Tag Archives: RCM The Big Phono English ver.

Opinion 1

Everybody who started the adventure with vinyl knows, that a phonostage is an indispensable element of the game. Without it, the signal from the cartridge, regardless if it is a MM or MC one, would be too low. And while it may look, that this topic is very simple and can be taken care of by purchasing any model, things are far more complicated. Why? Because this device is mostly responsible for what enters the rest of the system to be further amplified. If it will, colloquially speaking, massacre the delicate signal from the cartridge, then all those problems will only get amplified along the way and there is absolutely nothing we can do about it. We can try to mitigate some of the issues with the main system, but it will be something along the lines of treating the plague with cholera, what usually results in a spectacular, sonic antique tragedy, at least at the extreme High End levels. Of course in this game also other elements of the analog system play a role, like the deck, tonearm and cartridge, but in my perception, the phono preamplifier is the heart of it. How would I know? Of course from testing experience. Experience, that I waited for a long time, a few years at least, because when a unit of the model tested today came out of the production line, it immediately went to a potential buyer and never returned. And what device am I talking about today? This is of course revealed by the title of this test, but we are talking about a cult, at least amongst some, phonostage The Big Phono RCM, made by the Katowice specialist of everything analog and designed with costs being no constraints, which resulted in a two-box, large device.

And you can probably see from the very beginning, it is visible in the pictures, that costs were not spared while designing the device. Those are two rectangular boxes, made from solid aluminum using CNC and varnished black. They have a size of a solid integrated amplifier. And are very heavy. The power supply uses two 200W transformers, one for each channel, and weighs 30kg, while the main, solid state unit brings 20kg to the scale. The controls and connections are typical for this kind of product. So the power supply has a LED in the front indicating when it is powered on, while on the back three multipin terminals for powering the individual channels and logic separately. It also has a power socket with integrated fuse and main power switch. The main unit has a green display on the front that shows the selected parameters of cartridge adjustment, interleaved with the company logo. There are also four round buttons – one on the left to switch the unit on, and three on the right allowing users to configure the device. On the back we have two RCA inputs, one RCA and one XLR output, multipin connectors for the PSU, a ground pin and a ground lift switch. A nice touch of the Big Phono is a nice remote controller, borrowed from Apple, which allows us to bring the unit on from standby or the other way around and change the input. But what can this phonostage do? It allows to select the sensitivity of the cartridge input in a range from 0.3 to 5mV and input impedance in the range of 20Ω to 4.7KΩ. As you expect, the idea to have the best possible power supply performance translates into power consumption, which oscillates around 250W. What else? A table with full specs will be added at the end of the test, so I would like to point you there if you are interested in more details, while I invite everyone to read the report from a few weeks of using the newest product from the RCM Audio brand.

