This is a review and detailed measurements of the Rane PS1 Phono stage/preamplifier. It is on kind loan from a member. It has been discontinued and seems to have come out circa 2002 (?). I can't find a price for it.
If you are not familiar with Rane, it is a company focused on pro audio and has written some of the best tutorials on audio. Needless to say, my expectations are quite high here with respect to the engineering of the PS1.
The PS-1 is an industrial looking thing:
The back panel makes you even less proud to put it on display:
An external AC transformer with split tap powers the unit using a phone/RJ-11 style cable.
There are both unbalanced (RCA) and balanced (screw terminals) for output. I had to make a bare wire XLR cable to mate with the balanced output.
The shell of the balanced screw terminals was quite lose so I opened it to see what is going on:
Turns out there is no mechanical support for the plastic part of that terminal and hence the reason it wiggles.
The design is old school (no SMT parts here) and effort has been put in to make this a single sided board with those jumpers. WIth this type of cost cutting, I am hoping this was a cheap unit when it came out.
Phone Preamplifier Measurements
Here is the dashboard view using RCA outs with 5 millivolts input:
There is no distortion at all which is good. Then again the gain is a bit low side too. The THD+N then becomes really the "+N" dominated by mains harmonics. Better filtering of the rectified waveform would have helped here. The SINAD could be pushed near 100 dB had this been done. As it is, performance is wanting:
As noted in the dashboard view, after spending time building the cable, I was disappointed that the performance got worse, not better. You can see it clearly here with THD+N versus delivered output voltage:
We don't get the benefit of noise reduction or low distortion.
By the way, if you use the RCA outs, you better put the transformer way away from the unit. Being AC, it nicely couples into the unit, causing severe increase in hum.
SNR tells us what we already know from the dashboard:
With a lot more playing with grounding one may be able to get to the specified level by Rane. Mere mortals best not apply.
Frequency response shows variations especially with balanced output:
Conclusions
With a name like Rane, I expected far better performance than I see. Maybe this was a budget product for its time. I don't know. Today, there are much better choices.
------------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
This is my second review for the day. It was raining outside so couldn't do much gardening. Seeing how I have gone beyond call of duty, I thought I ask for a raise from you all. Please donate generously using:
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/audiosciencereview), or
upgrading your membership here though Paypal (https://audiosciencereview.com/foru...eview-and-measurements.2164/page-3#post-59054).
If you are not familiar with Rane, it is a company focused on pro audio and has written some of the best tutorials on audio. Needless to say, my expectations are quite high here with respect to the engineering of the PS1.
The PS-1 is an industrial looking thing:
The back panel makes you even less proud to put it on display:
An external AC transformer with split tap powers the unit using a phone/RJ-11 style cable.
There are both unbalanced (RCA) and balanced (screw terminals) for output. I had to make a bare wire XLR cable to mate with the balanced output.
The shell of the balanced screw terminals was quite lose so I opened it to see what is going on:
Turns out there is no mechanical support for the plastic part of that terminal and hence the reason it wiggles.
The design is old school (no SMT parts here) and effort has been put in to make this a single sided board with those jumpers. WIth this type of cost cutting, I am hoping this was a cheap unit when it came out.
Phone Preamplifier Measurements
Here is the dashboard view using RCA outs with 5 millivolts input:
There is no distortion at all which is good. Then again the gain is a bit low side too. The THD+N then becomes really the "+N" dominated by mains harmonics. Better filtering of the rectified waveform would have helped here. The SINAD could be pushed near 100 dB had this been done. As it is, performance is wanting:
As noted in the dashboard view, after spending time building the cable, I was disappointed that the performance got worse, not better. You can see it clearly here with THD+N versus delivered output voltage:
We don't get the benefit of noise reduction or low distortion.
By the way, if you use the RCA outs, you better put the transformer way away from the unit. Being AC, it nicely couples into the unit, causing severe increase in hum.
SNR tells us what we already know from the dashboard:
With a lot more playing with grounding one may be able to get to the specified level by Rane. Mere mortals best not apply.
Frequency response shows variations especially with balanced output:
Conclusions
With a name like Rane, I expected far better performance than I see. Maybe this was a budget product for its time. I don't know. Today, there are much better choices.
------------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
This is my second review for the day. It was raining outside so couldn't do much gardening. Seeing how I have gone beyond call of duty, I thought I ask for a raise from you all. Please donate generously using:
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/audiosciencereview), or
upgrading your membership here though Paypal (https://audiosciencereview.com/foru...eview-and-measurements.2164/page-3#post-59054).