Abbingdon Music Research PH-77 Phono Stage

Michael Fremer has posted a review of the Abbingdon Music Research PH-77 phono stage ($11,995) at Stereophile. His conclusions:

The PH-77 is a sweet, tonally well-balanced, quiet performer that produced a large, authoritative sonic picture packed with honest detail. Its weakest suit was its inability to produce full macrodynamic expression. While it was good in that regard, it was noticeably less fully expressed than through the other phono preamps surveyed here, though I noticed the difference only in direct comparisons, and because my Wilson MAXX 3 speakers exude dynamic explosiveness.

The PH-77's A/D converter is a nice convenience if you are wanting to rip your LPs, and while 24/96 doesn't make much sense if you're burning 16/44.1 CD-Rs, it makes complete sense if you're storing full-resolution files on a music server like the Sooloos—as I found out.

I hope AMR can introduce a less expensive version of the PH-77 with only a single, direct input—I think most serious listeners won't be using the switchable inputs of this superlative-sounding phono preamp.

You can read the full review here.