Sonic Brief:

The Hansen Phono Stage is designed for all LP lovers and audio purists in the South African Audio market who are looking for a high quality, hi-end audio-phile phono stage at an affordable price. Clarity, harmonics and 3-D sound with good defined bass flow seamlessly across the sound stage. This Phono stage has and an open mid-band and air for creating good depth in the sound image. If musicality is the aim in your sound system then this Hansen Phono Stage will be a great asset. This phono stage will reveal the detail and presence that a hi-end cartridge can throw at it and at the same time it can take an entry level cartridge to another level. Musical enjoyment is at the heart of this Hansen Phono Stage.

Technical Brief:

The first choice for the amplification was to use a Class A design which would produce the purest amplification signal with lowest distortion to the waveform from input to output. Zero feedback in the design also meant good dynamic representation of the audio signal. Over-design of the power supply compared to what is the calculated requirement results in great dynamics and excellent bass response. Full solid Faraday-cage design of the enclosure removes environment electromagnetic noise from the pcb and components. Internal shielding of the power supply and removal of the transformer from inside the enclosure results in a low noise floor environment which impacts on the subtle and intricate details of sound reproduction.

The active component in the design is a low noise, high quality audio purpose FET. Each of the six FET’s used in the design have individual bias adjustments and are setup in each and every HANSEN FET Phono Stage for optimum sound reproduction. The FET is used as it is the one semiconductor device that, if implemented correctly, can come closest to “valve-type” sound. I believe this design of mine achieves just that.

All resistors used are metal film and those in critical signal path are matched for optimum sound reproduction. All signal related capacitors are polypropylene, chosen for accurate sonic reproduction. All power supply capacitors are the renowned audiophile Panasonic, low ESR, high current capacitors. Power supply diodes are high speed diodes which improve recharge time of the power supply capacitors. Low noise voltage regulator and other low noise power supply techniques are implemented in the design, which all result in excellent audio reproduction.

Pcb layout regarding the flow of power supply and signal path all incorporate highly thought out design techniques with the purpose of maintaining a low noise level, good channel separation and high quality audio reproduction.

Versatility is incorporated in having both a moving magnet (MM) and a moving coil (MC) input. The moving magnet input impedance is set at 47K Ohm and the moving coil input is set at 200 Ohm which suites most cartridge users. If a client requires specific input impedance this can be done as required within available resistor values. Switched input impedance contacts deteriorate sound quality and result in imbalances on the tiny signals that come from the cartridge. Therefore no input impedance setting is incorporated in this design. The input capacitance is set at 56pF for both MM and MC inputs which removes input emi noise but has minimal roll-off in the high frequencies. Again, if a client requires a higher capacitance value that can be fitted as required, with in available capacitor values.