So how did it perform? Was the cost no issue approach worth its while? And if yes, what does this means in sonic terms? Well, I must confess, that I did not expect such turn of events. This is due to the fact that I am daily driving the cheaper construction from the same brand, the Sensor MkII, so I expected only minor sound corrections, adjustments to the sonic output directed to improving the overall experience, that would be able to explain the increase in price. Maybe a better controlled and stronger bass, a midrange presenting a bigger package of information, or more refined treble. All of that, or at least one of those aspects, would seem to be the natural direction to take in the further evolution of those phonostages. But how was it? Well, before I tell you that, a few aspects of the reference unit. The Sensor, which is known in Poland to probably all vinyl lovers, regardless of its version is always the source of nice drive, nice, essential, kicking sound, and at the same time an unobtrusive airing of the sound, brilliantly augmenting the whole experience. This is an energetic devil, which on one hand is far from being obtrusive, in how it presents information, on the other, being a bit unpredictable, what prevents it from being boring. Yes, it has its sound; dense, with a lot of energy, with a kind of solid state touch to it, and it does not have any of that tube distortion that we like so much to tingle our senses – I know, this was a bit malicious, but I said it more to show you the difference between how those two technologies are presenting audio, not to depreciate any tube based devices – but it always shows the joy hidden in the music. And when it looks like there is not so much separating us from full happiness, on the other side of the quality barricade – besides the much higher cost, and we are talking about a ten times difference – stands The Big Phono. But what does it mean sonic wise? In short? This is not a “slightly different” but a completely different quality world. It turns out that you can find yourself in a similar esthetic, with which I mean not having an artificial light being shone on the music, and yet present everything with highly elevated quality. Starting with the lower registers going much more down, also showing all their colors, through presentation of a much more saturated, and as such having more juicy impulse, and yet still very readable midrange up to the still not artificially shining, but in some way still presenting much more information treble – you can listen to the music at any level you like, because there is no distortion, often perceived as information, that could interfere with that. With the flagship RCM phonostage the sound becomes more noble, you do not have any impression of it being strained, what combined with all the other musical aspects being set on the highest notch results in the final sound being at the highest possible level for such devices. This presentation is so overwhelming that during the first contact you have the impression that there is much more of everything, even unnaturally so. But when you realize that you do not have anything artificial there, and for that you need to listen just for a few minutes, you come to the conclusion, that the cheaper constructions deprive you of so much, that only now you are close to the truth hidden in the recordings. And most importantly this is not on the level of nuances, but there is a completely different way of how the signal coming from the cartridge is being handled. And it was also able to convince my acquaintance, who is absolutely in love with tubes since the dawn of time, and once he tried out the tested RCM phono against his very good Destination Audio tubed one, he asked – Jacek is this the same disc? And when I confirmed, he asked “Jacek, if you can, don’t return it to the distributor”. Does it sound banal? Absolutely it was not, as this person is a frequent guest of my listening room, very well acquainted with highest quality audio gear, and also a tube gear admirer. And he really convinced me of the phenomenon of the Big Phono. Yes, a phenomenon, because I need to remind you, that the test happened using a relatively cheap cartridge, which, despite its limitations, showed what this game is all about to more expensive analog setups based around a phonostage with lesser quality. But what is the game about? First of all, reproducing all the lower registers recorded on the disc with all their shades, attack speed, sometimes softness, sometimes hardness. Secondly – a presentation of the essentiality of the midrange, I described so meticulously, not as a generic, homogenous pleasing pulp, but showing the diversity of energy produced by each of the instruments. Thirdly – lack of any kind of brightening, in contrary, an impression of slight darkening of the sound; showing that, what even the most transparent and bright products usually cannot in an esthetic of overall calmness. I assure you, due to this, we are confronted with something completely extraordinary. The music gains appropriate body, it can move the emotions of the listener with impulses reaching the Hades, and not their higher harmonics, it clearly shows the edges of the individual, even very round sound and build the space between the loudspeakers with a palette of information that was somewhere lost in distortion before. In addition it brags with changes of tempo, which tend to surprise the listener every time. And in all of his, the most interesting aspect is, that this kind of presentation we will get with all kinds of music – with the badly recorded one as well as wit the most well-polished. Of course this all happens within the established esthetic of the music genre, however the mentioned resolution, coherence, nice saturation and calmness make the worse productions sound more tasty, while the “candy” does not get too sweet. How is this at all possible? When I asked the manufacturer about that, he immediately responded that the clou of reaching this is to have appropriate power supply, which in this case, a device dealing with signal levels of a few mV, bases on two hundred watt transformers per channel, something that integrated amplifiers wound not be shy showing off. In theory this seems to be madness. But when we get the sound I am describing above, and we are in a cost no object segment, which does not care for any compromise, then this approach is worth every penny spent on it. It is so worth the money, that in my current situation – I am in progress of creating my final analog set – I have a problem. What problem you may ask? Well, you could say that I should start with acquiring a deck with appropriate tonearm and cartridge first, and then squeeze everything out of them with the eventual purchase of the Big Phono. Turning this around does not seem logical. But in my case things are different, because for now, even during the best analog presentations at home I did not find anything, that would satisfy my expectations with regards to quality and esthetics of the reproduced music. And I did host many great analog setups from different manufacturers. And a few times I sighed a bit inside. But none of them did impress me as much as the product tested today. And while the source for the test was a simple deck with a metal rod and a modest cartridge I still ended up with a pre-myocardial infarction state. And what will happen, when you put an analog Olympus in combination with the Big Phono RCM? Well, for now this is just a rhetorical question. I thing we all know the answer for that. At least I do. But how will this adventure end for me? I am trying to keep at least a small bead of common sense and evaluating all pros and cons.

