If you do a Google search for Famous Arias then you will probably see O Sole Mio or Un Bel Di and the good old Nessun Dorma....but it won't be long before the search will show the Rega Aria!

We have had time to give it a good workout today, and (not to our surprise) it is a cracker!

Using a Rega Brio-R amplifier and a pair of B&W CM1 speakers (as we used for the customer demo) we first used a RP3 straight into the Brio-R which itself has a great internal phono stage. The next comparison was then the RP6 which was clearly a big step above the 3....... then came the Aria...... "where did all that come from?" was the reaction!..

You could expect the Aria to be used in systems of far greater value than this but the question was "what would a good phono stage do to this system?" so that's what we tried.... and it worked a treat. So much so that if this is similar to your existing system then such and upgrade should certainly be considered before maybe upgrading the speakers for example. I can't wait to try it with our RP8 when that arrives!

Using a few Blues tracks and then a bit of Elvis Costello to cheer ourselves up we found it just had a brilliant groove (sorry about that one)... all the normal improvements you would have expected are there but the biggest thing is the foot tapping factor - just great (not on the Costello of course - that was far more dangerous - remove all sharp objects from the room!)...