Phono Preamplifiers

Frankly, although the new Nu-Vista Vinyl S is pitched at half the price of the bigger Nu-Vista Vinyl 2 [HFN Feb ’24 and pictured below], it still features a balanced, 7586 Nuvistor-based output buffer and a very similar three-stage, fully discrete transistor circuit around its two-stage passive RIAA network. The input stage offers +20dB gain for MM and +40dB for MC while the second and third-stage ‘correction amplifiers’ deliver the gain that’s soaked up by the split-passive RIAA eq arms. The third stage offers +20dB or +26dB and it’s that extra +6dB that was enabled in our sample of the Vinyl S [see PM's Lab Report]. There seems no obvious way for users to switch this +6dB in or out via the remote or menu – in our unit at least!

Power consumption is identical to that of the Vinyl 2 at 56W as are the equalised responses, with or without the two subsonic filters. The respective noise performance(s) are very closely matched too – only the distortion is slightly higher in the Vinyl S compared to the 0.00055-0.0065% achieved by the Vinyl 2 [see PM's Lab Report]. That said, the 0.0012-0.011% measured here for the Vinyl S’s MM input is still two or more orders of magnitude lower than would ever be possible from a pick-up. Otherwise, that +6dB boost applied in the Vinyl S simply means it is twice as sensitive as the Vinyl 2 in balanced mode (all gain settings), albeit with half the input overload margin. Fortunately there’s plenty of headroom remaining to accommodate the most aggressive grooves! PM