2023 Golden Ear: Sutherland Engineering N1 Preamplifier

$8000

It’s been roughly six years since I reviewed Ron Sutherland’s N1, which I ended up purchasing. Over that span the N1 has been in and out of my system as other gear gets reviewed, but each time I return to it I’m reminded of why I wanted to own it. Having made phono preamps a specialty focus, Ron Sutherland naturally conceived the N1 for the listener whose main passion is spinning vinyl. The design is also (proudly) something of a throwback. You see the N1 designation is a wink to “in-one” (as in all-in-one) preamps, the way most preamplifiers were conceived in the pre-CD (or streaming) era, in which the phonostage, linestage, and power supply are housed in the same chassis. Stacked, dual-mono phono boards occupy fully half of the unit’s interior space; the other half is also devoted to stacked dual-mono circuitry for volume control, input selection, and power-supply filtering and regulation. Additionally, and despite much of the industry’s preference for balanced designs, the N1’s circuitry is single-ended, as Sutherland prefers the simplicity and shorter signal paths that classic single-ended circuits provide. Moreover, the N1’s barebones design interface remains a rare marvel. A single knob controls all the unit’s functions. When the preamp is muted, you turn it for input selection. Unmuted controls volume. That’s it. The knob resides on a glass panel, beside which is a retro-cool-looking, amber/orange Nixie-tube numeric display showing the input number and volume level. One other thoughtful feature: The N1 has something labeled Input 6; in fact, this triggers a built-in white-noise generator designed to hasten the preamp’s break-in period. Or, if selected with your power amp on, to assist with the break-in time of your entire system. As to the N1’s sound, it is clean, pure, uncluttered, open, neutral—meaning tonally in the middle of warm and cool—always at the service of the music. It has matched flawlessly with power amps from the VTL S-200 to the Zesto Eros 500 Select monoblocks I’m in the process of reviewing. What Sutherland has created with N1 is high fidelity in the finest sense of that term, and it continues to serve me well. (266)