Has anyone tried the new Lyra Kleos?

Audiogoner Theo has one. He started with a Delos and swapped up to the Kleos. He's enamored with it and has excellent ears that I trust. I haven't heard it yet on his setup, but will shortly. I thought the Delos was very nice on his system and he claims the Kleos is MUCH better. Maybe he will chime in.

I too am enamored with it.

See my Kleos Sibilance thread for why NOT to use it with a JMW 9 Signature.

Robert
PS: Fremer reviewed it in Stereophile last fall.

the fremer review was in the january 2011 issue of stereophile. i've been looking for the online version because the paper copies got pulled from vendor shelves in the middle of january.

i can believe that the kleos would sound different from the delos. the kleos has an output voltage level of 0.5mv vs 0.6mv for the delos: this suggests to me that the kleos has fewer windings. there are undoubtedly tradeoffs in this stuff as jonathan carr has described, but i can believe that the channel separation for the kleos would be better. the intrinsic resistance of the kleos is also about 35% less than that of the delos but it's not clear to me how much difference 2.5 ohms will make in the sound given that typical phono stage load impedances are going to be well over 100 times that amount.

i'll try to take another look at the sibilance thread because i had previously glanced at a few comments and a hard time understanding what the problem was. the delos does have a thinner stylus, which suggests to me that it digs deeper into the groove and might track better than the kleos.

HI I went from a helicon to skala a few years ago. It's a big upgrade. Warmer and more organic but increasing in resolution and extension. It's a wonderful cartridge. The skala stereophile review should be posted online...

There is another thread started a few days ago on the Lyra's you might want to read...

http://forum.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/fr.pl?eanlg&1298751091&openmine&zzJfrech&4&5#Jfrech

I went from Delos to Kleos. I really like it.

As mentioned I had a Delos for a 30 day period and traded up top the Kleos. I have always wanted the Skala but when I read about the new developements of the Kleos I decided to get the newest design. I had a LydianB to trade and got a good deal. I could have actually bought the Skala for 400.00 more, which was a better bargain pricewise. But I really think that I made the right decision. The Kleos seems to do all I could expect a cartridge in this price range or even higher to do. I have always liked the Lyra house sound and this seems to refine as well as redefine that statement. You have a tough decision as the Skala is a great cart too. But in the long run I think the latest is the greatest.

Theo, was there any advice you were given or heard about the new designs vs. the Skala for instance. I just figured there may be a basic difference you had learned with regard to the latest design. Thanks!

The major differnce that caught my attention on both the Delos and the Kleos is the suspension. Take a look at the Lyra website as they have a real good description of this.
Jonathan Carr has implemented a new design that seems to be paying off. Fremer makes mention of this as well in both his reviews of the two new carts. I spoke with a field rep. at Immedia(lyra distributer)and in his opinion the Kleos outperforms the Skala. I have not heard them in A-B comparison, as my dealer had both mounted at one time but the tables were set up differently. I still think the Skala is great cartridge. But in my opinion the Kleos seems to bring more to the table in it's newer design. Either way on my table, my system, my ears, I am very pleased with my decision. I kept thinking that I should have spent the extra 400 as it was a better bargain, but now I am pretty sure I have the better bargain mounted. The Lyra trade up program is pretty hard to beat.

Anymore views on the Kleos.

How does it compare to the Titan i? I wonder if / when J Carr will be replacing the titan i with the new techniques found in the kleos/ delos?

Syntax, your views would be appreciated.

Cheers

Any Kleos news? Maybe a direct comparison to Dynavector XV-1s or XV-1t?

All I know is that I was in the same situation and bought a Delos because the Kleos was just out of my reach financially. I'm very happy with the improvement over the Helikon I had before it, especially in the bass... better defined and more tuneful, at least in my setup.

I am a lyra fan and love the titan i for its intensity and lightening transient: not only for the attack but also for how fast it can release the notes. Before optimizing the Kleos, I initially thought the designer went for a warmer, slower sound in the Kleos because the titan was criticized for a lean tonal balance or aggressive treble.

