridge and the Puffin phono preamp. The main reason for going with the Puffin was that I use my Topping D90 DAC as a makeshift preamp and I wanted to run a digital input from the Puffin into the D90 (Coax)....then switch digital inputs and use the volume control of the D90.

I just completed the initial setup (including new cartridge install) and everything is working fine. Now I'm going into fine tuning and/or testing of the setup...which is raising some questions.

First area......speed variation. I started out using the Puffin feature to assess this and got some unexpected numbers. Basically, the Puffin is showing a 33 variance of around +.6% (table spec is .1%). I doubled checked this using the RPM app on my iphone and got even worse results (+.9%). Does anyone have an opinion on how accurate the Puffin is at gauging speed? Any tips on verifying speed?

Second area....Azimuth check. Using the Ortofon test record I got results of 33db and 29db. Spec on the cartridge is 28db, so I'm assuming that is good but didn't know if I needed to worry about the 4 db difference between channels. I'm hoping that I can live with that because the VPI arm does not provide for Azimuth correction which means I'd likely be looking at some type of shim solution to adjust.

Any comments would be more than welcome!

I don't know how accurate the Puffin is, but for me, it's at least more consistent than any of the phone apps I've used.

I've tried comparing to a strobe disc and they don't seem wildly divergent, probably within +/- 0.1 RPM readings, but definitely not to 0.01

My best azimuth on my best cart is -32 db and - 29 dB, which is above specs. If you watch the video, Shanon says they're often better in one channel vs the other.
 

JP

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The way it's implemented it should be rather accurate, especially if you're getting the same reading with different records.

That said I've never actually used my Puffin, nor have I seen it in the past couple years.
 

USER

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First area......speed variation. I started out using the Puffin feature to assess this and got some unexpected numbers. Basically, the Puffin is showing a 33 variance of around +.6% (table spec is .1%). I doubled checked this using the RPM app on my iphone and got even worse results (+.9%). Does anyone have an opinion on how accurate the Puffin is at gauging speed? Any tips on verifying speed?
Those specs are vague enough to not take too seriously. Certainly the W&F was not measured at standards such as DIN and even then there are questions about whether that measurement is helpful at all.

IMHO you will never get true consistent speed with a belt drive and will usually have to adjust each time you want to do serious listening (or record something). This is where direct drive turntables differentiate themselves. I recently switched from a boutique turntable to an old DD classic and have enjoyed the peace of mind. There are simply too many variables with belts, such as wear and humidity, which can affect performance and compound. There's nothing like seeing the "lock" signal light up.

One thing that helped was using a test record with a 3.15kHz W&F signal and adjusting speed with it. This gave me the best results, but it is a lot of work and something I found that I had to do too often for my liking. But this is only my experience.
 

mash

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Speed......would you be concerned about a reading of .6% (vs spec of .1)? Its my understanding that new belt drive turntable will slow down slightly with break in and this is a NOS table with a new belt....so, maybe not so bad

Azimuth....I saw Shannon's video and was thinking the measurement was fine but wanted to get some feedback.

Anyway....the table sound really good. Its been fun getting back into Vinyl and it lets me go record shopping with my kids. Now I just have to get my old albums back from them that they have raided over the last couple of years!
 

JP

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Those specs are vague enough to not take too seriously. Certainly the W&F was not measured at standards such as DIN and even then there are questions about whether that measurement is helpful at all.

According to the manual it measures off the tick in a runout groove, so it's not W&F rather just speed variation.
 

watchnerd

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The way it's implemented it should be rather accurate, especially if you're getting the same reading with different records.

That said I've never actually used my Puffin, nor have I seen it in the past couple years.

Is your Puffin the roaming Puffin?
 
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