PS Audio Stellar Review (Phono Preamplifier)

[Vini darko]

Thanks for the review Amir. If I remember rightly the distortion is there on purpose. The original design went with high feedback for great measured preformance. But listening tests went badly with no magic soundstage stuff. So it was made worse till it produced magic soundstage unicorns. (Paraphrasing from one of Paul's videos)

 

[sarumbear]

View attachment 155364

What makes the unit so heavy?

 

[AudioSceptic]

This is a review and detailed measurements of the PS Audio Stellar Phono stage. It is on kind loan from a member and costs US $2,499 from the company direct.

I kind of like the look of the PS Audio gear. They don't look very high end but not budget either:

View attachment 155310

I was extremely surprised by how heavy this box is. It weighs as much as many power amplifiers! I was also surprised that there are no buttons on the unit. You have to use the remote control for that. The remote is small but feels good in hand and lets you even select MC input loading.

Back panel shows a surprise that I was happy to see: XLR balanced output:

View attachment 155312

I was impressed how shiny and beefy looking all the connectors were. And nicely spaced apart.

The vents in the back dissipate heat from a number of power devices in heat sinks so don't block them.

PS Audio Stellar Measurements
There are many variations here. I am going to limit myself to low gain and one set of loading. Let's start with moving magnet performance:

View attachment 155313

I was disappointed to see distortion spikes. Even budget phono stages are able to bury the distortion components in the rather high noise floor of these phono stages. Not here. The power supply noise is there for the ride usually in these phono stages. Hard to know if it is instrumentation error or nature of the beast. Grounding had no effect on this.

SINAD graph for phono stages is not super meaningful as it is usually dominated by just noise but here is the ranking anyway:

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Moving Coil measurements with 1/10th the input signal produced similar results:

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I was extremely happy to see a very nice implementation of RIAA equalization in both modes:

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Max output voltage is whopping 24 volts which provides excellent headroom to guard against saturation with pops and clicks:

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Back to distortion, as bad as it was at 1 kHz, it gets worse at lower frequencies (this measurement excludes noise so it is pure THD):

View attachment 155319

Does it matter when playing LPs? Likely not.

Conclusions
There is a lot to like here from good looks, excellent build quality and stellar, pun intended, frequency response and headroom. Typical of many PS Audio products though, gratuitous amount of distortion is there for the ride. It is not high enough to have any euphonic value. But high enough to raise our blood pressure that better could be done if folks were not chasing myths in audio.

Anyway, if you have the money and want a substantial looking phono stage, I can recommend PS Audio Steller Phono Premplifier.

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As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.

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It's great to see phono stages measured, as there is so little objective information available. Vinyl might be mid-fi, and certainly lo-res, but we don't want to add any more noise and distortion than is already there.

I really can't see why you give this a recommendation, though. It's hugely overpriced for the performance. How far will you go to allow build and looks to outweigh performance? I thought that was the sort of "High End" nonsense we are trying to get away from.

 

[3125b]

The cambridge Audio Duo was measured with double the input signal.

Right, that doesn't really make sense. The second one on the chart, the Cambridge Solo, was tested with 5mV input and still beats this thing by 23dB however. Granted, it only does MM and has certain issues, but it's like 180$ and not 2500$.
What I'm saying is that this PS Audio is, while not terrible, still not very good and certainly a bad value for money.

But their customers don't care about objective performance. If this was 250$, none of them would think it's any good.

 

[Ata]

Can a phono preamp be just a sensitive low noise amp followed by ADC then RIAA compensation in the digital domain? Sounds like a no-brainer…

 

[abdo123]

Can a phono preamp be just a sensitive low noise amp followed by ADC then RIAA compensation in the digital domain? Sounds like a no-brainer…

yes but why re-invent the wheel?

 

[sarumbear]

Can a phono preamp be just a sensitive low noise amp followed by ADC then RIAA compensation in the digital domain? Sounds like a no-brainer…

Of course it can and it will be an excellent solution: A digital phone pre-amp!

 

[sarumbear]

yes but why re-invent the wheel?

said the person who came up with the idea of cast alloy wheels -- not!

 

[Bruce Morgen]

This thing supposedly has over 700 components in the service of subjectively superior "musicality."

Stellar Phono Circuit explained

 

[mhardy6647]

Surprised there are no balanced inputs at this price.

I don't believe I've ever seen a turntable with balanced outputs at the uV to mV level from a MC or MM/MI phono cartridge...

 

[daftcombo]

Flatness of the frequency response and high headroom.

Are you sure it's 24 Volt and not mV?

In the MX-VYNL review, we are in mV:

Review and Measurements of Musical Fidelity MX-VYNL

This is a review and detailed measurements of the Musical Fidelity MX-VYNL phono stage/preamplifier. It is on kind loan from a member. The MX-VYNL costs US $999. The overall look and feel of the unit is a step above DIY/mass market products: Starting from the left, there is an on/off...

www.audiosciencereview.com

 

[JohnYang1997]

Are you sure it's 24 Volt and not mV?

In the MX-VYNL review, we are in mV:

Review and Measurements of Musical Fidelity MX-VYNL

This is a review and detailed measurements of the Musical Fidelity MX-VYNL phono stage/preamplifier. It is on kind loan from a member. The MX-VYNL costs US $999. The overall look and feel of the unit is a step above DIY/mass market products: Starting from the left, there is an on/off...

www.audiosciencereview.com

Generator level vs Output level.

 

[daftcombo]

Generator level vs Output level.

Thank you. Yes, there was also the output level in the review:

 

[JayGilb]

Flatness of the frequency response and high headroom.

Is there a Panther translation guide ?

 

[thefsb]

Is there a point where the headroom doesn't matter for the pops/clicks? Or is higher always better?

I was going to ask something similar...

Max output voltage is whopping 24 volts which provides excellent headroom to guard against saturation with pops and clicks:

24 volt pop and click spikes are likely to saturate some downstream equipment. Is that better than limiting them in the phono preamp?

 

[Hifihedgehog]

Batman doesn't always play records, but when he does...

 

[beefkabob]

Can a phono preamp be just a sensitive low noise amp followed by ADC then RIAA compensation in the digital domain? Sounds like a no-brainer…

Except that people who love vinyl fetishize the analog. Going digital removes the magic they believe in.

 

[levimax]

yes but why re-invent the wheel?

In order to use DSP room corrections when playing vinyl.

 

[levimax]

I don't believe I've ever seen a turntable with balanced outputs at the uV to mV level from a MC or MM/MI phono cartridge...

For many TT's it is easy to re-wire as balanced. The "alternative easy way" is to just use very short unbalanced connectors to the phono pre-amp and then go balanced out from the pre-amp like this one does. In my experience the "short unbalanced" connections work the same as "re-wire the TT balanced".

 

[AudioSceptic]

I'm always suspicious of somthing that weighs heavy when there is no technical reason. I've opened stuff up in the past to find lumps of metal that have no other function than to make the device feel substantial.

The usual reason is to add a thick copper base plate, supposedly for electro-magnetic reasons (justified or not). Does that apply to the PS Audio?