This is a review and detailed measurements of the Pro-Ject Phono Box DC MM/MC Phono stage. It is on kind loan from a member and costs US $129.
The box is non-descript but it is made out of heavy gauge steel. There are no controls as you see. Here is the back panel:
Nice to see support for both moving magnet and moving coil as the latter is sometimes left out in budget phono preamplifiers. Let's test it and see how it performs.
Pro-Ject Phono Box DC MM/MC Phono Preamp Measurements
Let's start with moving magnet mode:
With highest distortion at -100 dB, that is not an issue for the format. Performance is dominated by mains noise which is typical for the class. Gain is right on at 40 dB.
Moving coil mode naturally brings high penalty in noise department due to much higher gain:
I was totally impressed by the implementation of RIAA equalization:
It is rare that we see such flat response regardless of price! Would have been nice to have a high pass filter though to deal with LP rumble and other low frequency noise but that would have increased the cost.
Headroom is quite good for the class:
But degrades as frequencies go up:
Conclusions
Sometimes a product, despite its low cost, does everything right and such is the case with Phono Box DC. It has excellent RIAA equalization which many higher priced phono stages miss. Nothing like saying what you are going to do and delivering on that!
I am going to recommend the Pro-Ject Phono Box DC MM/MC Phono Preamp.
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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 box is non-descript but it is made out of heavy gauge steel. There are no controls as you see. Here is the back panel:
Nice to see support for both moving magnet and moving coil as the latter is sometimes left out in budget phono preamplifiers. Let's test it and see how it performs.
Pro-Ject Phono Box DC MM/MC Phono Preamp Measurements
Let's start with moving magnet mode:
With highest distortion at -100 dB, that is not an issue for the format. Performance is dominated by mains noise which is typical for the class. Gain is right on at 40 dB.
Moving coil mode naturally brings high penalty in noise department due to much higher gain:
I was totally impressed by the implementation of RIAA equalization:
It is rare that we see such flat response regardless of price! Would have been nice to have a high pass filter though to deal with LP rumble and other low frequency noise but that would have increased the cost.
Headroom is quite good for the class:
But degrades as frequencies go up:
Conclusions
Sometimes a product, despite its low cost, does everything right and such is the case with Phono Box DC. It has excellent RIAA equalization which many higher priced phono stages miss. Nothing like saying what you are going to do and delivering on that!
I am going to recommend the Pro-Ject Phono Box DC MM/MC Phono Preamp.
----------
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/
from me .
