G'day all, I often find it interesting and vaguely amusing to read of phono stage upgrades which are invariably described as 'improvements', but are they, or just 'different', especially when considerable expense is involved?
Given the vagaries of human perception and the ease of being fooled and/or mislead, what is real and what is just different? When it comes to phono stages, over the years I can't say that every phono stage I've evaluated has sounded 'that' different in absolute terms. Given the 'standard' nature of RIAA equalisation, phono stages all doing the same job 'should' sound very similar, all things being equal, I suspect.
Fairly obviously they don't, but they should. So when are upgrades real and worthwhile or just differences and variations from the familiar? Regards, Felix.