After optimizing the setup, the Kleos is also very fast and actually illuminated some details that I did not hear with the titan. It has a very natural transient that makes me I wondered whether the titan release the notes too fast. I am still not sure which one is more correct but I enjoy both tremendously. The titan is still more resolute in the low bass and macrodynamics and portray the scale of the large orchestra more convincingly. The Kleos excels in chamber music with its beguiling presentation and microdynamics. Both are able to portray a strong sense of recording space.

I have sold my Koetsu & more since I have acquired the Kleos.

I have installed the Kleos on a variety of arms including two unipivot arms without issues: Phantom 2, centroid. Also tried it on gimbal bearing: FR 64 & dyna 507. This cart is not as picky on arms as the titan.

IMHO, the Kleos need proper antiskate setting to showcase its ability ( sure, which cart doesn't). I have tried the minimal to no antiskate and this crippled the Kleos more than any other cartridge I have used. The overtly warm and slow sound in my initial setting may resulted from distortions from unopposed skating force.

A great performer in its own right but amazing considering its price.

Some of our customers have voiced a preference for the Delos over the Kleos. Compared to the Kleos, the Delos has a somewhat more exuberant treble which seems to work better in certain kinds of systems. At the same time, the Delos has greater resolution, wider dynamics, a wider timbral range, and a more natural tonal balance when compared to the older Dorian, Argo and Helikon models.

Compared to the Delos, the Kleos has a less resonant body structure and matching voicing which results in a somewhat sweeter, less dry-sounding cartridge than with previous Lyras, yet without giving up the dynamic strength, aliveness, resolution and speed that Lyra cartridges are known for.

Overall, I consider the Kleos to be a more versatile performer than the Skala, and a better "buy" for the price.

In comparison with the Titan, my opinion is that the Titan is still the better overall performer, but the two cartridges have strengths in different areas, as GLai has pointed out above. I can easily envision that some listeners and systems would prefer the Kleos over the Titan.

Both the Delos and Kleos redefine the level of performance that can be had at their respective price-points, IMHO, and they aren't particularly quirky in terms of sonic personality, nor very demanding to set up. I think that it would be difficult to go wrong with either one (grin).

Although the following doesn't affect the cartridges themselves, I should mention that our distributor for the North American market has changed from Immedia to Audioquest.

I would like to publicly thank Immedia for nearly 20 years of friendship and efforts on our behalf.

I am also happy to be reunited with our old friends at Audioquest, whom we previously worked with on the AQ7000, AQ7000 Fe5, and AQ7000 NSX models.

Like Immedia, Audioquest places great emphasis on good dealer relations and customer service, so I fully expect that Lyra customers in North America will continue to receive top-notch service. And should any Lyra customer encounter an issue regarding their Lyra cartridge which they feel is being unsatisfactorily handled, they are welcome to bring it to my attention in an email.

I believe that Audioquest welcomes dealers that retailed Lyra products for Immedia, so if there are any Lyra dealers who have doubts as to their present standing, I encourage you to contact Audioquest.

regards to all, jonathan carr

Jonathan, thanks for your regular polite, informative and objective postings, they are so welcome here!

Are there any plans on a successor of the Titan i, or are there no public-conform news yet?

I purchased a Lyra Delos recently and have been playing it in my Sota Cosmos IV with Audiomods arm and SimAudio lp5.3 phono preamp and am at a loss to find any problem areas. The Delos seems to be quick when it should be, smooth and tuneful with no particular emphasis at any point in the range. Very expressive midrange, defined treble and tuneful, tight and clear bass. Much like my Dyna 17d2 but with stronger bass and a little smoother throughout the range, but maybe not quite as quick. It also seems very quiet in the groove, which allows low level details to come through.
So if the Kleos is better than the Delos, it has to be an awesome cartridge.

Dear Breezer:

The Titan i will stay in our lineup, because it is a nice performer for the price, IMO.

