Self on Audio, 3rd Edition

Chapter 19Optimising RIAA realisation

(Linear Audio, Volume 7, Mar 2014)

This article is the sort of thing that happens when I sit on the sofa and let my mind wander. For no special reason, I began to think of the four different ways to make an RIAA network that were dealt with in Stanley Lipshitz’s famous paper [1]. An accurate RIAA network requires both precision resistors (which are relatively cheap) and precision capacitors (which are not). Given that it is hard to improve on the 5534 for noise performance with a Moving-Magnet (MM) cartridge, and it is not costly, it soon becomes clear that those precision capacitors will dominate the cost of an MM RIAA preamp stage. So the question was, for those four RIAA configurations, were there differences ...