NY Audio Show 2014

Jens Phono Stage Debuts at The New York Audio Show

Michael Fremer  |  Sep 27, 2014

The new American designed and manufactured Jens phono stage aims for state of the art status.

Within the gorgeous reflective fascia'd chassis (that's a reflection in the photo, the front isn't carpeted!), is a dual mono design featuring fixed 70dBs of gain and loading options ranging from 25 to 5kOhms. Despite the fixed high gain distributor Merrill Audio claims the unit cannot be overloaded, even by a 4.5mV MM cartridge, though of course that is not recommended!

The Jens Phono stage incorporated manually routed circuit board traces, strategically off-board wiring paths, multi-stage power supply filtration, an external high current power supply, an EMI/RFI shielding steel chassis, Stillpoint Ultramini riser footers, pure copper-rhodium plated RCA jacks and Teflon sleeved, silver plated OFC wire.

The Jens Phono results from more than 7 years of research with focus group input and 2 years of field testing before the design was finalized and put into production. The price including a 3 year warranty and included worldwide shipping is $15,449.

I got to hear a very early iteration some years ago at the beginning of its development and thought the top end overly polite and lacking in extension and transient speed and clarity. i hope to review the final product as soon as possible, though after that comment who knows!?

COMPANY INFO
Merrill Audio Advanced Technology Labs LLC
80 Morristown Road Unit 3B, #275
Bernardsville, NJ 07924
info@merrillaudio.net
415 5MA-HIFI
www.merrillaudio.net

COMMENTS
Ortofan's picture
Submitted by Ortofan on Sat, 2014-09-27 13:25

70dB of gain translates into amplifying the input signal by a factor of 3162. So, that 4.5mV signal at the input becomes a signal of over 14V at the output - of a phono stage. How many active line stage preamps (or even power amps) can, in turn, accept a 14V signal at the input without the output being driven into saturation/clipping?

cgh's picture
Submitted by cgh on Sat, 2014-09-27 14:47

... when did people that can afford $15k preamps start using freakishly high-output cartridges? Or anything other than low output cartridges? That's like designing an amp and trying to sell it by saying you can drop it off your roof and it will still work.

Michael Fremer's picture
Submitted by Michael Fremer on Sat, 2014-09-27 16:58
They weren't suggesting doing it.... just saying. It was designed for LO MCs.
Ortofan's picture
Submitted by Ortofan on Sat, 2014-09-27 20:13

That's still a lot of gain.

500mV, for example, is (more than) enough input signal to drive a line input on most preamps to the rated output. With 70dB gain, that implies the [U]peak[/U] output from the cartridge should me no more than about 0.150mv. An Audio-Technica ART-7 has a [U]nomimal[/U] output (at 5cm/sec) of 0.120mv while an Ortofon MC5000 is 0.140mv and the old MC100/MC200 were at 0.090mv. Are there any other cartridges with significantly lower outputs?

What were they using to demo the unit at the show?

Merrill Audio's picture
Submitted by Merrill Audio on Mon, 2014-09-29 08:34

"I got to hear a very early iteration some years ago at the beginning of its development and thought the top end overly polite and lacking in extension and transient speed and clarity. i hope to review the final product as soon as possible, though after that comment who knows!?" From FM

Michael,
Thank you for stopping by and for the note above.
Absolutely, a Jens phono stage will be sent for Review.

I understand you had a very early version of this unit several years ago form one of the early testers.

The Jens Phono stage was used by VPI and Xtreme Fidelity at the New York Audio Show.

Based on comments users of the production units, none of the above are problems.

The production unit testimonials speak of the speed, clarity and stage are the ones to be beat on the Jens. More on the product page on the website.

The point on the input signal it the amount of headroom provided at 1Khz, given that between 20khz and 20 Hz, there is a 40db difference on the RIAA curve. This unit is a MC only and not meant for MM cartridges.

Ortofan's picture
Submitted by Ortofan on Mon, 2014-09-29 09:33

But what good is it if the phono stage gain level is so high that the resultant output can drive the following line preamp into clipping, severely limit the volume control range on the preamp or overdrive the input to a power amp? For $15K, the unit should include a function that allows it to detect the average voltage level at the input and then select an appropriate gain level automatically.

figaro's picture
Submitted by figaro on Wed, 2014-10-01 19:59

for those of us that use step up transformers.
I would hate to spend all that money and my options be so limited.

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