MM/MC phono preamp with degauss facility
Made by: Aurorasound Inc, Japan
Supplied by: Pure Sound, UK
Telephone: 01822 612449
Web: http://aurorasound.jp/english; www.puresound.info
Price: £2700

PHONO STAGE

Aurorasound VIDA
Styling that reﬂects an older Japanese tradition conceals up-to-the-minute electronics
in this ﬂexible two-box high resolution phono stage from the pen of Shinobu Karaki
Review: Nick Tate Lab: Paul Miller

Not all of the Japanese hi-ﬁ
manufacturers are vast
corporates along the linesof Sony or Matsushita. Japanactually has a fair smattering of small
specialist companies making quirky
but interesting products aimed at thediscerning few who can afford them.
Aurorasound is one such example.
After 28 years of working for theJapanese subsidiary of Texas Instruments– as well as playing and teaching music –Shinobu Karaki is now designing phono
stages for a living. His new Vinyl Disk
Ampliﬁer (VIDA) joins a thriving market
for analogue-related products in hishomeland, one that was among the veryﬁrst countries to enjoy a vinyl revival.

OLD AND NEW WORLDS MEET
Superﬁcially, the VIDA appears quaintly
old-world: its late ’60s styling isn’t outof place next to, say, a similarly ‘period’
looking Leben tube amp. Yet peer insideits case and you’ll see circuitry that’s asmodern as the latest Mitsubishi motorcar. Precise wiring ﬂows around a board
stuffed with discrete componentry,
which the manufacturer describes as‘carefully selected’.
And there’s more intrigue, as you’ll
spy small, specially made Lundahl chokes(inductors or ‘ﬁlter coils’, as the company
calls them) on the circuitboard. Theseplay a key part in the overall design,permitting the use of an innovative
LCR RIAA equalisation network. This
makes what Karaki san calls ‘the world’s
ﬁrst LCR phono stage using discrete
semiconductors,’ no less.
Naturally it sports switchable
moving-coil and moving-magnetic
input sensitivity, complete with a high/low impedance selector on the front
panel. There is also a rather large,
orange backlit mute switch which

proved extremely handy. Other usefulfacilities include a stereo-mono selector
and subsonic ﬁlter. Aurorasound saysthat each switch uses a sealed smallsize signal relay for high reliability
and stability, and rhodium-plated RCA
terminals are employed for low signal
loss. Signal paths are short. Interestingly,
there’s also a cartridge degauss function,
which owners of older pick-ups mightﬁnd useful.
The VIDA package actually consistsof two boxes – the main unit whichcomes in a wood sleeved case, and aseparate power supply which is housed
in a smaller all-aluminium box. Inside
the latter is a toroidal transformer
and Schottky barrier diode. Both units
are very well ﬁnished, especially themain box, but prospective purchasers
might question why they’re stylisticallyso different. The main unit looks likesomething from another age, whereas

RIGHT: The VIDA comprises three building
blocks – a switchable MM/MC gain stage
followed by a wholly passive LCR RIAA networkand then a ﬁnal op-amp based output stage

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the power supply could be styled forthe latest Chord DAC. An odd visual
combination indeed!

NEUTRALITY AND NUANCES
Before auditioning, the Aurasound wasgiven a thorough run-in period in myreference system: a Michell GyroDec
turntable, SME Series V tonearm and Lyra
Delos and van den Hul Frog moving-coilcartridges, with a Goldring 2500 used toassess MM performance. Ampliﬁcationis courtesy of Sugden IA4 solid-state andCanor TP134 valve integrateds, withSpendor D7 loudspeakers.
All too many phono stages veer toone extreme or another – they’re either
forensic to the nth degree, shining alaser light on the deepest recesses of themix while losing the musical plot along
the way, or they suffocate you on a dietof saccharine and ﬂood the recording insepia-tinged warmth. The Aurorasounddoes neither, preferring instead to let
the original recording engineer and/orproducer decide the end result. Whatit gives then, is a very neutral, nuanced
view of the musical performance.
Whereas so many phono stages
manage to make everything sound as if
it has been recorded in the same studio
the VIDA does nothing of the sort. It
lets each respective disc’s ﬂavour ﬂood
out, while resolutely refusing to draw
attention to itself, being remarkably
devoid of noise or grain. Feed it with amodern techno recording like ‘Hazme
Sonar’ by Morenas, from Ambient House,The Collection, [DFC, BCM 422LP] forexample, and the track’s electronics
swell around the soundstage withvoluptuous depth and width.
The size of the recorded acoustic isexceptional, making rival (and highlyregarded) designs feel positively shut in.
Yet it doesn’t do that old tube phono
stage trick of sounding euphonic toachieve this end. Rather, the VIDA pulls
the listener into a highly immersive but
neutral rendition of the music which isalmost as deep as it is wide, setting upbold images in all three dimensions.

