Balanced, dual mono & fully discrete audiophile phono stage
All pre-owned product is tested in our service department and have been passed for sale... and comes with a 90 day warranty!
Current Model- This is $799 when new - this is a great piece at an awesome price!
In good condition! Top and sides have smudges. Includes original box and packing and european AC plugs. Specs are last image.
NEW balanced XLR in- & outputs; NEW 5-pin mini XLR balanced input
• NEW fully symmetrical & discrete gain stage
• NEW fully passive & discrete RIAA equalisation
• NEW fully discrete audio circuitry - NO Op-amps!
• MM & MC capable
• Balanced & single ended in- & outpus
• Dual mono design
• Continously variable input impedance loading
• Most precise MC cartridge matching
• Superior low noise / low distortion
• Trigger in- & output
• Heavy aluminium casing protects against interference
• Available in silver or black
• Magnetic wooden side panels avaialable separately
• Made in Europe
The techie stuff:
The Phono Box DS3 B employs a true fully balanced gain stage design. Connect your turntable either with the 5-pin mini XLR cable or standard XLR cables & profit of the balanced signal path. Symmetrical, or also called balanced, transmissions consist of a hot and a cold (also called + and -) signal. Both signal chains effectively carry the same musical information. A true balanced gain stage can now extract the final musical information out of the +/- signals and subtract, remove, all noise that could potentially be added along the transmission. As there are two separate signal chains, we also needed two individual amplifier sections.
Discrete Circuitry: The Phono Box DS3 B uses fully discrete audio circuitry. A discrete circuit is composed of electronic components which are disparate, individual devices, also called discrete components. Countless hours of listening tests and years of experience have shown us that even the very best Op-Amps do not tend to be so neutral, natural, dynamic or vivid. Standard phono pre-amplifiers with integrated circuits have a few tens or hundreds of components, but discrete designs will employ hundreds or thousands of components by comparison.
Passive EQ: After treating the balanced symmetrically they are added back together and processed by the fully passive and discrete RIAA equalisation stage. By keeping the gain stage fully symmetrical we can optimize the signal to noise ratios, giving the EQ section the best source to work its magic on. Fully split passive equalization allows for better impedance matching and lower deviation from the ideal RIAA curve. For the balanced XLR outputs, a discrete balancing stage generates a symmetrical signal, so you benefit from balanced signal transmissions again. The single ended RCA outputs run their own fully discrete output stage, served directly by the RIAA EQ.
Cartridge loading options: You can connect two turntables at the same time & easily set everything on the front plate. Each input settings are stored in the memory. Large ranges from 40dB up to 65dB are possible. A fully balanced design makes all the difference here, handling amplification levels this high. You can perfectly match it with a wide variety of cartridges and perfectly integrate it into the rest of your Hifi system, matching the volume levels accurately to other sources like CD players or streaming devices. Load impedance can be set continuously via potentiometer, a system invented by Pro-Ject Audio Systems. It allows you to seamlessly adjust the impedance during playback and immediately assess the impact of different loading options. This is necessary to find just the right load impedance for your cartridge. No other manufacturers implement this feature in this extreme way!
