Rerurn to Romy the Cat's Site

guy sergeant wrote:

It's polishing a turd though isn't it? I listened to the 834 quite a bit when it came out and thought it sounded poor, even for the price. imho, The circuit's just bad. If you do all that to it it isn't really an 834 anyway. I used to work for a valve amp making company and we had a little 2 stage phono amp that sounded far better than the 834 with passive eq, no feedback etc. It also cost less than the EAR.

Guy, I would respectfully disagree with you about the 834P. Some people “who know” taught me about the benefits of open loop EQ in the feedback circuits. In the 834P the nature of the 12AX7 actually performs the necessary open loop EQ. There are many other thing in 834P that makes it attractive, however I certainly not a person who would dispute the circuitries….

Being a user, I have to tell that I do like the 834P. I like it either in it’s default unspoiled version, either as the Thorstened 834PT (which is way better). 834P certainly should have OK tubes in it, have no output attention and must not use the default EAR step-up transformer. Everything else, no mater how cheap and primitive it is would actually be capable to delivery very-very good result. Combined with a very good transformer I feel that it is one of the most musical phonostage I ever come across.

Pay attention, Guy, I’m not project how it performs based of my assessment of the circuits or after a few listening sessions but rather after years of living with it and years of RETURNING to it after many other, even better phonostages. Certainly there are many different solutions and methods how we can get deferent audio properties better then 834PT does. However, how necessary is it? I sincerely feel that 834PT do is absolutely enough for 95% installations and for 99.99999% of the listening musical demands. It is possible to push the envelope further but it is mostly unnecessary. I’m not kidding: I personally have a number of the phonostages but I would be perfectly fine to live with my ET2-2x834PT. Also, some other my phonostages do better in certain aspects but I still am not going to remove the 834PT from the active duty. It has something within it that is very right. It would be interesting if you elaborate on your vision were the 834PT is falling out performance-wise

In the end, one more comment in response to you post. I do not know why, but the became fashionable recently passive EQ, no feedback phonostages do not do a lot to me. Among what I heard form them they were all flat, with no space. The RLC passive were another story, however…

Rgs,
The Cat

Rerurn to Romy the Cat's Site