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:
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:
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:
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:
Moving Coil measurements with 1/10th the input signal produced similar results:
I was extremely happy to see a very nice implementation of RIAA equalization in both modes:
Max output voltage is whopping 24 volts which provides excellent headroom to guard against saturation with pops and clicks:
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):
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.
Any donations are much appreciated using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
I kind of like the look of the PS Audio gear. They don't look very high end but not budget either:
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:
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:
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:
Moving Coil measurements with 1/10th the input signal produced similar results:
I was extremely happy to see a very nice implementation of RIAA equalization in both modes:
Max output voltage is whopping 24 volts which provides excellent headroom to guard against saturation with pops and clicks:
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):
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.
-----------
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/