SNEAK PEEK: Chord Electronics Huei Phono Preamp

Chord Electronics Huei Phono Preamp: https://audioadvice.io/2MXJeQx | Chat with us online: https://www.audioadvice.com | Call for sales and support: 888.899.8776 |

Chord Electronics is proud to introduce their second phono preamp. The Huei is crafted in the UK to provide a pure amplification path for your phono cartridge. For over 30 years, Chord Electronics has been known for circuit design that pulls you closer to the music by keeping the signal flow as close as possible to the original. The Huei is designed to work with both moving coil and moving magnet cartridges.

The Huei is machined from a solid aircraft-grade aluminum billet, and is very similar in outward appearance to their Qutest DAC. The Huei is fairly small in size making it very easy to place near your turntable. One of the design goals of the Huei was to keep each channel perfectly in balance with zero difference in the gain or cartridge loading. This helps account for the wonderful soundstage the Huei can portray on a properly set up vinyl playback system. They do this through their unique power supplies and perfectly matched components in the signal path that have made Chord Electronics famous.

Like many of their other products, the Huei includes a top mounted viewing window which gives you a cool look inside the chassis to see the high quality parts and layout. Chord Electronics have used polychromatic control buttons on many of their recent products and the Huei continues that tradition. These illuminated round front panel buttons give you direct access to gain, impedance, selecting MM or MC, and engaging the built in rumble filter. A quick glance at the manual will allow you to match up the color to the desired selection.

For moving coil cartridges, the Huei adds a pretty unique feature to the loading adjustments. In designing the Huei, they tested a large variety of moving coil cartridges and discovered some designs had a slight high frequency ringing. Each possible loading setting has an additional identically loaded setting that adds in 2.2 µF of loading to reduce the ringing. Another pretty cool feature of the Huei is the fact it has balanced outputs in addition to the standard RCA jacks.

Supported cartridges:

Moving magnet and moving coil

The Huei will be compatible with just about any type of phono cartridge as the loading range is very wide for moving coils. You have a choice of 3,700, 1000, 470, 320, 150, or 100 ohms and each of these has an option to add the 2.2 µF of loading to damp some ringing cartridges. The quick front panel direct access with make it really easy for listeners to experiment to find the best setting for their system. This will make it super simple to start at the recommended loading point for a cartridge then experiment up or down one step to fine tune the Huei to a cartridge. The Huei also remembers where you had things set when you turn it off, so there is not need to reset the loading each time.

The rumble filter will come in very handy for situations where your turntable has to be placed very close to your speakers. Engaging it in a case like this should not only reduce any background rumble, but also improve clarity.

The adjustable gain is the most flexible we have ever seen. Both moving coil and moving magnet cartridges vary quite a bit in their output. It is best to adjust the gain of a phono stage to match the output of the cartridge. The Huei gives you a very wide range of adjustments for both moving coil and moving magnet with a 41db swing between the least and most gain with changes in very slight steps of mostly 1db in the midpoint of the gain adjustment.

The Huei appears to be another great example of Chord Electronics thinking outside the box to produce a super flexible product that should greatly improve the performance of any vinyl playback system.

Inputs:

1x Stereo unbalanced RCA input

Outputs:

1x Stereo unbalanced RCA output

1x Stereo balanced XLR output

Huei is a stylish, practical and high-performance solution for integrating turntables into Chord Electronics’ (and other) systems and features both unbalanced (RCA) and balanced outputs (XLR) with RCA inputs. A high-quality 12V external power supply is also supplied.

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