In the previous episode of Real Hi-Fi, SoundStage! founder Doug Schneider said that consumers need to spend at least $300 to get an “acceptable” turntable setup (turntable, tonearm, and cartridge), but if they didn’t spend a least $1000, they’d have sound that wouldn’t be as good as digital playback.
Most people agreed, but as Doug points out in this video, some people said that he didn’t go far enough and omitted a key component in a turntable playback chain—the phono stage. Doug agreed with them—and in this follow-up episode, Doug explains what a phono stage does in a stereo system and why it can affect sound quality so much.
#turntable #hifi #audiophile