My experience with the Lyra Delos has been good and to put it the best way too revealing? So far my original vinyl sounds incredible, especially stuff from the Golden age of stereo. Amazing to say the least. However, newly remastered stuff sounds extremely overdone and in some cases unlistenable and I am talking about a lot of Classic reissues. Is this just the way it will be or will this cartridge still relax a little as I only have roughly 50 hours or so on it?
The Lyra Delos is a bright, lean cartridge with an exaggerated top end. It might improve a bit as it runs in, but if you don't happen to like that sound, then it is unlikely to get better. Try a Benz instead.
If you don’t fing love the DELOS something is wrong. New recordings are awful, and most are pressed horribly and warped. stick with old, clean ,not scratched up , original used records and you’ll be much happier.
I'd agree with others that it's slightly tipped at the top end. I owned a Delos for many years, admittedly loved it during this time but until I compared with other MC's, I had no idea that it was slightly etched. I listened to Transfiguration and Benz carts that were much more neutral and now own a Transfiguration. Just my opinion and experience.
The older recordings sound great, better than they ever have. I have never had a cartridge track like this one. My old vinyl sounds new. I am thinking that it is just so revealing that newer recordings are just really overdone somehow. When I put on an old living stereo, it just sounds so analog, beautiful. when I listen to a reissue, it sounds very Hi Fi'ish to my ears at least. Maybe I need a different type of cartridge for these as I do have two Benz the Glider and a Ref wood body but they just do not trck like this one. Not even close.
I am going back and forth between my Benz Ref s and the Delos. Both are great cartridges in their own right. Let me know how the SME works out for you. Did you listen to the 15? If so, what did you think was the difference? I still like that michell table. What arm are you using on it?
In my mind, the Benz cartridges and most any Lyra cartridge are polar opposites, in terms of the words I might use to characterize the two brands. This is not to say that you can't like both. I find both to be too "biased" (for want of a better word) on the opposite sides of the spectrum, in the way in which they play music; one can be a bit "clinical" (Lyra) and the other tends to the euphonic (Benz). Although I have heard the Benz LPS on a very fine system (underwhelming IMO), I must admit that I have not heard the latest, greatest Lyra TOTL cartridges. My neighbor, who sold the Benz LPS in order originally to buy ZYX UNIverse(s) (he had 3 in rapid succession), now has a Lyra Etna. I must go listen to it, not that I would ever spend that much.
@lewm I couldn't agree more. I was using a Benz Wood SL and bought a Delos while the Benz was in for service. The Benz was a bit too soft for 80s Thrash Metal but the Delos was a bit too hard. My current Kiseki Blue NS is a very good balance of both those cartridges.
It's difficult finding a cartridge with the right balance of virtues for your tastes.
I have owned a Lyra Delos, Kleos and most recently an Etna SL. I sold all of them within a relatively brief time. The Etna SL was obviously the best and it did not have the exaggerated top end of the less expensive Lyras, but it was still (IMO) over-priced and overrated.
I have also owned a Benz LPS, Ruby Z, Glider, L2 and L0.4. I have kept the Glider and the L0.4. The LPS and Ruby Z were nice cartridges but always sounded a bit too dark and closed in for my tastes - as someone noted above, the polar opposite of Lyra. But I do like the lower priced Benz cartridges, such as the Ace, Glider and the entry level wood cartridges, which I think are the best value in the Benz line up. Not quite the resolution of the Ruby Z or LPS, but they sound great on their own terms and sound a bit more neutral than the higher level cartridges, though still with the characteristic Benz warmth.
Currently I am enjoying a Van den Hul Black Beauty, which I think has the speed and dynamics of a Lyra without the shrill top end, and some of the warmth and richness of a Benz. It has become my favourite cartridge, and it is a bonus that they have a long life of 2500 hours and are inexpensive to retip. At a lower price the Frog is also an excellent and well balanced cartridge, so I highly recommend checking out the Van den Hul cartridges.
Where did you get the Van den Hul? i agree the Benz and the Lyra are polar opposites. I have been told that the Lyra needs well over 100 hours to settle down. Thats a lot. The Benz works well with newer recordings and the Lyra works really well with older vinyl, especially from the golden age. The thing with the Lyra is it just about tracks anything perfectly. Old records I thought were worn are obviously not. I really love the sound of the benz but they just do not track very well on many recordings IME but they can sound just wonderful.
tzh, I would have thought that the Cardas cables would somewhat mitigate any tendency for the Lyra(s) to sound "clinical". Cardas ICs and speaker cables tend to the Benz view of things, in my own experience on my system. For me also, however, the Cardas wires tended to enforce a certain blandness or sameness. (Obviously, this is a completely subjective opinion. Anyone else is free to have a different one.)
