Further to yesterday's post about discretes vs. ICs, Stan and I had built the first phono stage prototype using the standard integrated circuit op amp of the day, the ubiquitous 741.
The circuit itself was pretty simple. A 741 input stage that connected directly to the phono cartridge, followed by a passive RIAA curve, and then through another 741 op amp for the output stage. Simple, clean, using what we believed to be the state of the art in IC op amps.
So, let's pause for a moment at this juncture and allow me to ramble somewhat on using the accepted standard. To anyone new in a field like we were, the obvious and common thing to do is to use the accepted standard. I mean, why not? If your car needs new tires you go with what everyone else considers the standard. If you're new to cooking you buy what's the accepted best in cooking. If you want to start a loudspeaker company you start with the best off-the-shelf drivers.
Right?
It isn't until you immerse yourself in the field that you begin to see alternatives. And that is when, for some obsessive types (like me and Stan), we begin questioning the "regular kind".
Back to the story.
As we're hauling our little prototype from stereo system to stereo system we were kicking ass on everyone's preamplifiers. That was all about to change when we came up against a brand the we hadn't known about. The Quintessence.
The Quintessence was a new kid on the block, started by Dennis and Sally Had. Dennis, who would later found Cary Audio, was the engineer behind Quintessence. His unit soundly kicked our phono preamplifier in the keister. Wiped it clean. Mopped it up for breakfast. It wasn't even close.
Upon opening the box we discovered the circuitry to be pretty close to the same as ours. Chip IC op amps, power supply, etc.
We horsed around with all manner of tweaks and ideas to compete with this preamplifier but each listening session was another setback. After months of trying we began questioning the core of the product itself, the IC op amps.
Now, conventional wisdom and measurement equipment would tell us that the performance of each op amp should be the same. A 1kHz sine wave through the IC op amps Dennis was using would measure the same as the one we were using. IM, THD, all that would be identical. And, they were. Each preamplifier measured within a tenth of a dB between each other.
WTF?
Our world was about to be shattered.
