Mobile Fidelity UltraPhono Phono Stage

DESCRIPTION

Meet MoFi Electronics UltraPhono Phono Stage

UltraPhono replicates the wide bandwidth transparency Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab mastering engineers demand.

Tim De Paravicini, the designer responsible for the Mobile Fidelity Gain2™ Ultra Analog cutting system, assisted with the internal circuitry to ensure your analog system at home faithfully reproduces the music buried in the grooves of your LPs. UltraPhono also includes an audiophile-quality Class A headphone amplifier for intimate listening enjoyment.

Mobile Fidelity is the company from the 1970's and 1980's responsible for the Half Speed Mastered vinyl recordings which have become folklore.

They still produce what is considered to be the best vinyl recordings available. Drawing on 5 decades of making the world's best sounding records, Mobile Fidelity has designed a range of turntables, cartridges and phono that continue the Mobile Fidelity tradition of getting you closer to what the original artist intended. Designed in collaboration with some of the world's finest audio designers, UltraPhono features an incredible amount of ingenuity and technology usually reserved for much more expensive products.

Tim De Paravicini is a global analogue renaissance man of sorts who has travelled many roads over the past decades, working with EAR, Musical Fidelity, and Luxman, to name a few of his more recognisable stops. De Paravicini was uniquely suited to captain the design of the UltraPhono as he understood the technical aspects and standards Mobile Fidelity sought to deliver better than anyone: to create an ultra-wide bandwidth, high transparency phono stage truly faithful to original master recordings.

Tim de Paravicini oversaw all circuit design and part selection to accomplish Mofi’s mission for the UltraPhono.

Mobile Fidelity has figured out how to give the UltraPhono a healthy dose of sonic balance. Aided by an exceptionally quiet noise floor, dynamics and detail are always present and accounted for and the sound never loses that “easy-does-it” signature analogue charm. The UltraPhono is able to whip a track into shape and keep everything crisp while never losing a rounded and open feel that makes the music so compelling. For the power supply, the UltraPhono is equipped with a balanced external power supply that was chosen to keep noise away from the low-level circuitry in the relatively small chassis. 

There are two buttons on top of the UltraPhono’s casework: mono and subsonic. Mono recordings have musical content in only the horizontal plane while stereo recordings require the cartridge to output both horizontal and vertical signals. The only signal in the vertical plane on a mono record is noise. Pressing the mono button sums left and right, blocking the vertical signal, therefore blocking noise. The subsonic button blocks signals below 20Hz (the low limit of human hearing) from reaching the amplifier. If you’ve ever seen a woofer pulsate wildly while playing a record but can’t hear anything, this is subsonic energy. It makes your amplifier and speakers work hard for nothing. 

 

UltraPhono includes a powerful Class A headphone amplifier perfect for quiet nights when you want to keep the records spinning in private. And with a 31-step volume control built into the unit, all you need to do is directly plug-in your headphones and turn it up! It's the easiest way to achieve high-fidelity vinyl playback without speakers and electronics. It is possible to listen for several hours without fatigue. Its quality and power make it possible to power a wide range of Hi-Fi dynamic headphones, even difficult models.... 

UltraPhono won’t add anything to your music. If anything, it’ll remove a layer of noise that may have previously gone unnoticed. If you are in the market for a very reasonably priced yet high-performance phono stage, the American-made UltraPhono should be at the top of your shopping list. It performs far better than its price indicates and will match well with a wide variety of cartridges. Most importantly, it doesn’t have a “sound”—it’s just a conduit for musical enjoyment.The UltraPhono on its own merits outpaces anything else on the market at its price point.

CLASS-A HEADPHONE AMPLIFIER

UltraPhono includes a powerful Class A headphone amplifier perfect for quiet nights when you want to keep the records spinning in private. And with a 31-step volume control built into the unit, all you need to do is directly plug-in your headphones and turn it up! It's the easiest way to achieve high-fidelity vinyl playback without speakers and electronics.

 
ADJUSTABLE GAIN AND LOADING

With selectable gain and loading, you will be able to tailor UltraPhono to match nearly any moving-magnet or moving-coil cartridge on the market. A readily accessible bank of toggle switches can be found on the unit’s underside to quickly make adjustments without the need for any tools.

Product Features

• Selectable gain for MM or MC 40dB, 46dB, 60dB, 66dB

• Adjustable loading 75Ω - 47kΩ

• Class A Headphone Amplifier

• Switchable Mono mode

• Subsonic filter

• External power supply

Technical Specifications

Gain
Adjustable from 40dB - 66dB

THD
Load Impedance (MM)
47,000 Ohms

Load Impedance (MC)
75, 100, 500, 1k, 10k, 47k Ohms

Input Capacitance
100pF

Headphone Amplifier

Headphone Output
8V RMS Max, 62 Ohms, 1.5 w/ch

Volume Control
31 steps, 2dB per/step, 62dB range

Mute Switch
-90dB

Minimum Impedance
> 10 Ohms

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