Parasound Zphono ($150): www.parasound.com.(AUDITIONS)(Product/service evaluation)

Belying the Zphono's compact, space-saving, design, is a look and feel of top quality audio equipment. In this latest incarnation, Parasound has slightly modified the Zphono with a 100[ohm] resistor-loading in the moving coil mode. It remains 47k[ohm] in the MM position. Gain at 1kHz is 46dB in the MM mode and 61dB in the MC mode.

A phono preamplifier is one of the most challenging analog designs in audio electronics. I do not have the space here to outline all the issues here, but interested readers can refer to an old Audio Critic article I wrote: http://wwwtheaudiocritic.com/cwo/Back_Issues/Issue 18, page 12.

Parasound's well-executed two gain-stage design proves a unit's low cost need not be an impediment to solid design. To summarize, the advantages of a two-stage phono preamp design include:

* the first stage does not load the cartridge since it can be designed to have high input impedance independent of frequency. Cartridges are very particular about the load that they see at the preamp input if they are to produce flat frequency response.

* the preamp can more accurately follow the RIAA inverse equalization curve.

* the preamp exhibits better overload performance as well as lower distortion and noise levels

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