I put $2350 into my Parasound Halo JC-3 phono stage. Granted, that's probably more than a lot of (most?) vinyl lovers are going to pay for their phono stage, but I don't know anyone with a turntable valued at more than $500 who's running it into a phono input on a receiver or a pre-pro. They've got a dedicated separate phono stage device of some sort.

So by all means, delete the phono input that's not going to be used anyway, and save the money.

But this is all irrelevant chatter, isn't it? Isn't the consensus here that the hardware is set, and it's got what's being described as an "audiophile-level phono input?"