Sutherland Club House

OMC said:
Having owned the Sutherland 20/20 and the Duo I can say from experience that Ron Sutherland is a phono stage genius. From the Vibe to the Loco every step in his line is superb and a bargain as well.
I love my Aesthetix Rhea Signature with its ten tubes but will soon be playing around with a Little Loco mk2 and a rewound low impedance Benz Ruby Z to introduce myself to the world of transimpedance phonography. Like @Mather I find that tubes can be a source of dyspepsia. Sutherland products can be a set and forget it source of great pleasure.
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Please do share your experience of the Little Loco! I’ve been eyeing it for a while and waiting for someone on N&G to go first!
 
ngower said:
For those of you with an Insight, what did you move from? I have a Parasound XRM which is *fine* and I'm in no rush to move on from it. But, my phono stage is probably the last element in my system I can improve upon without spending ludicrous amounts of money. This is a move that's a ways away--I've gotta pay off new speakers first--so I'm mostly just curious how stark a change it was or wasn't? In other words, if you had a $500 or less phono stage, and you went to an Insight, was it a big enough leap that you felt the purchase was justified?
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I moved from the built-in pre in my Uturn to an insight. I remember noticing that all the noise I was used to was gone. It felt like an orchestra was playing in a pitch-black void. I still have and love my insight.
 
ngower said:
Never found my XRM to be noisy. Not sure how much of a change it is from the USB, but I know a lot of impressions of it suggested it's a relatively close baby brother of the JC3 Jr sonically.

Maybe I'll see if I can find a local dealer to let me home audition one.
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I started out with an old Garrard changer and a Shure M92E cartridge; the Zphono USB was my first phono.

It was fine, but when I upgraded to a VPI Traveler with a 2M Blue cartridge, something seemed to be lacking. The Insight cured that sense of anything being lacking. But, I don’t know if I would have had that same sense of leaping forward using the Insight with the Garrard/Shure combo.

In short, what’s upstream of the Insight will also determine how much better your system sounds with it.
 
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Angsty said:
I started out with an old Garrard changer and a Shure M92E cartridge; the Zphono USB was my first phono.

It was fine, but when I upgraded to a VPI Traveler with a 2M Blue cartridge, something seemed to be lacking. The Insight cured that sense of anything being lacking. But, I don’t know if I would have had that same sense of leaping forward using the Insight with the Garrard/Shure combo.

In short, what’s upstream of the Insight will also determine how much better your system sounds with it.
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Oh absolutely.
 
Angsty said:
I have developed an incorrigible hum in my system in the past few months when using a SUT with the integrated amp phono. Thinking seriously tonight about reinstalling the Insight as I never had hum issues with it.
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Were you able to isolate the actual cause of the hum? Same issue with my VPI Classic 3, need to follow up with them after the holidays.
 
spydrwebb44 said:
Were you able to isolate the actual cause of the hum? Same issue with my VPI Classic 3, need to follow up with them after the holidays.
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I’m sure the issue was a ground loop and the insertion of the phonostage broke the loop. My turntable was not malfunctioning; it is a matter of how it was interacting with other devices.

I rearranged my room a few months ago and that’s when it first started - it became subjectively worse over time. My subwoofer caught the brunt of the 60 hz hum.

Adding an extension cord to plug it into the same outlet as the rest of my components may have helped, too, but I did not take that step independent of the phono insertion.
 
kvetcha said:
iirc Ron Sutherland himself only offers it because people kept asking for it, not because he feels it‘s necessary. I believe it was designed and built by a third party.
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Why do people keep asking for it? FOMO or because someone who’s done it and finds it to be better and shared their experience? Fun game we play as “audiophiles!”
 
OMC said:
Why do people keep asking for it? FOMO or because someone who’s done it and finds it to be better and shared their experience? Fun game we play as “audiophiles!”
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People are convinced a linear power supply is better/quiter than a switch mode power supply.

I’m not convinced with a Sutherland design. All of the capacitors are there to clean up/quiet the incoming power.
 
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