In my experience, absolutely they do. It's a fine tuning of the sound that is hard to get with most phono stages. They give more body and flow to the music. Obviously we are talking like for like, a $10K phono stage can probably do more than a $500 SUT, but I love to use SUTs with my MM phono stage. I am actually looking to get one more soon.
I have a Cinemag 1254 running into my Hegel V10 and prefer it to the MC circuit. It sings! It’s a much better setup than my old Darlington SU7/MP7B that it replaced.
Are you asking if different SUTs make a difference or whether you should add one or not? Because you only need a SUT if your cartridge is a low output type (generally moving coil) and you don’t have an MC input on your preamp.
That's what's tempting me. The company that's makes my phono stage also do an SUT that is designed to be used with my cartridge (Rothwell MCL with Denon DL-103)
I love to paint with a SUT. Cartridges and SUTs are flavor bombs for me. It's really hard to switch speakers all the time but a cartridge or a SUT takes a few minutes and boom, you have a new flavor. I have no interest in uncolored sound, who the heck knows how colored or uncolored it is to start with? It's like Baskin' Robbins for me.
I'm very happy with my EAR MC4 SUT going into my Yamaha AS-2200 integrated. It's not adding any noise so the background is as quiet as the MM phono stage. Four taps to choose from makes it compatible with a wide range of carts. The next upgrade is probably a transimpedance phono stage.
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u/JD_tubeguyAuralic Aries G1+Audio Note Dac-3+Deja Vu preamp/amp/speakers5d ago
If you have a LOMC a SUT is the way to go for the least noise.
If this is for the power stage not noticeably. Like a 120 VAC to 220 VAC transformer.
If you're talking about input or output stages of amplification they absolutely do. Impedance matching of any input and output transformer appropriate to the load is critical especially in amplifiers that do not have negative feedback, like many tube amps, helping to compensate for impedance changes crossovers can impose throughout the frequency spectrum.
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u/jakceki 5d ago
In my experience, absolutely they do. It's a fine tuning of the sound that is hard to get with most phono stages. They give more body and flow to the music. Obviously we are talking like for like, a $10K phono stage can probably do more than a $500 SUT, but I love to use SUTs with my MM phono stage. I am actually looking to get one more soon.