EAR 868 Preamplifier (Brilliant)

This includes a magnificent Phono Stage!

Pride of Craftsmanship

Encased in solid built construction, to a quality you wouldexpect. Each front fascia is CNC milled for a high level of precision typically associated with finely crafted watches. It’s 10mm thick fascia is hand-finished in flawless chrome and is matched by it’s clutter-free interface. Four gold or chrome finished controls dial in the experience. We have a heritage of crafting products for more than 30 years and if that wasn’t enough, it’s good to know that its designed and made in England.

Breadth of Capability

Handling a variety of analogue sources, the EAR 868 is designed to be the most capable of analogue pre-amps. With 5 analogue inputs, connect your Hi-Fi to the latest devices, like the EAR Dac 4. Aided further by its studio heritage to bring you a pair of balanced inputs in the form of XLRs, you can connect to a whole host of devices you never thought imaginable.

The additional built-in phono stage in the EAR 868PL edition becomes its own when connecting your pickup. You’ll notice your turntable’s Moving Magnet cartridges come
alive with grace and with the addition of a Moving Coil toggle switch, the 868PL can support a wide range of cartridges.

Built on Excellence

Engineered on the same core technologies as the studio grade brother, the EAR 912. The EAR 868’s smaller size may mean theres less of it but there’s nothing less to it. It’s still big on performance with circuitry designed by Tim de Paravicini. The 868 utilises the same reliable PCC88s in a configuration of four. The carefully built circuit boards enable performance that is low in distortion, low in noise but full of sound. Leaving reliable service that is suitable for high end professional tasks.

Inside Story

Every decision is considered. There’s no power brick. The 868 has it’s own built in power supply that reduces clutter, leaving visible just a single power cord. It’s great for performance too, keeping hum at bay and allowing for the inclusion of a high capacity design. Both the output transformers and power transformers have been tailored for the 868. Each transformers is hand wound to exacting specifications that ultimately produce it’s exhilarating sound. Design that is intentional and rigorous.

Listening Trials
Component burn in and pre conditioning before the audition was emphasized by the distributor, EAR U.S.A. Consequently, when I received the amplifier it had nearly one hundred hours on it. That is not unusual for a hollow state component and during my listening sessions it sounded better after it was on for approximately 20 minutes. Most of the time the EAR 868 fed the input of my workhorse 320 Watt Sanders ESL transistor amplifier. Anecdotally, it takes an unusually long 20 seconds for the sound to gradually fade away after you turn off the preamplifier power.

Initially I warmed things up playing my Sangean HDT-1 Digital tuner. That is before listening to my Marantz 8400 universal CD player. Everything sounded quite accurate and normal, as there was very little audible component character to describe. With all line sources, the sound is moderately warm just as a very modern tube amplifier should sound. About a week into my auditioning something difficult to describe caught my attention. Like a light bulb turning on, I became aware of a subtle quality contained in the music. For lack of a proper familiar audiophile phrase, the music became more “relatable”. It seemed I could relate to it better on an emotional level and the performers sounded more lifelike. A big part of this was the conceptualization of a dimensional sound stage inhabited by people separate but still acting in concert. The phrasing was real and the music conveyed a sense of warm life. These qualities are often spoken about but still they are very elusive and difficult to capture. But after all isn’t that the raison d’être for a hollow state amplifier.

A Tale Of Two Personalities
The EAR 868 line stage is a revelation and easily one of the best I have heard! Now lets go vinyl. Thinking my Shure V15 Type V-MR would represent a typical Moving Magnet cartridge, I went with it. It is spec’ed at three milliVolts output and requires a 47 kOhm load, that should make it a perfect match for the EAR 868 Moving Magnet phono stage. Incidentally, am not a big fan of this cartridge, competent yes, but slightly boring, it is all of that. I cleaned and spun a vinyl two dollar flea market purchase of: Sting, The Dream Of The Blue Turtles [A&M SP-3750 ] I know this to be a good recording, I already had the CD. Side one, first song, If You Love Somebody Set Them Free. The first few notes got me to sit up in my chair. Wow, never knew a Shure V-15 could do what my ears told me it was doing. Dynamic speed swinging dynamic contrasts deep wide soundstage echoing reverberation along with the separation of backing vocals. It had drive, pace, and excitement. You could clearly hear the metal disks shimmering sound of the tambourine.  Like a starving man looking at a picture of a Big Mac I grabbed another black disk. This was a vinyl version of my long time CD reference Basia Time and Tide. But this time it was Time And Tide the vinyl version [Epic Stereo – FE 40767-1].

Again the first cut on side one, Promises, where the opening line is ‘promises, we forget about our promises’. This was no aberration; once again the excitement is there with driving pace and articulate speed. You can hear the details and power in the bass lines that is not complete on the CD. As a matter of fact it was necessary to dial down the separate bass amplifier that is built into my Onix Rocket Strata Mini four way speakers. After listening to these albums I began to wonder what after all these years could explain a Shure V15 coming alive like this. This is a cartridge and a system that I know very well. Logically the only component that was different was driving force of the EAR 868 preamplifier.