Lewm, That is exactly correct. My take is the Lyra just is not very rolled off. It is very extended and it seems as though older recordings were so well recorded that they are so revealing through the Lyra and the Benz tends to veil in comparison. On more recent hotter reissues, the benz sounds better at the expense of mistracking sometimes in comparison to the Lyra which really just tracks just about anything with ease. I just hope it melows a little bit more as it is still a bit edgy but also only has about fifty hours or so on it.
Delos is tipped up in HF, no two ways about it. Benz is tipped down. The relatively less voiced carts are typically Ortofon, Shelter and EMT to name a few. A shelter 901 mk2, EMT TSD-15 Sfl or Ortofon Cadenza Blue are all very good carts without much voicing.
I'm not a big fan of the Delos (despite being a fan of JCarr, and higher up Lyra's when in the right systems) and tend to agree with some of the comments vis a vis it's tonal tilt, but will ask if you're pretty certain it's dialed in, optimally loaded? How do you find the bass / lower mid-range weight? Just curious...
It really depends. Lyra cartridges certainly are truth tellers.
Great recordings will sound great, bad invariably will sound bad unless the rest of your system is appropriately voiced and full range.
If your system is slightly lean or you use small two way speakers that don’t really go low in the bass frequencies, Lyra will not be for you.
If you have a neutral or slightly warm system and want more detail, Lyra will probably be a revelation.
J Carr has voiced the Delos to have a slightly bright top end to match more warm systems that need some detail.
I own the Delos, Etna SL and Atlas SL and have owned the Kleos and Atlas over the last 7 years so they have many hours on them. All Lyra carts are good for at least 2500-3000 hours if looked after.
Personally I could not think of a worse sounding cartridge than a rolled off Benz - but some like that sound.
I can only go by what I am told as my friend has had a Delos and it sounds fantastic in his system. He said it takes a while for the Lyra to settle in. The dealer said the same thing. One thing I know is it is definitely not rolled off thats for sure. Older recordings on six eye, living stereo, Mercurys, Londons do not sound bright at all. They sound amazing to say the least. They sound spooky real through the Delos. I still think it will settle in somewhat but after 50 hours I think I am clearly starting to hear the personality of this cartridge on my system. If I had a collection of primarily newer releases, the Delos would not be my first choice. I may look into some of the more neutral cartridges mentioned in this thread.
The bass is fine. It was not originally. The lower midrange is still not there. Hoping it gets a little better. I am loading at 100 ohms. Had it at 91 at first but it did not sound right. 100 seems like a good starting point
The Delos can be a great sounding cart you just need to make sure you have the loading right, it is sensitive to the cabling (not expense or expensive cabling but capacitance) . As was mentioned try 250-500 ohms. Mine is at 330 Ohms and sounds very big and expansive, mids and lows are weighty and authoritative. Upper mids and highs are very clear but not too bright. It's a revealing cart for sure. I listen to a lot of both new music as well as old 50's and 60's I don't think it plays favorites on recordings. It's a colored cart for sure, but most are, it's just definitely not a soft sounding or overly warm sounding cart.
I use two MC carts with my Technics 1200G, the Delos which I’ve had for about 3 years, and an AT ART 9. I have MM carts as well, but I haven’t tried them yet with the Technics. No reason for not, but I haven’t yet.
The Delos is more revealing, cleaner and tighter sounding, but compared to the ART 9, it is brighter. I’ve sort of stopped using the Delos as the ART9 does such a nicer job with midrange, channel separation, and macro level weight. It is not warm, but more musical. Add that it is half the price of the Delos makes it a keeper for sure. If you want to evaluate a system change, the Delos may be the better "reporter".
The ART 9 is not as dynamic as the Delos, you might find it a little lacking on Classical, I did. But the ART 9 is a pretty balanced cart overall. I bought it based on the love it gets on this forum but for me I never felt it was the giant killer people here thought it was. It's nice, but I did not find it a musical as the Delos.