Another impressive facet is its
tonality, which doesn’t resemble tube
phono stages yet is eerily different frommost transistor ones too. There’s noneof that cloying, honeyed warmth of theformer, yet you don’t get that chromiumplated upper midband that afﬂicts lesser
solid-state designs. Instead, the productgoes its own ‘third’ way, and shows
itself to be remarkably neutral. Dropthe needle on Chick Corea’s ‘Return To
Forever’ [ECM 1022 ST], and the VIDA
forges a direct link between the groove
and your auditory ossicles,
supplying a vivid renditionof this classic jazz waxing.

NOTHING LOSTABOVE: A handy mute button dominates thefascia, next to cartridge degauss, stereo/mono,
subsonic ﬁlter, MC/MM and MC load switches

and splash. The cymbal work on theChick Corea track was a revelation: you
could really hear the drummer’s subtle
phrasing, yet tonally it had a lovely,
sophisticated feel.
Last but certainly not least, theVIDA’s sound is ‘all of a piece’ – with nosense of the music’s rhythm being lostin translation. ‘Girlfriend In A Coma’,from The Smiths’
Strangeways Here We
Come [Rough TradeRough106], showed
that, once again, thatits lovely glass-clear
midband is the rootof all that’s good inthis phono stage. It
offers startling insight into a recording
which can sound opaque, fuzzy and twodimensional through lesser gear.
Happily though, both high and low
frequencies follow suit and beat inperfect time with the midband, and theresult is a wonderfully cohesive, unforced‘Electric pianoon the Corea
track drips withrich harmonics’

Although the midband
is squeaky-clean, you
would never call it sterile.
Instead, the VIDA sounds
natural and even, and this feeds down
to a tight, taut bass whose power isperfectly judged. It can rumble withthe best should the need arise, but
it never seems to overwhelm. In thetreble it comes across as bright, open
and spacious, yet totally devoid of grain

JAPAN’S VINYL PASSION
Japan is a country full of paradoxes, and its relationship with the vinyl LP is
one of them. On one hand, it is one of the most forward looking, technologyobsessed nations on the planet – its post-war economic boom was underwrittenby the rise of solid-state electronics and microprocessors. Yet it’s also animmense respecter of tradition, and loves precision artisan manufacturing. WhenCD arrived, it was the world’s ﬁrst adopter, yet the size of the country and its
audiophile market was such that vinyl never really went away. By the early ’90s,
the huge popularity of jazz, and the dissatisfaction of some with CD’s sound,
was likely the reason for vinyl’s resurgence. First, BlueNote Japan and Impulse
started re-pressing classics, and then a whole swathe of reissues followed, fromThe Beatles to Led Zeppelin. By 1995 vinyl was back in fashion – if for audiophileconsumption only. Phono cartridge makers from Audio-Technica and Denon toLyra and Koetsu began to reap the rewards, and they haven’t looked back since.

ABOVE: While the main unit gets a retro look,the PSU could come from any 2013 product. It’s
well made though, with a big toroid insidewww.hiﬁnews.co.uk | REPRINTED FROM HI-FI NEWSLABREPORTPHONO STAGE

AURORASOUND VIDAABOVE: The low noise enjoyed by the VIDA phono stage is achieved, in part, by useof an outboard PSU. Separate MM and MC input RCAs are selected on the front panel.
The single-ended outputs, also on RCAs, are ﬁxed rather than volume-driven

and enjoyable listen. The VIDA is
tonally well lit, but doesn’t get its
speed from any artiﬁcial edge.
Put this altogether and theresult is magniﬁcent; the Fender
Rhodes electric piano on theChick Corea track drips with richharmonics just as it should, while
saxophones on The Crusaders’‘My Lady’ from Street Life [MCAMCF3008], are as raw and reedy
as you’ll ever hear them at home.
But cue up a well preserved
classical long-player and you’ll
be in for an out-of-listening room
experience you won’t forget toosoon. That spectacular depth andspace, allied to the purity of tonethat the Aurorasound displays
and its utter absence of noise,is transﬁxing – Handel’s Messiah
by the Dunedin Consort andPlayers [Linn CKH312] sounded
real enough to make me forgive
my well-worn copy its last snap,
crackle and pop.

