Has anyone tried the new Lyra Kleos?

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

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

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

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

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