Mobile Fidelity StudioPhono Phono Stage

Mobile Fidelity is the company from the 1970's and 1980's responsible for the Half Speed Mastered vinyl recordings which have become folklore.They still produce what is considered to be the best vinyl recordings available. Drawing on 5 decades of making the world's best sounding records, Mobile Fidelity has designed a range of turntables, cartridges and phono that continue the Mobile Fidelity tradition of getting you closer to what the original artist intended. Designed in collaboration with some of the world's finest audio designers, StudioPhono features an incredible amount of ingenuity and technology usually reserved for much more expensive products.

StudioPhono replicates the wide bandwidth transparency Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab mastering engineers demand. Tim De Paravicini, the designer responsible for the Mobile Fidelity Gain2™ Ultra Analog cutting system, assisted with the internal circuitry to ensure your analog system at home faithfully reproduces the music buried in the grooves of your LPs.

Tim De Paravicini is a global analogue renaissance man of sorts who has travelled many roads over the past decades, working with EAR, Musical Fidelity, and Luxman, to name a few of his more recognisable stops.De Paravicini was uniquely suited to captain the design of the StudioPhono as he understood the technical aspects and standards Mobile Fidelity sought to deliver better than anyone: to create an ultra-wide bandwidth, high transparency phono stage truly faithful to original master recordings. Tim de Paravicini oversaw all circuit design and part selection to accomplish Mofi’s mission for the StudioPhono.

Mobile Fidelity has figured out how to give the StudioPhono a healthy dose of sonic balance. Aided by an exceptionally quiet noise floor, dynamics and detail are always present and accounted for and the sound never loses that “easy-does-it” signature analogue charm. The StudioPhono is able to whip a track into shape and keep everything crisp while never losing a rounded and open feel that makes the music so compelling. For the power supply, the StudioPhono is equipped with a balanced external power supply that was chosen to keep noise away from the low-level circuitry in the relatively small chassis. 

There are two buttons on top of the StudioPhono’s casework: mono and subsonic. Mono recordings have musical content in only the horizontal plane while stereo recordings require the cartridge to output both horizontal and vertical signals. The only signal in the vertical plane on a mono record is noise. Pressing the mono button sums left and right, blocking the vertical signal, therefore blocking noise.The subsonic button blocks signals below 20Hz (the low limit of human hearing) from reaching the amplifier. If you’ve ever seen a woofer pulsate wildly while playing a record but can’t hear anything, this is subsonic energy. It makes your amplifier and speakers work hard for nothing. 

StudioPhono won’t add anything to your music. If anything, it’ll remove a layer of noise that may have previously gone unnoticed.If you are in the market for a very reasonably priced yet high-performance phono stage, the American-made StudioPhono should be at the top of your shopping list. It performs far better than its price indicates and will match well with a wide variety of cartridges. Most importantly, it doesn’t have a “sound”—it’s just a conduit for musical enjoyment.The StudioPhono on its own merits and even more so paired as a combo with the StudioDeck & StudioTracker outpaces anything else on the market at its price point.

ADJUSTABLE GAIN AND LOADING

With selectable gain and loading, you will be able to tailor StudioPhono to match nearly any moving-magnet or moving-coil cartridge on the market. A readily accessible bank of toggle switches can be found on the unit’s underside to quickly make adjustments without the need for any tools.

MONO AND SUBSONIC FILTER MODE

Two selectable toggle buttons on the top of the unit can engage Mono or Subsonic filter mode. If you're a fan of mono recordings, vintage or reissues like the Beatles in Mono box set or the Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab Bob Dylan Series, the Mono mode will come as a revelation. It will improve image stability and generate richer tone.