SWITCHING TO MM
With the Goldring 2500 MM
cartridge slotted in, results
remained consistent with thelow output ﬁndings, ie, the unit
sparkled with detail and ﬁzzed
with energy, while staying as
couth as this more modest pick-up
permitted. That same stadiumsized soundstage again impressed,
although the Goldring cartridge’s
limitations meant the effectwasn’t quite as profound.
Still, cueing up a 45rpm
twelve-incher of Gary’s Gang’s‘Keep On Dancing’ [SAM Records
23-10885] saw the VIDA inciting
me to do precisely that… Thecommand it showed of thetrack’s synthesised basslines wasremarkable, following its everyundulation down to seemingly
subterranean levels, and matchingweight with subtlety.

A product as well honed as
this is hard to fault, and any suchcomments can sound churlish
so the following is more of anobservation. Great high-end
products are designed withoutcompromise – no consideration
is paid to any inadequacies in therecording and replay chains inwhich they ﬁnd themselves. And
so anyone wishing to purchasea phono stage that ﬂatters or
deceives should look elsewhere.
This won’t have your mediocre
turntable or rotten mid-pricepressing singing like it was at its
own 21st birthday party. Rather,
the Aurorasound is unromanticand doesn’t suffer foolishness
gladly – so you’re going to needa highly capable vinyl front end.
Even thus equipped, bear in mind
that the VIDA’s well-lit treble
favours immaculate vinyl surfaces.
The Aurorasound VIDA is oneof vinyl’s little wonders, then.
Looking like something fromanother age, it gives no visual clue
about the design and engineeringcalibre internally. It simply
conﬁrms vinyl as the amazingly
capable medium that it is.

Bearing in mind the extra gain required to accommodate apassive RIAA network, especially for MC pick-ups, Aurorasoundhas achieved a creditable combination of good sensitivity
and very low noise. In its MM setting, the VIDA offers +38.4dB
gain (47kohm/250pF loading) which is equivalent to a 416mVoutput for a ‘standard’ 5mV MM signal input. This is a few dB
below other MM phono stages but more than sufﬁcient to drive
any modern preamp and comes complete with a generous
input overload margin of 160mV and an A-wtd S/N ratio of80dB. The MC input includes an additional +25.8dB of gainin the pre-RIAA input stage, realising a total gain of +64.2dB.
An MC with an output of 0.61mV will raise 1V from the Vida,
suggesting that even low output MCs may be used to goodeffect. The 76dB A-wtd S/N ratio is very good but the 9mV
overload margin is less generous – relatively – than that for theMM stage, precluding the use of higher output MCs.
Distortion is impressively low at <0.01% from 20Hz-20kHz,
the minimum of 0.005% appearing through the midrangeat 1V output [see Graph 2, below]. No pick-up cartridge will
match this, so the Vida is essentially ‘transparent’ from theperspective of THD. Its equalised response is also very neutral– just +0.2dB/20Hz to –0.4dB/20kHz with a sensible ultrasonicroll-off reaching –15dB/100kHz. The low bass extension of its
DC-coupled output stage is extreme, showing a mild subsoniclift of +0.2dB from 5Hz-20Hz while the subsonic ﬁlter is usefulfor record warps only with a mild attenuation of –5dB/5Hz [seeGraph 1, below]. Only the high 1.1kohm output impedanceis disappointing. Readers may view a QC Suite test report for
Aurorasound’s VIDA phono amp by navigating to www.hiﬁnews.
co.uk and clicking on the red ‘Download’ button. PM

ABOVE: RIAA corrected freq. resp. from 5Hz-100kHz(black, subsonic ﬁlter dashed) with o/p imp (red)HI-FI NEWS VERDICTThis quintessentially Japaneseslice of analogue exotica isartfully engineered to givea coruscatingly incisive anddetailed sound, yet one
that’s genuinely musical too.
Impressively devoid of noise, it
provides a wide open window
onto the vinyl groove yet it neversounds coldly forensic or overly
romantic. The VIDA should win
many friends here, as it alreadyhas in Japan.

Sound Quality: 83%0-------- 100

ABOVE: Distortion versus frequency from 20Hz-20kHz
at 1V output. Typically <0.01% through audio range

HI-FI NEWS SPECIFICATIONS
Input loading (MM / MC)

47kohm/250pF / 42ohm (High)

Input sensitivity (re. 0dBV, MM/MC)

12.1mV / 614µV

Input overload (re. 1% THD, MM/MC)

163mV / 8.6mV

Maximum output (re. 1% THD)

13V (1.1kohm o/p impedance)

A-wtd S/N ratio (re. 0dBV, MM/MC)

80.0dB / 76.3dB

Frequency response (20Hz-20kHz)+0.21dB to –0.42dB

Distortion (20Hz-20kHz, re. 0dBV)

0.006–0.01%

Power consumption

9W

Dimensions (WHD)

260x100x250mm

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