Naturally I expect better performance from my moving coil cartridges in direct comparison with one of my moving magnet cartridges. Once again, like the Shure V15 V-MR, I tried to select a relatively inexpensive cartridge that would be almost universal among vinyl loving audiophiles. This has to be the $225 Denon DL103. We must remember this is a moving coil cartridge made for the Japanese Broadcasting Company 50 years ago. Its numbers are legion and is still being manufactured today within Japan.

After following the pains in cartridge alignment and setup, I cued the Denon 103 on Sting’s song “If You Love Somebody Set Them Free”. This same track, as played using the Shure V15 V-MR, didn’t sound quite as good. Something very unexpected was messing with the sound. It is not that the Denon 103 wasn’t performing properly. It was just that there was less detail as compared to the Shure V15 V-MR. An e-mail to Dan Meinwald, the EAR USA distributor, affirmed that I had the correct Denon 103 resistive loading set with the phono printed circuit board jumpers set at 40. The Denon 103 just did not have the transient speed and dynamic contrasts of the V15. In addition, what had been an expansive and deep center stage had moved slightly closer. Thinking the set up must be at fault, I tried readjusting the vertical tracking angle. Alas, raising and lowering the arm position did not seem to have much effect. During this adjustment process the reason became obvious. The Denon cartridge basically has a round stylus profile. It is referred to as a Modified Conical stylus. It simply cannot extract the very same fine details of the hyper critical Shure V15 V-MR (Micro Ridge) stylus.

At this point I needed a third opinion. The truth and nothing but the truth comes in the form of a not so typical Haniwa HCTR 01 MC cartridge. The Haniwa Audio System HCTR 01 is a low impedance moving coil I reviewed for Enjoy the Music.com in June 2012. This $5000 MC was designed by Dr. Tetsuo Kubo and has a bare minimum of wire turns in an attempt to minimize cartridge inductance and its detrimental phase shifting effects. Without getting too technical, its input impedance is only 0.8 Ohms and inductance is 1.3 micro henrys with an output voltage of 0.35 mV. After shifting the loading jumpers, the loading options chosen during this review was set at 12. There is one other pertinent fact; the HCTR 01 uses a critical profile line contact stylus.

The Verdict Is In
The EAR 868 line stage is capable of sound reproduction nearing the state of the art. It is the phono stage that undoubtedly sets the unit as ‘state-of-the-art’. In combination with the Haniwa HCTR01, it raises the level of performance beyond any other phono stage that I have ever heard. To my ears within the system, the Shure V15 did indeed extract more dynamic life out of vinyl records. I was able to hear deeper into the subtle details of the recorded music. Let us refer again to that cut by Sting “If You Love Somebody Set Then Free”. Within the orchestral arrangement, it was easy to groove to the sound of a tambourine as it drive the tempo forward. The Haniwa HCTR01 not only conveys the startling transient impact on the tambourine, I could better delineate the sound of the tambourine’s individual metal disks hitting each other. The explanation must lie in EAR’s very ingenious combination of a tube phono stage that send the signal to a third stage of amplification and two dedicated moving coil step up transformers. EAR’s 868 moving coil transformers provide dead quite amplification plus serve as the resistive load seen by the cartridge. The Ear 868 works beautifully.

Foot Notes
During the EAR 868 evaluation I made a few observations. The first is about system interconnects. The sound changed slightly switching between coaxial and balanced wiring to the power amplifier. My balanced generic microphone cable produced a slightly softer warmer but larger and deeper soundstage. The coaxial wiring was via a Nordost Red Dawn used as my reference. This provided more dynamic contrast. I realize that I’m describing the characteristics of my interconnect cables and of course anyone who chooses to purchase this unit should conduct cable optimization. I used the 868 preamplifier to feed the digital power supply of the Rogue Sphinx integrated amplifier. The result: a little uneven response, the bass was more prominent than my reference, but still displayed the wonderful dynamic energy. Additionally the EAR 868 was employed feeding the tube powered amplifier portion of my PrimaLuna Prologue 2 Integrated amplifier. Result a little less dynamic contrasts. Ultimately I preferred my transistor reference, the Sanders ESL power amplifier, which proved to be the best match.

Next: Placing silicon damping rings on all four tubes had little effect on the sound. Also, Soft Sorbethane feet under the chassis did nothing to alter the sound. Additionally, my VPI Magic Bricks had no effect on the sound. Conclusion: This seems to be one solidly made preamplifier.

Musings
Many recordings passed through my system both Black Disc and Compact Disc. Indeed the sound quality of the EAR / Yoshino 868 always conformed to GIGO (Garbage In Garbage Out). The CD sound quality proved to be better than my reference system. The CD sources used were more consistent in that it did not vary as much as the quality of the vinyl sources. To minimize one possible variable, I based my assessment on one very good vinyl recording. This reviewing thing has a definite down side, and that is I will be parting with the EAR / Yoshino 868 tube preamplifier with phonostage that perhaps represents the state-of-the-art not just for today, but for a long time to come.

As always enjoy the music and from yours truly, Semper Hi-Fi