At the same time, it is true that I am working on a new cartridge model, but for a higher price-point.

This is a much more complex and radical design than the Titan i, and will therefore be priced somewhere between the Titan and the Olympos.

The weight should be a little less than 12 grams, making this a more heavyweight design than the Titan.

The Kleos made serious inroads on the performance and sound of the Titan i, IMHO. The Titan i remains the better performer overall, again IMO, but in some areas the Kleos performs and sounds better.

Regarding the new design, we are committed to ensuring that it becomes the best-performing, best-sounding cartridge that we have ever made.

As of now, initial measurements look good (actually really good), also the sound is better than the Kleos and Titan in most respects, but not all. We had hoped to launch the new cartridge earlier, but we are spending extra time to improve and refine it, so that its performance and sound clearly supersede both the Kleos and Titan in every area.

We plan to start deliveries in October.

kind regards, jonathan carr

Thanks very much, Jonathan!
As someone who has a Helikon Mono for some years and would like to buy a Kleos, i would also like to ask for your activity in mono cartridges, even if it is a little off topic here.
You have started with fantastic mono cartridges some years ago, used a modern stylus of the Titan for the Helikon and Titan mono cartridges and showed up that it is fantastic for mono playback.
At this time the cheaper Dorian mono cartridge disappeared. Here in Germany i see a little but enthusiastic mono "scene", but most of them invest not much in mono playback, even if there stereo playback system is quite expensive.

How do you see the mono market? Is there any activity in the future in this regard?

Thanks very much!

Dear Breezer:

Lyra is not like Benz-Micro, Ortofon, ClearAudio, Denon, or Audio-Technica. We are a small company, and we keep a hands-on approach for everything that we do. Lyra only has one person (although he now has one assistant) building all of our cartridges (and all of the rebuilds).

This means that our production capacity is limited. Our estimate is that our production capacity is about two-thirds as large as our product demand, therefore we must always plan on how to use our production capacity wisely.

Some months we find that we should not produce a certain cartridge model, because there is a greater need to use that same production capacity for other models.

The Dorian Mono is one such cartridge. It is a distinct model, separate from the stereo Dorian, and needs its own components, preparation, testing and so on, but the market demand for the Dorian Mono is not so large. We gradually realized that the Dorian Mono took more time and effort than we could justify, given what we could earn from it, and given what the same production effort could accomplish if allocated to other cartridge models.

Therefore we shifted our production capacity away from the Dorian Mono and to other models like the stereo Dorian, stereo Helikon, Helikon Mono (I believe that the market demand for the Helikon Mono has shown itself to be greater than the demand for the Dorian Mono) and so on.

When I designed the Delos, we discussed the possibility of having a Delos Mono (I think that I even made a graphic of a mono cantilever and printed it on the Delos' box), but ultimately decided against it.

When the Kleos was created, we were presented with a similar choice, and decided that it was OK to produce a Kleos Mono. We haven't made a big announcement or fuss about it, but we have made a few shipments of Kleos Monos to our distributors.

http://www.lyraconnoisseur.com/Products/Products_Analog/transducer.html

Rather than being standard production, this is essentially an order-made model. You would probably need to give your dealer an order for one, which would be conveyed to us. Once we collected sufficient orders (from all over the world) to make production efficiency acceptable, we would produce a group of Kleos Monos, and send them to the distributors that ordered them.

We haven't yet discussed whether we will make the upcoming super model in a mono version or not. For the time being, we have our hands full in trying to get the standard stereo version ready!

kind regards, jonathan carr

A question for Mr. Carr ... I just bought a VPI Classic 3, for which I have been planning to purchase a Kleos. But now I am concerned by reports that the Kleos does not perform well on VPI tables, allegedly due to poor control of VTF on the wobbly unipivot arms. Does this make sense do you??? (Understanding full well that the question is rather loaded)

Hi David: I have used all of our cartridges on lots of unipivots - Grahams, Spiral Grooves, Naims, Audiocrafts, Moerchs and more… Haven't encountered any particular problems so far that defied careful setup, although I can imagine that some users may find it twitchy to set up tonearms that don't have stabilized azimuth.

