Musical Surroundings SuperNova 2 Phono Preamplifier (TAS 200)

If we are living in the twilight of vinyl, it has to be the longest lasting twilight since mechanical watches and fountain pens.1 LPs and equipment to play them are undoubtedly a niche market, but there can be no question that this particular niche is lively, robust, and apparently profitable. Not to say also resourceful, imaginative, and inventive when it comes to better mousetraps, to judge by the proliferation of record‑playing paraphernalia to hit the market these last ten years.2 And it’s surely some kind of huge irony that the stand‑alone phono preamplifier came into its own not during the decades when vinyl was king but long after it had been deposed as a popular medium by the compact disc.

 
Mike Yee is one of the most innovative phono‑preamplifier designers working today. Marketed by Musical Surroundings, his designs are distinguished by superb sonics, very low distortion and unusually low noise even without battery operation, the widest range of loading and gain options of any phonostages now available (perhaps ever), and genuinely high value. The Nova Phonomena has been my reference phono preamp since I reviewed it (TAS 172), replacing the original Phonomena.
 
Yee’s flagship, the SuperNova 2 under review here, may be a unique product—I don’t know of another like it—in that it can be connected to a line‑level preamplifier as a conventional stand‑alone phono preamp or it can itself serve as a passive linestage when connected directly to a power amplifier. There are two outputs, one fixed, the other variable and controlled by one of two front‑panel knobs. The other knob selects among the three inputs, two for phono and one high-level labeled AUX (for CD player or other line‑level component). The phono inputs, which will accept any moving magnet/iron/coil pickup, are independently adjustable as regards gain and loading, allowing you to run two record‑playing setups or two different tonearm/pickup combinations on one turntable, each optimally adjusted for gain and loading and accessible with the flip of a switch.
 
Well, not quite a switch. The original version of the SuperNova ($2,800), now retired, had no line‑level input, only three phono inputs, which allowed Yee to employ a novel means of source selection. All three input stages were simultaneously hooked up to a single output stage, the “switching” done by only having a single current source assigned by the selector switch, thus eliminating switches in the audio path. This is how selection still works between the two phono inputs in the new version, but when he changed the third phono input to high‑level in order to allow for the connection of a CD player if the SuperNova 2 is used as the primary preamp, it was necessary to put a switch between the AUX input and the two phonostages.
 
Regulation of the variable output is likewise novel. With only twelve positions, it is misleading to think of it as a volume control. Yee prefers to call it a “limited attenuator.” Most attenuators operate over a 40dB range (10,000:1). This one is intended to operate over an 11dB range or so (the lowest, i.e., far left, position totally muting the output). Most systems, he believes, have far too much gain; reducing the excess allows for the elimination of gain in the linestage, which results in greater fidelity. He also claims that its lower output‑impedance makes the SuperNova's attenuator much less sensitive than typical passive attenuators to the effects of cables. “If set up properly,” Yee told me, “as the output approaches 0dB, the output impedance of the limited attenuator is close to 50 ohms” (see sidebar for more about setup). I tried running nine feet of Kimber Select and heard no untoward effect upon very high frequencies, which is where it would be noticed first.

 
Inasmuch as the earlier SuperNova served as the basis for the Nova, the sound here is a known commodity that I need only summarize.3 That sound is, first of all, very neutral, so much so that some have found it “too neutral,” a concept I have difficulty with when the goal is reproduction. It is also transparent, dynamic, and high in resolution. Thanks to its comprehensive loading and gain options I feel that it allows me to hear the essential character of every phono pickup I audition, review, or otherwise evaluate. But therein consists a potential problem: you really do have to attend to these or what you’re hearing—or reporting on—is the sound of the pickup improperly loaded, not necessarily the sound of the preamp as such.
 
Let me provide an example. Regular readers of mine will know how highly I regard some Ortofon pickups, in particular the Kontrapunkt C and the Windfeld. In order to hear these pickups at their best, however, they must be correctly loaded. With respect to the Windfeld, the difference between loading at 40 ohms and either 30 or 60 is clearly audible with critical listening. Load it at 30 and the sound is subtly less dynamic and lively and the top end sounds fractionally less extended. Load it at 60 (or even 50) and the sound becomes slightly more dynamic and lively, with a brighter top end. Only at 40 does it sound just right. If you have not set these values precisely, it would be very easy to attribute the characteristics I’ve described to the phono preamp rather than to the pickup itself or a combination of the two. This is why the Nova, with its 256 possible loading options and 16 possible gain settings, remains for me an indispensible reviewing tool and my longstanding reference.