NAGRA HD PHONO

Design and DevelopmentThe Nagra R&D Department, served by ten skilled and specialized audio engineers, worked on this project for three years with the goal of creating the most revealing and engaging preamplifier in the world. The audio engineers spared no expense and accepted no limitation in developing electronics, mechanics, power supply or in addressing thermal and vibration issues. Each stage of the design also included extensive listening sessions. The result is a striking product in terms of appearance, specification and performance. It will reshape the expectation you may have of what a preamplifier will add to your whole set-up, sources and amplifiers.

DevelopmentThe Nagra HD PHONO follows the introduction of the Reference Turntable and Nagra MC-4 moving-coil cartridge. Both the Reference Turntable and MC-4 Cartridge are state of the art contenders in their own rights and proved to be major assets in the finalization and fine-tuning of the HD PHONO.

Diamond Revision HDMI: A Year of DevelopmentDiamond Revision HDMI took Purist over a year of research and development, aimed at three things at once: better audio, better video, and a cable flexible enough to route behind equipment without fighting it.

The conductor is an alloy of copper, silver and gold, 32 AWG to 26 AWG depending on length, under triple shielding - and, as with everything Purist build, treated with the Triple (3x) Cryomag process.

Two Chassis DesignThe HD PHONO is a two chassis design in which the delicate phono stage circuitry is isolated in its own CNC machined aluminum chassis. A second chassis serves to house a massive supercapacitor external power supply. Supercapacitor based power supplies provide all of the advantages of battery-based power supplies with the added advantage of accepting and delivering charges much faster and with higher current load and cycle stability than battery-based power supplies. This power supply is based on those of the HD PREAMP and HD DAC X but features a number of innovations which make it even more silent with improved performance. Both chassis are suspended in a system incorporating a damped, constrained layer platform coupled to four isolator damped towers providing superior vibration resistance.

All-Tube Class A StageThe best of analog is incorporated in the HD PHONO. It is dual-mono, pure Class A with 100% tube stages. In addition, it incorporates remote control cartridge load adjustability from 10 to 390 Ohms, with steps as fine as 5 Ohms for smaller values. This allows perfect matching between your cartridge and HD PHONO stage – all confirmed by ear from the comfort of your listening chair.

Input TransformersThe HD PHONO features a new generation of input transformers. Following the original VPS transformer and based on the Nagra IV-S microphone input transformers, the HD PHONO’s transformers are a fourth-generation design featuring 26 dB of gain. The new transformer’s core is made with Cobalt and is cryogenically treated over the course of several weeks to improve performance. The transformer itself is hand wound in a very delicate process requiring watchmakers’ type of skills.