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AT ART 1000 vs London Reference vs Ana Mighty Sound 103.3

I have eagerly desired to hear the ART 1000 every since I first heard about (2016?) and finally I decided to have one sent out to me to satisfy my curiosity. I have read many things about this unique design, all good. People have compared its dynamism to the London, going as far as to state that it's capable of explosive dynamics. I listened to the unit on my Technics SL 1200 GAE with both my AMR PH 77 (MU 6900 tubes and AMR TriCore Capacitors installed) and my SPL Phonos. I used the LP Gear Zupreme headshell and the Audio Technica AT-LH 18/OCC headshell.

First off this cartridge in the AT headshell is a thing of beauty, a real functional piece of art (no pun intended :). I literally took photos of it on my TT as it just looked so gorgeous.

The ART did not take to the LP Zupreme very well with the sound becoming a bit cooler and taking on an almost strident nature. 
 
I found the ART to be a very fluid and refined cartridge, it reveals a massive amount of information from the groove. All in all I spent about a solid 20 or more hours intensely listening and fine tuning the cartridge to reveal the best it had to offer. It is a bit to the right of neutral, i.e. I find it to be a bit warm and it does instill a bit of lushness to the music. This may be welcome in some systems that may err to the left of neutral or are a bit sterile. 

I listened to music by Jacintha (Fire and Rain, James Taylor Tribute), Julie London, Dianna Krall, Chasing the Dragons Espana, Joss Stone, Stevie Ray Vaughn (45, Couldn't Stand the Weather from the 12 album boxed set), Stacey Kent and many others. 

It sounded lovely, and that's where I started having issues. I simply could not become engaged with the music that I know so well. My 103R is engaging, my 103.3 is engaging as is my London and Anna. The Art caused me to sit there and listen and wait and wait and wait for the magic. It never happened. I wanted to like this cartridge so so much but in the end I simply could not connect with its take on the musical spectrum.

I compared it to the London and let me go on record and state that if anyone tells you that this cartridge has London like dynamics, don't ever listen to anything they convey to you concerning hi end audio without listening for yourself. It is NO WHERE near the London as far as dynamics, immediacy or aliveness. It is more refined than the London but worlds away from that live feel that the London can so easily evoke. 

Comparing the ART to the 103.3 and 103R I found the 103R to be a bit rough sounding in direct comparison and yet, it makes my foot tap and makes me smile. The 103.3 does what the 103R does only so much better and far more refined. At the end of the day the 103.3 was preferred (for my ears), it simply plays with nearly the same level of refinement as the ART, but not quite, and yet the openness and aliveness it presents is far more engaging. I found myself leaving the 103.3 on for longer periods of time during my comparative cartridge swap outs.

I would sum it up as follows; I find that the ART has a sort of hi-fi-ish sound. It makes the music sound a little processed to my ears. Some people like this sound, I am not one of them. I would attribute this same quality to the Air Tight PC 1 Supreme, but not the PC 1. I find that the PC 1 Supreme has that same sort of hi-fi-ish sound where as the standard PC 1 does not and to my ears, sounds better than the Supreme. 

All in all this is a beautifully made device that will, I have no doubt, sound sublime in some systems and to some ears. Even though it is ultimately not for me I think it is a great value as I could easily see some of the other manufactures charging $10K or more for this unit. 

I think I am going to send Francois another 103 and try a 103.4 with the silver coils to quench my curiosity :)

Hope this was helpful to someone. 

Thanks for reading. 
audiofun

Showing 5 responses by lewm

lewm
12,551 posts
 
Interestingly, my Beveridge amplifiers are signed inside by the initials "RM", using magic marker, and dated 1979.  Or maybe only one of them is.  RM worked with Harold Beveridge back then. I knew that RM had an all-tube mod for my amps (which have a solid state input stage), but I did not know that he is making a complete direct-drive speaker system.

I built my TL cabinets more than 45 years ago, using the famous article by Bailey, published in Wireless World, as a guide.  I was also copying the IMF Monitor speaker, which I had heard many times at Lyric Hi-Fi on Lexington Ave in NYC.  To me, the Monitor had the lowest distortion and most extended bass of any speaker available at that time. And of course, I could not possibly afford them, because they cost something like a THOUSAND DOLLARS!!! (Can you imagine?)  So I bought the IMF Studios from Lyric and soon realized I wanted more.  In construction, I used 1.25-inch MDF with a formica covering. Thus each cabinet weighs near to 100 lbs. I was a medical intern at that time.  So my schedule was stay up all night one night in the hospital, sleep the next night, work on the speakers the night after that, then stay up all night in the hospital, etc.
Audiofun, I don't know that I have the ART7 set up "perfectly", but for now I will give it more time.  Not a bad idea about playing with VTA, but keep in mind, I am not talking about tonal balance, which in my experiece is most affected by VTA.  I am talking about an over all quality.
lewm
12,551 posts
 
We took a long vacation in June, to visit our son in Tokyo.  During that time, the ART7 sat without use in our chilly basement, where I keep my second system.  I fired it up again only last week, to see what was happening with the ART7.  I still don't love, love it.  It's very vivid and seems to get all the notes, top to bottom, but the word "clinical" keeps going through my mind.  The ART7 is riding in a Dynavector DV505 on a very modified Lenco, into a Manley Steelhead driving the built-in direct-drive amplifiers of a pair of Beveridge speakers that are full range down to 80Hz where they cross over to a pair of KEF B139 woofers installed in a transmission line cabinet of my own making.  IOW, this is a very low distortion speaker system; it doesn't need exaggerated details from the cartridge. But given the circumstances, I am not prepared to declare a final opinion.
General thought: I remember some guru saying that MC cartridges get the attack of notes correct, but they fall down on the trailing edges.  Comparing the ART7 to an Acutex LPM320 in this same system, that's exactly the way I hear it, so far. The ART7 does better than the Acutex on the attack, but the Acutex captures the decay better than the ART7 and presents a more "musical" facsimile of reality.
lewm
12,551 posts
 
Woe to the audiophile who uses a Decca cartridge in a totally undamped tonearm.
lewm
12,551 posts
 
I hope my own ART7 will also continue to improve with time and hours of use.  I had the distinct feeling it took a step backward 2 nights ago, but that can also happen during the break-in period.  Not all the changes that cartridge goes through during break-in are necessarily for the better, until finally it reaches a stable state.
lewm
12,551 posts
 
audiofun, Thank you for taking the trouble not only to perform the experiments but also to write the results up so thoroughly.  One of the first things that comes to my mind is break-in.  I am not so sure that other components really change much from brand new, but I am sure that cartridges do.  I would especially expect there to be some changes in sonic character associated with break-in, for a cartridge where the coil is mounted so close to the stylus, where it cannot help but add some moving mass to the equation. (But maybe not, because the signal leaves the transduction apparatus right there, at the stylus.  So, whatever mass is added by the coil, some mass is also lost because the whole length of the cantilever is out of the picture.) So, how many hours were on your sample of the ART1000, before you evaluated it?

Second, it was a bit eery for me to read your comments in light of my own current experience with a brand new ART7.  The ART7 does many things very well, but I cannot quite yet fall in love with it, and I am hoping that time will ameliorate some of the issues I have.  I do already hear some improvement in relation to hours of use, but I've still got probably less than 20 hours on it and still don't adore it.  It was a bit too clinical at first while at the same time it conveyed a lot of detail; lately it's getting warmer, not on the warm side of "neutral", but warm-er. Too bad for me that I have no familiarity with the 103.3.  In fact, I had never heard of it until reading this post.
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