Rather than unipivot vs. gimbal or knife-edge or whatever, consistent VTF is tied to the relationship between tonearm bearing height vs. stylus position (both should be at the same height). If the bearing height is low in relation to the stylus, the VTF will be reduced as the cartridge goes up (on warped LPs), and if the bearing height is high in relation to the stylus, VTF will increase as the cartridge goes up.

Tonearm center of gravity vs. stylus position will also have some effect on VTF consistency.

I don't own a VPI myself, but have heard from customers and dealers that some of the VPI tonearms seem to work better with our cartridges than other VPI tonearm models.

As always, someone who is good at setup will be able to extract a higher percentage of the sonic potential of whatever components are used.

kind regards, jonathan carr

I have a Delos on a VPI Classic JWM 10.5i arm and I couldn't be happier. It was my first unipivot arm and I'm dumber than a sack of hammers, but I got it to work extremely well.

And the unipiviot isn't wobbly when it's in action, only when it's off the album. If it wobbles while in play, you've got problems.

I read the laundry list of complaints/problems guys have...IGD, sibilance, hum, skipping, harsh/muted/ highs, too much/not enough bass, what have you...and I just don't have any of that.

If the table/cart vanished tomorrow, I'd replace it with the same thing. Tomorrow.

My ONLY gripe, and having Mr. Carr in on the thread, is that the Delos is so tall that the VTA adjustment on my arm is pretty much all the way up to get things level that way, and that's bare metal platter. Which is ironic considering the only negative threads I'd seen on the Delos were based on "low rider" cantilevers.

And that might well be a VPI complaint, that they need to put a little more positive VTA adjustment into this arm assembly. I can't run a mat without the cartridge end of the arm being higher than the pivot end.

That said, I still think it's a great combo.

"I read the laundry list of complaints/problems guys have...IGD, sibilance, hum, skipping, harsh/muted/ highs, too much/not enough bass, what have you...and I just don't have any of that."

I meant that as a general list of complaints, not as a specific list of complaints towards this particular pairing.

P.S. I wish I could become a full member so I didn't have to wait a couple of hours before my posts appear. In this case I realized right off that I could have worded it better, I didn't want anybody to get the wrong idea about my previous post.

Jr_w,

Have you experienced the Delos with other tables or arms for comparison?
Also, I am curious, how have you got your anti-skating set up?

Thank you for your encouraging testimony,
- Dave

No, I have only used it on this table. I did use a less expensive MM cart (AT440MLa) on the table for a bit while waiting on the Delos. Phono stage is Pass XP-15.

Since this was my first unipivot arm, I did go through some trials and tribulations getting it set up, and I removed the arm a few times to do the physical parts swapping.

When I first started using it I didn't use the anti-skate, but I think removing the arm a few times flexed the leads enough that they no longer provided sufficient anti-skate on their own. I ended up applying the bare minimum anti-skate via the weight/lever/line mechanism. I might even be able to remove that now, I only had an issue with a single track on a Steely Dan album, but that album is one that I have settled on as a reproduction benchmark that I can detect subtle changes to the setup with. It's flawless now and sounds excellent even with the touch of AS, I suppose it wouldn't hurt to revisit "Can't Buy a Thrill" with no AS since everything should be settled in by now.

I need to emphasize that I am certainly no expert on any of this, so please don't take any of my postings as doctrine. Just an anecdote. The main point was that if an idiot such as myself can get this kind of performance from a Lyra Delos on this arm/table, I see nothing inherently incompatible between the two. I'd imagine the Kleos would behave similarly as far as mechanical setup is concerned.

Hi Jr W:

In past years we made physically shorter cartridges, like the Clavis DC. or the Parnassus DCt. With these, we sometimes received complaints from owners of certain tonearms such as the SME V and IV. The short cartridge height allowed the tapered armtube to touch down on the LP midway through a side, which was a most unpleasant surprise to the listener when it happened.

