When you play vinyl, up to 90% of your total system amplification takes place in the phono stage. Most integrated amps and pre-amps do not have high grade phono stages as they share the power supply with the rest of the electronics. This is what makes investing in a high grade phono stage one of the most effective upgrades. The Origin Live phono stage ultra is designed to vastly improve on whatever you currently own by virtue of innovative circuit design and employment of high grade components. It will amplify the output of all Moving Magnet and Moving Coil cartridges. Unlike many phono stages, it is fully balanced, which yields a host of benefits over unbalanced phono stages (more of this later). It also features a full range of adjustments for capacitance and impedance loading along with a wide range of gain settings. This flexibility means that you are able to get the very best from your cartridge regardless of it’s make and characteristics.
Improvements that the Origin Live phono stage bring to a system are dramatic - the most immediate observation among many, will be a vastly improved speed and timing in the music that brings you much closer to live performance. Other factors to highlight are increased transparency, dynamics and levels of detail. It’s highly neutral tonal balance means excellent imaging capability leading to the 3 dimensional sound stage so appreciated by those who understand what makes music tangible.
Technical Aspects
The Origin Live phono stage is a high end, stand alone product, meticulously designed and packed with innovative thinking. You can expect unrivalled sonic qualities, with low noise and high performance that place this item well ahead of the field.
Design overview: The design emerges out of Origin Live’s partnership with one of the foremost designers of electronics David Rusby. It is built around a fully balanced circuit with zero feedback and passive equalisation. Each channel is treated separately and the use of very high quality components allows the performance of the circuit to shine through. For faithful reproduction of the original recording the RIAA curve is produced as exactly as possible so the Origin Live Phono Stage is flat to the RIAA standard by less than 0.5dB.
Balanced configuration: The advantages of a balanced phono stage are extremely compelling, both in theory and auditioning. Using a balanced preamp with a phono cartridge makes a lot of sense for the same reason it makes a lot of sense to use it with a microphone: immunity from noise. The output signal from a cartridge is almost negligible compared to the signal levels coming from a tuner or CD player. Consequently, the gain (amplification level) is very high in a phono preamp. Such high levels of amplification mean that an unbalanced preamp also amplifies the noise signal from the cartridge and arm leads to relatively high levels. Contrastingly this unwanted noise is completely eliminated in a balanced system.
An additional advantage of balanced circuits is the ability to suppress much of their own power supply noise. At each stage of the circuit, the power supply noise is treated as a common mode signal and ignored.
Balanced configuration does not necessitate the use of XLR plugs on your arm leads - you can continue to use your normal RCA phono plugs as these give a fully balanced signal - you only need to connect your arm earth lead or the earth from any arm cable screening to the earth terminal provided on the Origin Live phono stage.
To gain the full benefits of balanced configuration it is best to use a balanced pre-amp / power amp. However, if you do not have balanced amplifiers you will still gain benefits from a balanced phono stage. It is worth noting that a balanced phono stage represents a good future proof investment because if you upgrade to balanced amplifiers later, you will save the expense of changing your phono stage.
One of the truly great things about the Origin Live Ultra phono stage is that it uses fully balanced RCA input sockets, rather than XLRs for the tonearm cable inputs. This has the advantage that you will not need to change your arm plugs to XLR ( as you do with some balanced phono stages).
High Grade capacitors: Our use of extremely high grade capacitors results in incredible levels of detail. This gives real presence to vocals and generates a truly massive sound stage.
Power supply with unrestrained delivery: Much attention has gone into the power supply design which features several levels of regulation for each stage. Despite this, care has been taken to ensure that the power supply can provide very high levels of current delivery, to allow the phono stage to accurately follow all the dynamics in the music. This is an area where many phono stages fail, resulting in a dull and lifeless sound. In contrast to this, the Origin Live phono stage uses high current power transistors in all its regulation stages bringing the music to life.
Origin Live Ultra Technical Data
Gain - 5 switchable settings 47db - 75db
Impedance loading - 5 settings 10 ohms - 47K ohms
Capacitance loading - 5 settings 0 - 4.7nF
RIAA deviation 20Hz - 20kHz +/_ 0.5dB
Noise - 1nV per Hz
Power consumption 5W
Phono stage dimensions in mm 25 x 6 x 17cm ( D x H x W)
Power supplycase dimensions 23 x 7 x 15 cm ( D x H x W)
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