IFI Zen Phono Preamp / Pre-Amp Turntables / Vinyl Record Player

The iFi Audio Zen Phono is a small, powerful and affordable desktop phono preamplifier.
The brand has particularly worked on noise reduction on this device which displays a background noise measured at 90/96dB (MM/MC). It is also versatile since it is compatible with both MM (Moving Magnet) and MC (Moving Coil) cell boards from < 0.25mV to > 2mW. The Zen Phono also includes a balanced circuit and connectors, a gain control, or a sub-sonic filter.

The ZEN Phono has:
MM/MC from 36dB >72dB gain. Super-silent noise floor -151dBV
Precise RIAA with Balanced output, performance comparable to +$1k phono stages
AI sub-sonic filter. Addresses warp without eliminating bass or causing phase issues

Mil-spec RIAA
The EQ circuit uses multiple TDK C0G capacitors in parallel. This is for best stability and the least distortion. They beat polystyrene capacitors and are close to Teflon. Already using the lowest tolerance capacitors combined with multiples in parallel, tolerance is exponentially improved by the square root of the number of capacitors. This is quite a natty circuit design. The RIAA EQ tolerance level (+/- 0.15dB) is impressive as it is en par with hand-selected capacitors!

Super sub-sonic
The intelligent sub-sonic filter is from the iPhono range and is quite special. Normal sub-sonic filters remove ‘rumble’ AND bass and cause phase issues. Our unique AI phono sub-sonic filter removes ‘rumble’ only.

Hissless whisper.
Unusually, the ZEN Phono has its own high-tech clean power supply. It creates a 1.2MHz power supply (20,000x mains frequency of 60Hz). In this circuit, a 10uF filtering capacitor = 200,000uF at lower, audible frequencies. With serious levels of noise filtration, it performs at the level of well-designed LC filtering circuits as found in classic tube amplifiers. Further, located on its own ‘island’ PCB, it is isolated so there is no noise pollution of the analogue stage.