Devialet 120

[ArnoNYC]

Still looking at getting into the world of Devialet and have the opportunity of a 120 for a reasonable price, so a question. I’m still a big vinyl listener, but how good is the phono stage? If I were to get it and then have it upgraded to a 220, does the phono stage get upgraded too?

I've used a 120 with a turntable during several years, with vinyls being the original reason for my amp purchase. The setup was in our living room in an old NYC building, nothing specifically intended for music listening. Still, vinyls sounded absolutely great (provided that the records were of good quality  ). The only issue that I had was an occasional background noise which was fixed after I disabled the amp WiFi input.

I since upgraded it to a 220 Pro with CI, a decision mostly motivated by the better connectivity (and the price difference between a 140 Pro upgrade and a 220 Pro upgrade was definitely in favor of the 220). And yes, the 220 comes with a dedicated phono stage, but to be honest the difference was not stellar (but it frees some amp inputs...)

From my standpoint, unless you have a 10 k turntable and a very dedicated setup, I would save some $ and give the 120 a shot, as it's an amazing product for its price (especially on the preowned market).