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Review on Parks Audio's Puffin Phono DSP: An Ideal Preamp for Enhanced Vinyl System Sound by Chris Quinto

Revainrating 2 out of 5

Total flexibility and ease of use

I hooked up my Puffin and listened to various headphones and the ProAc tablet 10. Puffin makes it easy to adjust gain, volume, bass, treble, tilt and air (among other settings) so you can listen to your turntable with different types of headphones (I have Sennheiser, HiFiMAN, Audio Technica, Koss and ESS). with an impedance of 32-300 ohms and various sensitivities, and you no longer have to open headphone amplifiers and adjust the gain settings to optimize the volume range for each headphone, etc. All I can say is WOW! I like the ease of use and the ability to customize the sound. 90% of my records are from the 1970s and 80s and many records are far from perfect. No bass, bright, tiring highs etc. My current turntable is an Oracle Origine with a blue Ortofon 2M which can sound bright on some old records. Puffin allows me to tame the piercing highs, boost the bass and add a bit of "tube" sound if I want it. My preamp is a Modwright LS 100, so I don't need/need a phono stage with tubes. In the past I've had an Acoustic Signature Tango, a Ray Samuels XR-2, an iFi iPhono phono stage (the cheapest toggle switches on any audio product I've owned!) and most recently a Simaudio 110LP with an aftermarket PS, and none of them offered the flexibility to adjust so many parameters with a turn of the knob to tweak the sound. Let's not forget that there are no screws to remove to open the case to access microswitches, change jumpers, adjust gain, etc. My impression of the Puffin is that it exceeds my expectations and gives me a level of flexibility, that increases the pleasure of listening to my vinyl collection. As a side note, I have the puffin lying on its side rather than lying flat so I can easily access the front panel on the second shelf of my rack. Puffin is so easy to use, you don't need to read the owner's manual, and the different modes enhance the sound - no twisting tubes, swapping cables or swapping cartridges!

Pros
  • Electronics
Cons
  • Expensive