[James Tanner - Bryston]

Originally Posted by audio bill

With all due respect, a transformer is far from a perfect device and has its own set of compromises. You may prefer its lack of noise to some other active solutions but a transformer is not inherently better. As with most things in audio it often comes down to how well a specific approach is implemented, not the device itself being used.

HI Folks,

As Bill said the implementation is important but given quality designs our opinion is that properly implemented MC transformers are the best approach. Our MC transformers are custom made for us to exacting standards.

The advantage a transformer has is because a Moving Coil cartridge has very high 'current' output but very low 'voltage' output.

So a transformer simply uses that high current output and 'transforms' it to the voltage which the phono stage requires for amplification purposes. The advantage of this approach is that the 'noise floor' of the cartridge becomes the limiting factor rather than the noise floor of an active MC transistor based step-up style MC stage. Active transistor based step-ups have to take the very little voltage available from the MC cartridge and amplify it many, many times which increases the noise.

So in our opinion a low noise floor is critical in quality phono reproduction. Others may disagree but look at the quality cartridge manufactures that also build step-up devices for their cartridges and I think you will find most of them recommend transformers.

james