Reaching the finale of this test let us move on to the specifics. The first one is the information, is it worth to get interested in the tested phonostage and why. The second one is to select potential buyers. For me, the end of this story is very simple, something that does not happen very often. The response to the first question is contained in the description of how the Big Phono sounds. This is the quintessence of good weighing, contour, resolution and brilliant swing in reproducing music. And when this are like that, you should not be surprised that I do not have any counterindications to try it out by any music lover. This is such a refined product, that you would require an earthquake, or you would need to be an absolutely orthodox tube lover – and let me remind you about my colleague I mentioned during the description – to not find any connection to the construction from Katowice. I think it is possible, but I think that when you know what music reproduction is about, the number of people not content will be absolutely marginal. Within the margin of error. So the way to a brilliant sound, very close to the real thing, is now wide open to everybody.

Jacek Pazio

Opinion 2

After the second and third version of the basic, and at the same time most popular, Sensor, and the, seemingly difficult to beat TheRIAA, time came for the true opus magnum for the Katowice based RCM, a project we were able to follow since its conception. But while the previous propositions from Roger Adamek – the mastermind behind the whole ado – were aimed at refined, but quite rationally managing their income, audiophiles, the today’s hero brutally gets away from that approach attacking the audiophile Olympus, overtaking any competitors and puts itself on the king’s throne. Does this sound too lofty and are the conclusions premature? Not at all, because reaching into the strictly ultra high-end areas and putting the threshold of expectations on appropriate level, meaning – I can finally let out my inherent clinginess, I tried to find some shortcomings in the tested device for a few weeks and … I found none. So if you are wondering what I will be singing songs of praise about and compliment in the paragraphs below, I will not keep you in the dark any longer, and tell you, that this will be the phonostage RCM Audio The Big Phono.

The Big Phono continues the family tradition, so it is easy to guess, that it comes in two modules – with the signal and power sections separated. But while the PSUs for the Sensor and the TheRIAA were significantly smaller than the main unit, here both carcasses are of similar size. Both are made from CNC milled aluminum shells and anodized (a specialty of the Bulgarian Thrax), so there is no reason to hide anything behind your rack, as both are equally attractive. And the looks are also not too shabby – the main unit has a very well readable green-yellow OLED display, a power switch to the left of it and three control buttons to the right. On the other hand, the power supply has only a discrete LED informing us it is switched on.
A quick look at the back does not bring any surprises, confirming only professionalism and care for the details. We have two pairs of RCA inputs (top Furutech) and RCA outputs (Furutech) as well as XLR (Neutrik), a ground clamp, a GND switch and three multipin power connectors. In the power supply we only have a set of three multipin power outputs and a Furutech IEC power socket with integrated power switch and fuse.
And here I will allow myself to digress a little. Looking at the Hi-Fi/High-End market you can see, that using precision milled aluminum blocks becomes quite common, but the devil is in the details, as it usually is. While you may think, that having the carcass milled and the top and bottom plates bolted to it should give you the required rigidity, it may not eliminate the “ringing” of the complete chassis. This is why in The Big Phono the manufacturer decided to additionally bolt the halves together with triple bolt connections at half height of the units.
Looking inside, we can see a construction following the clues of the younger brethren, a solid state circuit based on low noise Texas Instruments opamps working in four amplification stages. The components are soldered to double sided PCBs with thick, gold-plated copper traces. The power supply was treated with absolutely no compromises, and it is based around two 200W EI transformers (each powering a separate channel) and a third one, dedicated to logic and display with only 15VA rating. The whole has a twelve stage regulation and the cooling is fully passive – using two copper plates attached to the chassis.

