You are getting into a very diifcult and unpredicatble area here. Read any of the many articles about turntable setup, particularly in Stereophile, and you will quickly realise there is no such thing as right.

Phono amps tend to have very large headroom (in my experience) to cater for badly - or well - mastered recordings. The modulation of the groove can cause relatively massive voltage swings and may overload many a line-level input - I believe the Audio Research reference stage can deliver up to 20v on the output. The 562 allows you to set a sensitivity to maximise the use of the bit-depth and minimise the chance of clipping. I have certainly had LPs cause clipping but on rare ocassions. I think this is why many phono stages have variable outputs.

But you also want to ensure that your phono stage is compatible with the particular characteristics of your cartridge - to me this would be of equal concern.

I think this all comes back to listening and auditioning. Buy the MPMax221 because it is a given you need it and it is particularly suited for your DSPs. Then audition a few phono stages until you find something you like the sound of. Then try it with a few torture tracks to see what it does and whether it can handle extremes in a manner you can live with.

In the spirit of Spinaltap, I would like to confirm that I am not involved in the corrupt theft of a global sport.