Aurorasound AFE-10 MM Expander

There are plenty of MM cartridges and many of them have very different characteristics from one another. However, the MM phono inputs of amplifiers or preamps provide a fixed 47 kΩ load impedance and load capacitance.

Vintage MM cartridges, mono MM cartridges, MI cartridges or high output MC cartridges are often ill-adapted to phono inputs. The Aurorasound MM Expander AFE-10 can resolve the problem.

AURORASOUND AFE-10: HOUSING

The nicely built small housing is fully passive! It doesn’t require a power source. There are no noise problems and the shielding is perfect.

The Aurorasound MM Expander AFE-10 includes two potentiometers: the first one adjusts the resistance with six options (47, 23, 15, 6,8, 3,6 and 0.900 kΩ), while the second one adjusts the capacitance with six options as well (0, 47, 100, 220, 330 and 470 pF).

It also features a Mono/Stereo switch and a second switch allowing to cut the ground loop caused by certain cartridges. There’s the traditional orange mute button from Aurorasound devices as well.

The manufacture is very well made. In fact, the manufacturer uses exclusively 1% grade TAKMAN metal foil resistors and WIMA film capacitors part.

AURORASOUND AFE-10: TESTING AND LISTENING

In mono listening, the mono position cancels vertical vibration originating from the cartridge and picks up the lateral signal only. By reducing or cancelling unnecessary vertical signal, we obtain a strong and precise mono sound reproduction with a very low noise level.

Some monaural cartridges may cause hum noise due to the housing and cable ground loop. The GND Lift switch prevents this potential issue.

This type of phono pre-preamp is very useful, most especially with cartridges such as the legendary Shure V15 III requiring 15 kΩ and 330 pF that few MM preamplifiers are able to truly optimise. In fact, this problem also happens with some Grado or Denon cartridges.

The Aurorasound AFE-10 MM Expander is an unusual product completely free from competition! Would recommend.

AWARDS:

Audio Accessory Award - 2022