PS Audio Stellar Phono Stage

Before I start this short review an admission from me, I committed a cardinal sin here and bought PS Audio Stellar phono Preamp blind, or should that be deaf? - whichever is correct, I bought it without auditioning or even hearing it beforehand. I bought this purely on the reviews I read, all of which were glowing bar one which concentrated on its measured performance. However as the designer, Darren Myers, states something can measure perfect and still not sound good and vice versa.

Darren stated he wanted listeners to be wowed on hearing the first note, well it took longer for me to form an opinion it took two full tracks to be seduced by this phono preamp. Two tracks of the eponymously named Tracy Chapman Album. The first and most impressive thing of note was the clarity to the vocals and general instrumentation, second was the darkness of the background, almost silence when the musicians stopped playing; and then the subtleties started to become apparent. The reverberations following Tracy’s voice seems to last longer, decay slower and have a much more natural decay profile than my previous, well-regarded Sonneteer Sedley, phono amp. You were always aware of these reverberations with the Sonneteer but they sounded engineered, not on the PS Audio they sounded totally natural giving a huge increase in the sense of space and the natural recording environment. This minutia of extra detail extended to the backing instruments too. Again, with the Sonneteer, they were nicely positioned in the sound stage and sounded accurate and fixed in space, however switching to the PS Audio, each instrument developed its own pocket of space around it giving the whole soundstage a holographic feel to it. The backing instruments were no longer showing depth just by reduced volume in their playing but by developing a sense of space around them which integrated perfectly with the overall presentation and the sense of space which the entire recording created itself.

Bass seemed extended too with the PS Audio, so much so that I had to check the dip switches on the back of the Sonneteer to see if the rumble filter had been switched on all the time (it hadn’t!). Not only was the bass more extended but individual notes on a fast played bass line carried their own sound signature without blending together with the note before and the one after. A similar experience with top end, cymbals seemed to shimmer more and for longer while some subtle detail like brush work on drum skin and cymbal became easier to discern and follow without necessarily disappearing into the overall mix.
Vocals, as mentioned at the beginning, were clear and precise and I was caught out a few times when I sang along in my mind only to have to stop and replay a particular track because I realised I could actually make out the lyrics which I didn’t know because they were unclear on my previous setup.
I think you get the direction of this review, but if you are looking for a negative, then so far, it is just the total reliance on the remote control to select the correct inputs and loadings if power is lost to the unit. Sonically I haven’t come across any negatives when compared to my older, but well reviewed Sonneteer Sedley, but time will tell.
As a final endorsement, and perhaps the greatest one of this review, my wife was reading her Kindle while sitting next to me on the couch as I listened to the new phono preamp. At the end of the first track of Chrisy Moore’s Ordinary Man album she put down her Kindle and said, “that new thing sounds so much better than the old one, I’ve had to reread several passages of my book because I kept getting drawn into the music.” Well I rest my case!