Sony TA-E90es

Hi here is my review of SONY TA E90ES Preamp. First let me state after reading a lot reviews in various HiFI magazines here's my summary: it is the "last effort Sony made to stay in HiFi audio business. Like all HiFi manufactures by the end o 80's all made cost cuts in their productions. Sony at least kept a good design and materials to the end (aluminum chassis and the great "champagne" colour which I adore but also kept a very reasonable technical standard so called ES (Evaluated Standard) . the TAE90ES is a great pre-amp made withFET/MOSFET and alps potenciometer. Not going into too much details it has a huge audio response 3 Hz -300kHz in the line inputs and RIAA is 20Hz-20KHz within +/- 0.2dB but unfortunately without load correction for MC Cartridge. That.s the only weakness in this amp. So if you have a vinyl collection and a very good cartridge then of course it will be OK when you hook it up to MC input but the setting is kind of average so you will not get the best match to your cartridge.
I use both CD player / Turntable as a source of music material and the sound is just great. This pre-amp drives my tube amp with 845 triode power tube in SET config and sometimes I switch to my monster sony TA N1 amp. THe pre-amp has no problem driving them. The sound stage is huge in both amps and the bass / treble are to my subjective opinion Hi-end
bass controlled and high's silky smooth. Thanks to the FET/MOSFET output of the pre-amp details in the music stand out and sometimes I am amazed that with other pre-amps I had not noticed it before.
If you have a chance to get it relatively cheap. Then do not hesitate. Just for the record I compared the Sony pre amp with other pre-amps : I had eg ONKYO P388 / Pass X10 / Aodioresearch PS14 all have more or less have there own signature but Sony is just after PassLabs and better than AR by the way PassLabs uses almost same schematics of FET/MOSFET as SONY IN TAE90ES I wonder who was first to use this technology?. Anyway once you hear this pre-amp you will apprciate it and the sound. It is very neutral in passing the music material from the sources I hook up. Other pre amps gave some coloration to sound. This Sony does not
Enjoy the music.
Greg
PS you may wonder why i use Sony instead of Passlabs simply it was not mine, Ijust had it to compare it with TAE90ES. IT was the closest to the sound I wanted to get in my setup. I do not want to spend more money to get what i want to hear. and I got it with SONY TAE90ES

Thank you for the review - it is a nice addition to the page!