Of course for the tech things like azimuth adjusting, you also need a good test LP or two. also viewed"), but do use the website for the the upgraded units. The Puffin was first introduced in 2018, and the $489 base unit is readily available on Amazon (I discovered it because "Customers. Parks apparently names his products after birds-his first phono stage was dubbed the Budgie-in much the same spirit that John DeVore names his loudspeakers after apes, and Audioquest names their stuff after everything else. The box is powder-coat cast metal, the top plastic and at about 6" x 3 3/4" x 2 3/4" it's about 1/4 the size of a box of cereal and weighs about a pound. That may explain the rather pedestrian industrial design of the device-it looks to me something like a kit-build circuit tester. The man behind the Parks Audio Puffin is Shannon Parks of Poulsbo, Washington, who had been active in the DIY audio community for 20 years, and was selling stuff on the side like Dyna ST-70 boards before starting Parks Audio.
#PUFFIN STUFF INSTALL#
Plus, it ships all burned in and set up for a MM cartridge bottom line, it's easier to install a Puffin than to make a programmable thermostat behave. The Puffin's analog is an "Easy" starter menu and a "Full" menu version for strutting its stuff. Listen, I'm an old school film photographer, and the Puffin interface reminded me of the menu control wheel and menu "set" button on my digital cameras: you quickly learn what basic camera settings work in a given situation, and pretty much ignore the "features" that you deem irrelevant (until you need them). The knob cycles through the tasks, the right button selects the user's choices (the left button is power on/off and pause). Enough so that the user interface-a simple two line LED display of multiple options and settings-can at first seem intimidating. That, according to the manual, means the input signal goes to an adjustable analog gain stage, is then digitized at 24/96kHz resolution by a Texas Instruments PCM1808 ADC, the heavy lifting (i.e, DSP) is handled by an ARM Cortex M4 80MHZ with 32-bit FPU, and the processed signal is converted back to analog by a Texas Instruments PCM5102A DAC.Īnd what a couple chips can accomplish for analog is downright staggering. The Puffin just brings the power of the algorithm to analog playback. Almost all mass-market LPs produced in the last several decades already have some digital DNA in the recording, mixing, and mastering process. If that heresy has ruffled your feathers, you probably should cancel your Tidal subscription. That's right, we're talking about a digital phono stage here.
#PUFFIN STUFF FULL#
Hint? The full and proper name of the device is: Puffin DSP by Parks Audio. If that got your attention, you might be wondering how a small box with only two buttons and one knob could manage to do all this. "Magic" gentle de-clicker impulse noise reduction.Stereo, Mono, Left or Right only outputs.Absolute Polarity Inversion for both channels or independently.The Puffin incorporates a suite of turntable set-up, adjustment, and playback tools: Default MC loading of 200 Ohms (but see more below).įrom there, it gets interesting.Standard 47K Ohm/50pF loading for MM cartridges.User selectable gain from below 40 dB for MM to 72 dB for MC, in I dB steps, thus accommodating essentially any MM or MC phono cartridge.One pair each gold-plated RCA inputs and outputs.But for starters, the Puffin does do the phono stage basics: So why all the Etc's? Because, while nominally an affordable MM/MC phono stage, the Parks Audio Puffin incorporates a flock of features and functions simply unavailable in phono stages commanding ten times the asking price ($489 to $639 depending on options).
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