Technology is wonderful, but when it comes to real innovation in Vinyl Playback - something which is completely new, one designer comes to mind more often than any other - that is Tom Evans.
If you know anything about high quality phono playback, you must have heard about the now-legendary Tom Evans Audio Design Groove 20th Anniversary II and Groove+ SRX II phono stages. To give you some sense of how good these are, for comparison, I recently compared the Groove + SRX II phono stage to a Highly touted phono stage which sells for $35,000 The result: The Groove 20th Anniversary II SRX was ten times quieter and sounded infinitely more life-like than the Mega dollar Design in every possible way.