Moving on to the paragraph about sound, I would like to loyally warn you, that for your sake, you should keep in mind, that we will be operating on absurd levels of audiophile addiction, and if you dealt only with phono preamplifiers in the likes of Ypsilon VPS-100 or Audio Tekne TEA-9501 to date, then you should start your experience with the RCM flagship in limited chunks, because that, what will reach your ears may not only re-evaluate your analog worldview, but turn you completely around. In audio, like general in life, you should remember the statement “inopiatum expectes”, expect the unexpected, but the first contact with The Big Phono carries such a hefty load of unexpected, and at the same time positive experiences, that you could compare this to the Spanish Inquisition as presented by Monty Python, which was never expected by anyone. To keep it short – after a few minutes of listening, the smile on your face would need to be removed surgically. But let me come to the point, so first a little bit of celebration with choosing an album, that will set the optics of the session, cleaning it and placing on the platter of the turntable, calibrating using the DS Audio ES-001 and we are off!
First came “Satchmo Plays King Oliver” by Louis Armstrong, followed by Frank Sinatra with “Come Fly with Me”. Yes, yes. I know, those are very old things, covered with layers of dust and moss, and which you probably cannot bear to listen to in digitized form, available in popular streaming services, as the sound flat and rustling. Yet the Polish phonostage was able to squeeze only the best out of the groove, not only saturating the vocals, but surprisingly defining and bringing to life the musicians accompanying the singers, finally taking a palpable shape and stopping being perceived only as a flat and unengaging background. The directness and expressiveness of the sound became absolutely captivating, there was absolutely no trace of any brightening or hardening, which would become boring in the long run. I could even claim, that for most listeners TBP (The Big Phono), at least in the beginning, can seem dark and surprisingly dense. But you only need a short while to accommodate to notice, that this slight darkening, and in fact a better description of that impression would be “shying away from flashiness”, is a native characteristic of this preamplifier, while the density turns out to be nothing else but a truly organic coherence, unattainable for most competitors. Additionally the sound was not only energetic in the rhythm section, but the whole spectrum was equally sharing that trait. I am mentioning that not without a reason, as the longer I was being exposed to this esthetic, the more I became convinced that placing this phonostage into the system brought the, quite basic admittedly, turntable dangerously close to a formula reserved for reel to reel recorders, like our Studer A80. Those observations were only confirmed by reaching to contemporary jazz and the very well recorded, minimalist album “How My Heart Sings” by Massimo Farao’ Trio, where the holography of the recreated stage came close to the level, where the listener starts thinking about how well he or she is dressed for the occasion, and if it is appropriate to cough to clear their throats, to being put down by the disapproving glare of one of the musicians. In short – we just have the question of resolution answered, because we do not think about it at all, we just take it as something completely natural, and if we will not need to downgrade to something of lesser birthright, then we just can live on thinking, that this is how it should be. However this is wishful thinking, and not a rule.
But how do things fare with “some” less refined repertoire in the likes of “Hardwired… to Self-Destruct” by Metallica or “Accident of Birth” by Bruce Dickinson? I must confess that I did not expect miracles, but the TBP showed, that I am a person of little faith. You cannot squeeze more out of this material, which is very far from the refined audiophile recordings, than was put into the master, but in this case, things depended on how that material was served to you. The RCM flagship preamplifier acted maybe not as the best gourmet chef, but like an Italian nonna, who can cobble together a delicious meal from very simple and basic ingredients. First of all the mentioned density and “darkening” did a phenomenal job adding the so expected weight and filling, and secondly, the mentioned energy supported the native, fiery expression. Things got heavier and mightier, and at the same time we did not lose anything from the aggression, and if that was not enough, instead of a wall of sound without any shape, we finally got proper localization of the virtual sources. But instead of putting artificial contours around them, the TBF just materialized the individual musicians in an adequate, firm arrangement on stage, leaving the task of acquiring “perception improvers” for themselves and the band onto the listener. Maybe this is not a very noble approach, but the tested phonostage destroyed the myth, that the better the gear, the lower the number of discs you can listen to using it, because with it being installed in the system, you could listen to absolutely everything. And the joy from listening turned out to be painfully better than with the, already very good, Sensor 2 mkII, which was much less humane to the low quality recordings.

