Rega Mercury

Product Description

Experience the Art of Silence: Hand-Built Rega Mercury Reference Preamplifier Is Designed for No-Compromise Performance, Has Fully Discrete Symmetrical Circuitry and Abundant Audiophile Features 

The Rega Mercury Referen preamplifier is schooled in the art of silence. Designed, engineered, and built in Britain as a no-compromise unit, it is the largest (by component count) and most complex electronic product Rega has created in its lauded history. Housed in a custom CNC-machined aluminum case, Mercury boasts an exceptionally low noise floor that helps account for its thrilling dynamic range, tonality, and clarity. It captures the most nuanced details in your recordings and lets them blossom with their intended colors, textures, and intricacies, all the while giving you extraordinary flexibility and usability.

Everything for the 31-pound Mercury, which sports parallel connected Wolfson DACs with S/PDIF and USB inputs, as well as a discrete headphone amplifier, begins with the architecture. As attested by its completist-minded connectivity — four sets of RCA inputs, one pair of balanced inputs, a record input, a record output, one pair of balanced outputs, a pre-out, two coaxial inputs, and two optical outputs, plus a 12V trigger — this is no ordinary device.

Mercury uses a discrete, differentially driven, fully symmetrical, high-linearity and-bandwidth common base voltage amplifier throughout the signal path. Each stage has complementary, high-current drive capability Class A output stage amplifiers — symmetrical amplifier circuit topology that provides the necessary voltage and current drive to enable Mercury to perform with minimum distortion. Critical amplification stages use Linear Systems ultra-low noise FET transistors in the differential quad pair input stages. The signal path from the analog output of the DAC ICs to the output of the preamplifier is entirely symmetrical. And the Alps Blue Velvet RK27 volume control is paired with symmetrical common base driver stage amplifiers. The main outputs are DC coupled to eliminate output coupling capacitors.

Anchored by a generously rated toroidal transformer feeding a linear power supply, Mercury’s discrete, symmetrical tracking power supply uses fast diodes and low-noise voltage reference. Each stage has its own localized capacitance, multiplier power supply, and LED-referenced current generators for voltage references. To maximize headroom, Mercury leverages a higher-than-normal power supply voltage that comes in 60% higher than that normally found in high-end preamplifiers.

A similar statement can be made about the headphone amplifier. It essentially operates like a mini-Solis power amplifier as it uses the same symmetrical common base driver stage circuitry. Plus, it touts high-voltage and current-drive capability, enabling the headphone output to drive both low- and high-impedance headphones with ease.

When it comes to protection, the 3.8 x 17 x 15-inch (HWD) Mercury has an extensive circuit that monitors the DC output levels of the main and headphone output. It works in conjunction with the supervisory circuit. Mercury also uses microcontroller-based slow start and standby, and a power-supply supervisory circuit to power-up the generously rated toroidal transformer from standby, keeping the in-rush current to a minimum. In another sign Mercury overlooks nothing, the front-panel display uses a IPS LCD display with a linear DC adjustable backlight to eliminate noise. The slow start, power-supply supervisory microcontroller, protection circuits, and display all have their own dedicated power supply isolating it from the audio.

We’d also be remiss if we didn’t go into depth on the digital input circuitry. The asynchronous USB input is galvanically isolated with its own dedicated power supply, with extensive re-clocking of both the PCM and DSD clocks and data that is recovered from the USB input. The USB input has two high-stability oscillator modules providing low-jitter clocks for both professional and domestic sample rates. And the S/PDIF input uses a Wolfson digital interface receiver and PLL, recovering low-jitter data and clocks from the incoming S/PDIF data. The recovered PCM and DSD data feeds the two aforementioned parallel-connected Wolfson DACs, which then in turn feed the post-DAC symmetrical analog filter and amplifier stage. The analog amplifier/filter uses Linear Systems ultra-low noise FET transistors in the differential pair input stage.

Rega Mercury Highlights