Since the Titan, Dorian and Argo, I have attempted to standardize on our cartridge dimensions, to make it easier for our users to change from one Lyra model to another. Those dimensions are as follows: in the vertical plane, between 17 and 18mm from tonearm headshell surface to stylus (with VTF applied), and in the horizontal plane, from 9.52mm (3/8 inch) from mounting screw centers to the stylus.

The only occasions when I have allowed myself to deviate from the above is when the size of the body mechanisms were too large to fit without enlarging the cartridge body. Fortunately, that has not happened in production yet - only for prototype cartridges.

In my recent designs, I have built various internal mechanisms into the cartridge body, and this has required a certain amount of physical space. It would not have been possible to package the mechanisms of the Kleos, for example, into a shorter cartridge, and even so I needed to use shorter components for parts of the body structure than what I normally use.

kind regards, jonathan carr

Yes, I realized even while posting that the arm just needed a little more UP VTA, I bet a person could shim the arm assembly -plinth junction a bit pretty easily. It's not really a problem unless you have your heart set on using a mat, and I don't.

It's still a keeper!

Jonathan,

Would the new lyra cartridges continue to have a hole drilled in the body, allowing for fast mounting on the Centroid arm?

Thanks

Gordon

I am using a Delos on a Origin Live Aurora with Encounter arm and I am having no issues. Setup is critical. 1.76 VTF and a fair amount of antiskate. Antiskate is imporatant to get right. VTA with the tone arm about level or slightly tail up, adjusted by ear. I listened to Lucinda Willams Live album last night and really enjoyed it. I felt about as close to being there as possible. I'm very happy with the Delos so far.

I'm using the Skala on a Unify 9" arm, mounted on a Clearaudio Performance drive, with a motor regulation.
So far, I could say it outperforms many combinations that I listen to (I was working with a major distributor having Clearaudio, Lyra, EMT, Brinkmann, Koetso and sometimes other cartridges in stock). Especially the Clearaudio don't have any chance, maybe except the DaVinci. The Koetsus sound too dull but have lots of body.
Recently a friend of mine bought Kleos, on his Jelco arm (which I think is inferior to the Unify, although it's a 12"), mounted on a Dr. Feickert Blackbird. I was thrilled by the sound, but couldn't make a one to one comparison.
Fact is: the Skala is not a full bodied sounding cartridge, but its transparency, sweet treble, sound stage and mor are outstanding. Question is, does the Kleos which seems to have similar virtues, sound as good, but maybe with more body?

If yes, I'll place an order tomorrow!

Cheers,
Dan.

Anyone tried using using the KLEOS w/ the Rega RB700 ?

I'm using a Kleos on a rega rb1000. On my rega p9 I'm using one 2 mm spacer and a fair amount of antiskate.

I too would be interested in the Kleos. Anyone any thoughts how it would compare to a Benz LPS or Ortofon Cadenza Black/Winfield?

What is the current trade-up policy for a Delos to a Kleos?

So if I understood all the information written the only Lyra cartridge that not sound like a classic Lyra cartridge is the Kleos model.

This is a very important input to think about it.

Delos/Skala/Titan i ----> Fast, dynamic, detailed... with the improvements of the 5th generation (sweeter mids)
Kleos ----> Warm with some detailed sound.

Is it right?

I have heard of a few benz cart and ortofon but much prefer the Kleos and delos for my taste. YMMV.

Dear Jonathan and others using a Lyra Erodion stepup,

what can you tell about the sonic characteristic changing with th use of an Erodion for a Lyra Kleos? I have with the latest Klyne 7LX/P and a Shindo Monbrison two full-function preamps with good MM and MC phono stages.
What can i expect with the Erodion?

May i ask once again for the changes that i can hear with the use of an Erodion SUT for a Lyra Kleos cartridge?

Has anyone tried the *New new Kleos? The "Level 2, New Angle" version?