I would play witht he Delos some more, it really can benefit from tweaking VTA and loading and setting the VTF at 1.72g. When it is set up right it should not sound shrill or harsh at all.
I never felt it was the giant killer people here thought it was. It's nice, but I did not find it a musical as the Delos.
I think this is where system dependencies and preferences alter opinion. I find the richer midrange and overall bigger soundstage of the ART 9 makes classical listening more musical than the Delos. I like the Delos more for small group jazz and featured vocalists. In that regard it earns its higher price tag.
I do think the ART 9 @ $ 999 is worth forum praise and I really like it due to its balance sound, but I also disagree that it blows away carts twice its price. People get carried away sometimes.
In general, I try to stay out of these “which is best” conversations. Of course, this ends up being a “horses for courses” sort of discussion, and folks will gravitate all over the spectrum in their cartridge selection.
To the original poster’s comment - I agree with you that a well-balanced system should allow you to play and enjoy the majority of your recordings. The horrid ones? Well, there’s not much you can do about those but in general that should be only about 10-20% of your collection.
Cartridges and speakers are the biggest challenge to the audio engineer. Both are electro-mechanical devices, and the challenges in designing a linear motor as well as moving parts with minimal resonance is no small feat.
The crafty designer will balance out the errors he can’t correct to result in a product that reproduces a coherent musical whole - "hiding" the errors where they are most consonant. This is as much art as science and hence the variability in what you hear, and the broad range of preferences.
One thing I encourage my customers to do is to voice the tonality of their analog front end to be similar to their digital rig - this, assuming that they have a general liking of their digital playback. For all of the pros & cons of analog vs. digital, the basic tonality of a good analog setup and a good digital setup should be similar.
In other words, if your system is too hot (both analog and digital), you’d be well advised to fix the brightness somewhere other than at your cartridge. You want to enjoy all of your recordings after all, and if you compensate too heavily on dialing in your analog front end (at the expense of your digital), you may never listen to your digital.
Now, not everyone can fix all elements in their system at once, and if you think of a cartridge as a "consumable", then an alternate strategy (in this example) might be to optimize your analog front end with a rolled off cartridge, or alternatively one with a bit of bass emphasis. As long as you’re aware of what you’re doing, you’ll keep track of this and return to address it later, as time and budget permit.
With respect to Lyra, if a customer doesn’t have a bias against silver cabling, they’re a good bet to like a Lyra. All too frequently, the messenger (silver, Lyra) is blamed for problems elsewhere, and the person who is fine with silver, very likely has a system with well-behaved upper frequency response.
One warning sign for me is the customer who considers his analog front end to have great PRaT. I’ve found that many of these systems are much like systems people claim to be imaging champs - having an emphasis in the presence zone (2-4K) which renders the leading edge of notes unnaturally (harsh). Pairing one of these turntables/tonearms with a cartridge with extended upper frequencies is a recipe for misery. Note that not all turntables which convey rhythm correctly follow this design approach. I’d like to think that my Galibier turntables are both balanced and have good PRaT.
There was a time when I was of the opinion that Lyras were bright cartridges. More accurately stated, I felt them to be slightly deficient in the mid and upper bass. This "brightness" many reported in earlier generations was more of a perception thing (perception counts, of course) in the sense that a slight deficiency in the bass registers draws the listener’s attention to the upper frequencies in the same way that a mini-monitor does.
I call this shift in attention, a shift in the "sonic center of gravity". Around the introduction of the Titan cartridges, this changed and Lyra began to compliment what I always considered the best top end in the business with superb balance in the lower frequencies.
Contrast this with another very fine brand - Dynavector - which has a characteristic mid to upper bass bump that lends a bit of power and impact - a Technicolor or "va-va-voom" sort of presentation. It’s a bit of a hyper-real effect but Dynavectors still have an uncanny way of paying respect to the nuances in the recording.
This mid/upper bass emphasis (Dynavector) shifts the sonic center of gravity downward, and the fellow with a bright system (who doesn’t want to address it elsewhere) would be advised toward this sort of cartridge, or alternatively to a cartridge with varying degrees of upper frequency roll-off (Koetsu, Benz, and possibly Ortofon).
The obvious can’t be overstated: setup counts. I can’t tell you how many substandard setups I’ve encountered where the owner blamed his cartridge, tonearm, or turntable, which is one reason I started my traveling setup road show.
