Copied from my blog:
'It seems odd to talk in terms of upgrading the H3000V phono stage but the effect of adding the HA3000 is quite something. I was expecting a moderate but detectable increase in all the usual hifi properties - resolution, speed, space, depth, purity, timing, coherency, solidity - and you do get all of that, but in a bigger dose than I could have imgained.
What that doesn't tell you though is more about the overall bigger picture. The sound now seems injected with a sense of aliveness that I previously not thought possible from vinyl. Much like your first experience with a good active system, every note seems to be pressurised and energised and delivered to your living room so raw, intense and so immediate that going back the stock H3000 step ups makes it seem small, soft, weak and a distant impressionistic rendering of the music rather than a directly wired connection. Anyone who has heard the bare H3000 will know that it's difficult to contemplate the 3000 phono in those terms; indeed, the idea of it being in any way small, distant and weak seems preposterous until you hear it with the Head Amp.
Slotting in the HA3000 the sound is huge, grand, boundless, filling the room in front and behind me in a way I've not experienced before. There is some more running in to be done but so far I am pleased as punch with this piece and my findings seem to contradict the reticent nature of some of the reviews out there. This isn't like taking a good phono and gilding the lily but rather a whole different flavour and performance level. Allnic could almost incorporate the HA3000 and H3000 into one box and call it the H4000 and sell it for £15000 and i'm sure it would do extremely well.'
