Listening
Contents
So, we have already written quite a lot of words without hinting anything about the performance of the Primare R35. And oddly enough we can be brief about that: we think this phono preamp is very good… very, very good. It is clear with all turntables we tested. First of all: the R35 brings calmness. Silence. No hum or noise. And we’ve connected some notorious troublemakers as far as hum is concerned. The R35 keeps it quiet. And the moment the needle falls into the groove, the Primare manages to get so much music out of the element. Of course, an element of a few tens cannot be compared to a moving coil miniature piece of art by Iseki for which you pay a hundredfold. But from both cartridges the R35 gets the best – if properly tuned – and that’s very impressive.
It is mainly enjoying music and records. In other words: listening to the whole side and not just a single track. We keep listening and discover music again. At first we had some trouble with the R35 going into standby mode after 20 minutes of silence; at first we thought there was something wrong with the amplifier when we wanted to set up a new record and didn’t hear anything. But we quickly got used to that; where the switch on the front of the R35 is, we leave it up to the owner… (NB: you can disable this feature!)
We, and our visitors, are always surprised by the level of detail provided by the R35. And dynamics, and soundstage. We compare some tracks with FLAC versions in Roon. For example, Donald Fagen’s version of Ruby Baby. Somewhere in the middle of the track, a synthesizer is going to play an octave lower beneath the copper instruments. Digitally you can hear this, but through the record it is a layer that is overwhelming and at the same time subtle. And the better the record player/cartridge combination, the better the experience. We can go on like this for a while. For us, it shows that a phono preamp can make a big difference in how your turntable can sound and perform. And that fine-tuning the connection values is more than worth the effort.
