Delphini Mono Phono Amplifiers

Iso-Tonic - Trichord/Michell Delphini Monoblocks
After ten happy years, Michell ISO owners now have something to upgrade to - the brand new Delphini.
David Price imbibes the top of the range monoblocks.

The ISO's importance cannot be understated. It arrived at a time when many thought vinyl was about to die, and blew the oceans apart with it's amazingly tight, detailed sound. Analogue would never be the same again. A decade later, enter the Michell Delphini, hoping to do the same all over again. Except it isn't so much an updated ISO as a brand new design from the pen of Trichord Research's Graham Fowler.

It is a radically different beast to Tom Evans' baby. Graham's paid religious attention to power supplies, meaning each monoblock has its own dedicated PSU, with two completely independent an isolated DC supply circuits for positive and negative voltage rails. The specially made low noise audio 160VA toroidal transformer is followed by two bridge rectifiers built with ultra fast, soft recovery diodes for low RF generation, and the bridges are followed by massive RC/RC filtering using no less than 16 1000uF capacitors. This all provides extremely low noise power supply lines for the main amplifier units. A silver plated copper power cable completes the PSU.

The Delphini amplifiers themselves have further onboard regulation - four ultra low noise, wide bandwidth voltage regulation circuits to be precise, one for each pair of the two gain stages. Between these is the fully passive RIAA equalisation, which uses high performance 'MCAP' film and foil polypropylene capacitors and FET and current feedback technology. There's also a servo circuit around the second gain stage to keep DC offset at the output to a minimum, which also uses MCAPs.

In the true Michell style, Delphini comes with an Allen key. Don't worry, unlike the turntables, the electronics are pre-assembled and the Allen key's only for opening the case to changes cartridge settings. There's a choice between 33R, 100R, 330R and 1K loading, and <0.25mV, 0.25 - 0.4mV and 0.4 - 6mV. In short the Delphini will take any MC around, even ones with the lowliest of outputs.

From the moment you plug it (them) in, you realise the Delphini is as startling as we all once thought the ISO was. To put it into context, I've only ever heard one phono preamp sound better - the Connoisseur Systems 3.0. This uses air-dielectric technology, takes ninety hours to build, was constructed by Lyra's Jonathan Carr and costs over 15,000. Considering the Michell will set you back 1895, it's quite a bargain. With Dynavector's superb, ultra low output 17D2/II MC, the Delphini sang it's heart out. Without so much as a hint of the ISO HR's chrome-plated upper midband and lack of stage depth, it proved supremely neutral and gave a remarkably open window to the music.

I'm loathe to use adjectives like 'clean', because that almost suggests the Delphini does some tidying of its own. It doesn't, it just rips open the curtains and lets the daylight in. Throughout the listening session, I found myself constantly being amazed by (a) my Orbe turntable (b) my dog-eared old records (c) my Yamaha NS1000M loudspeakers. All these things I knew to be good, but never realised they were this good or - rather - this amazing. The combination of analogue recorded and mastered vinyl and the Delphini monos is fearsome, and blows even the best 24/96 PCM into the weeds. Like the ISO before it, it throws out vast tracts of detail, but unlike its forebear manages to be effortlessly musical and beguiling too.

Rather than being a tiringly in-your-face performer, the new Michell simply does what's right in the circumstances. As the opening guitar in the Beatles' ' Here Comes The Sun' plays in, you just hear a sweet, natural, unassuming acoustic guitar. Then the song bursts into life and fireworks explode all around. The speakers disappear, George's voice hangs from mid air, you can feel every last movement of Paul's fingers on his Hohnerbass. Little Hammond organ flourishes come from nowhere, exquisite harmonies pop up behind you from rich. Resonant voices and suddenly Ringo's the best drummer in the world, teasing his kit like nothing on earth.

An auspicious start then, but cue up The Pistols' 'Never Mind The Bollocks' and it gets even better. This dirge-like recording bursts into life with some of the tightest, most rhythmic guitar playing I've heard committed to vinyl. Then There is the beautifully smooth, old fashioned analogue fuzzboxes (digital effects pedals no thanks), hi-hat cymbals with a shimmer to die for, and an oddly distinctive voice snarling at you from the middle of your listening room. Could this be Mr John Lydon' 'Submission' never sounded so good.

The Delphini's masterstroke is that its neutrality predisposes it to every type of music. It doesn't rely on euphonic coloration to make jazz sound groovy, or harsh transistor edge to give The Jam some bite. You can talk of its super-grippy bass, fantastic rhythmic ability and tunefulness, the walk-around soundstaging, its forensic detail excavation abilities and the utterly even handed tonality. You can say you've never heard such ISO HR-like grip, Linto-like transparency and EAR834P-like sweetness together in one package. But in the end the only way to describe it is by saying it doesn't really add or subtract much. The Michell Delphini is an analogue tour-de-force. Short of winning the lottery on rollover week, I can't imagine vinyl sounding better.

World Verdict: ****
The best phono stage at or anywhere near the price, bar none.