If you don’t like a new cartridge after 10 hours of burn-in (assuming your setup is good), you’re not going to like it. Spend time on your setup, but don’t torture yourself for 100 hours (300 record sides) if it’s not working for you.
My neighbor, who sold the Benz LPS in order originally to buy ZYX UNIverse(s) (he had 3 in rapid succession), now has a Lyra Etna. I must go listen to it, not that I would ever spend that much.
@lewm - you need to hear your neighbor’s rig. I set up his Etna SL last month. I’m sorry I missed you, but it was a quick visit.
We were listening to Keith Jarret’s Koln concert and at the end of the first side, we looked at each other with tears in our eyes. There’s no more of that analytical presentation people talk about when they reference Lyras - yet further proof (to me) that the musicality vs. accuracy argument is a fallacious one.
BTW, the Delos is a big slice of the Etna - much more than I would have expected. Of course, the Kelos and Etna are more refined, but you get much more than a taste of Lyra in the "lowly" Delos.
Lest I forget - a disclaimer: I carry Lyra cartridges (along with several other fine brands), so please don’t consider this as anything more than one person’s point of view about cartridges in general, and Lyras in particular.
When I listen to the Lyra, it makes me think that many recent recordings, and recent reissues(not all) are purposely remastered somewhat hot knowing that most cartridges are in fact rolled off. I personally have not heard many cartridges with this kind of extension in my life. Cartridges like this can really dig so much out of older original issue recordings. Its quite amazing. I honestly cannot see myself wanting to listen to my living stereos, mercurys, deccas, columbias, etc. with anything but this cartridge. I could not fully appreciate what was on these records with my older cartridges, mainly benz like I can with this one. The benz can sound very pleasing with orchestral reissues but just cannot track like this one. I have never heard a cartridge track like this one ever. The other cartridge that was close was a Denon.
I personally have not heard many cartridges with this kind of extension
in my life. Cartridges like this can really dig so much out of older
original issue recordings. Its quite amazing. I honestly cannot see
myself wanting to listen to my living stereos, mercurys, deccas,
columbias, etc. with anything but this cartridge.
Fast right-hand runs on a piano have jaw-dropping articulation. Call me a believer as far as the effects of reduced tip mass are concerned.
Interestingly the Lyra phono cable is all copper with low cap. Its all a balance, but frankly if you are happy missing information at the vinyl playback stage with a warm or rolled off cartridge, you will never get it back.
Ask yourself whether you're in love with a rising top end, common to MC cartridges, or with a truly extended hf response. Also, if lowest tip mass is paramount, we should all be listening to MI or induced magnet types.
Oh My gosh. Something just happened. This is quite amazing. Now everything sounds amazing. The lower mids just filled in appropriately. Just like that. By far the best cartridge I have ever heard.
Ask yourself whether you're in love with a rising top end, common to MC cartridges, or with a truly extended hf response. Also, if lowest tip mass is paramount, we should all be listening to MI or induced magnet types.
Hi @lewm,
Well, it's all a balancing act. I didn't mean to imply otherwise.
Lyra and other MCs don't dig up more detail. They just over exaggerate what other cartridges don't. It's false information. But to a casual listener, it may seem like a revelation.
Lyra and other MCs don’t dig up more detail. They just over exaggerate what other cartridges don’t. It’s false information. But to a casual listener, it may seem like a revelation.
Them’s fightin’ words. Seriously however, where are you located? I’d love to demonstrate a well set up system to you.
Obsession with false detail, soundstaging and PRaT are pet peeves of mine.
Tonality and correct timbre are two of my primary acceptance criteria in a musical reproduction system. If you really get the timbre right, the rest will follow, but most individuals put the cart before the horse, and as a result, they’re constantly tweaking and replacing components.
I was once at a customer’s when another respected designer was also visiting. I was dialing in the azimuth on the customer’s turntable when he commented "the flute is in the right position in the soundstage" (words to that effect). It sounded wrong to me and I commented: "yes, but does it sound more like a flute or less like a flute?
In a well balanced system, I guarantee you'll hear nuances that have you completely rethinking a musical work’s interpretation and this will have nothing to do with false detail.
The only thing I changed were the screws. I put the longer ones in. I do not thing it was that. I just think it is still running in. It sounds fabulous to say the least.
You must have a verified phone number and physical address in order to post in the Audiogon Forums. Please return to Audiogon.com and complete this step. If you have any questions please contact Support.
