StageLine or Benz PP1 for Ace cartridge?

I'm not a lover of the stageline in any shape or form ..and yes I have been an owner

There are plenty of great priced stages that you could get ...eg Lehmann black box that will soundly beat the stageline price for price

it's important to get the right match between cartridge and phono stage -- so on that score, i'd go with the PP1. i've also found the Stageline to be underwhelming -- and i've had three of them -- but perhaps that's because i've never heard a Stageline with the Linn cartridges for which they were intended. 

Japtimscarlet posted:

I'm not a lover of the stageline in any shape or form ..and yes I have been an owner

There are plenty of great priced stages that you could get ...eg Lehmann black box that will soundly beat the stageline price for price

The Stageline is great, but like anything else, you need to ensure a good match with the right cartridge for it to really sing.  

Interestingly I recall that the Black Box was soundly beaten by the Stageline & i-Supply in a group test shoot-out of phono stages on Hifi World magazine some years ago.  But that may well have been down to cartridge match (see above).

Thanks to a couple of friends, I have been testing the two phonos over the last days.

Config. 1: StageLine K + i-Supply PSU connected DIN to DIN (Naim 4 to 5 pins cable) to the amp

Config. 2: Benz PP1 T9 connected RCA to RCA (VdH D501 cable) to the amp

so..... the StageLine is more natural and coherent, I don't know if is suggestion or what. The turntable/cartridge/amp are the same (wilson circle/Benz Ace SL/Uniti Star), the only differences are the phono stages and the cables, but......

......what I suspect is that the DIN input of the Star could be better than the RCA input..... and in the end the best match could be the Benz phono connected RCA to DIN to the amp..... is it really possibile?

In the next days I'll try also that configuration.