OK, enough of the sugarcoating. In summary the RCM The Big Phono on one hand turns the high-end stereotypes around, which try to tell you, that shocking and an almost pornographic showing of details are the only things that count, and on the other, gives you such a palpable and realistic contact with your beloved musicians, that after the second or third piece we are starting to treat them as part of our family. So if you want to shatter the glass frame separating you from the events happening in the studio or on the stage, then the RCM flagship can deliver you such directness. But there is one “but”, something that gets written with the smallest font in any contract. You absolutely should not reach for The Big Phono if you cannot afford it, because the return to the grey reality is a regression similar to going back from First or Business Class in Emirates to an old, shabby car. You really should treat the contact with the tested phonostage as a one way ticket. Once you hear it, there is no going back.

Marcin Olszewski

System used in this test:
Source:
– transport: CEC TL 0 3.0
– streamer: Lumin U2 Mini + switch Silent Angel Bonn N8
– DAC: dCS Vivaldi DAC 2.0
– Master clock: Mutec REF 10 SE-120
– reclocker: Mutec MC-3+USB
– Shunyata Research Omega Clock
– Shunyata Sigma V2 NR
– Preamplifier: Gryphon Audio Pandora
– Power amplifier: Gryphon Audio Apex Stereo
– Loudspeakers: Gauder Akustik Berlina RC-11 Black Edition
– Speaker cables: Furutech Nanoflux-NCF Speaker Cable
IC RCA: Hijiri Million „Kiwami”, Vermouth Audio Reference
IC XLR: Tellurium Q Silver Diamond, Hijiri Milion „Kiwami”, Siltech Classic Legend 880i
Digital IC: Hijiri HDG-X Milion
Ethernet cable: NxLT LAN FLAME
Power cables: Hijiri Takumi Maestro, Furutech Project-V1, Furutech NanoFlux NCF, Furutech DPS-4.1 + FI-E50 NCF(R)/ FI-50(R), Hijiri Nagomi, Vermouth Audio Reference Power Cord, Acrolink 8N-PC8100 Performante, Synergistic Research Galileo SX AC
– Table: BASE AUDIO 2
– Accessories: Harmonix TU 505EX MK II, Stillpoints ULTRA SS, Stillpoints ULTRA MINI, antivibration platform by SOLID TECH, Harmonix AC Enacom Improved for 100-240V, Harmonix Room Tuning Mini Disk RFA-80i
– Power distribution board: POWER BASE HIGH END
– Acoustic treatments by Artnovion
Analog stage:
– Drive: Clearaudio Concept
– Cartridge: Essence MC
– Phonostage: Sensor 2 mk II
– Eccentricity Detection Stabilizer: DS Audio ES-001
– Tape recorder Studer A80

Manufacturer / Distributor: RCM
Price: 39 000€

Specifications
Input sensitivity: 0.3 – 5 mV (variable in 7 steps)
Gain: 52 – 74 dB (nominal output 2 V rms)
Input impedance: 30 – 47 000 Ω (in 8 steps)
Input capacity: 150 pF
Inputs: 2 pairs RCA
THD: >0,01%
S/N: 87dB
Linear precision of RIAA: +/- 0,1dB (20Hz-20kHz)
Output impedance: 70Ω
Outputs: XLR, RCA
Nominal output: 2V rms
Maximum output: 9V rms
Power consumption (max):250 W
Dimensions (W x D x H): 430 x 410 x 145 mm – preamplifier; 430 x 410 x 145 mm – power supply
Weight: 20 kg – preamplifier; 30 kg – power supply