Fully Balanced Throughout

The typical domestic electrical environment is far from noise-free. There is noise in the earthing system and mains supply, and there is radiated noise from transformers, intentional radiators etc. Audio engineers know very well that there is no better way to transport and process delicate audio signals, such as those produced by a cartridge, in such an environment than a balanced interconnection and circuitry. This is because a balanced interface offers significant extraneous noise canceling. Note that an unbalanced interface offers none. Not only is the input interface of V33 balanced, it also utilizes a fully balanced circuit architecture throughout. Although this requires almost twice the electronics, it offers two extra advantages: reduced distortion and twice the overload margin of an equivalent unbalanced implementation.

Signal Path Purity

It is simply technically impossible to design extreme versatility and configurability into a phono preamplifier without compromising sound quality and increasing cost. In light of this, only those configuration settings, with their inevitable switching elements and added circuitry that were deemed essential have been incorporated into the design of V33. You will not find multiple inputs, multiple EQ de-emphasis curves or a remote control; Instead, you can rest assured that the cost budget has been steered towards using the highest quality components and an uncompromising circuit architecture.
No expenses have been spared in the choice of the 770 or so electronic components that go into building V33, with several resistors and capacitors costing orders of magnitude more than those found in many other similarly priced units. These components were carefully selected for their sonic attributes in countless sounding tests.
The V33 Balanced Phono Preamplifier is DC-coupled throughout. There are no DC blocking capacitors to impose their sonic signature on the sound.

Cartridge type support

Moving coil cartridges are inherently low impedance transducers, and as such require low input current noise from the preamplifier to achieve the lowest noise possible. Unfortunately, this is in conflict with the requirements of a moving magnet type cartridge. To support both cartridge types, most phono preamplifier designs are forced to compromise on this front. By eschewing support for MM cartridges, the V33 Balanced Phono Preamplifier was designed from the ground up to offer uncompromising electrical and sonic characteristics with the preferred moving coil type cartridge.

All these attributes go a long way towards assuring that there is little to touch the V33 Balanced Phono Preamplifier within its price range and well beyond that.