Transfiguration Orpheus - Has anyone tried it ?

Maybe the egg is on MY face. I suppose I should leave the review to the person actually living with the equipment. I listen to Larry's system approximately once a week and he is obviously still tweaking. I know that I've yet to hear the best the Orpheus has to offer. Of course there's also the break-in issue. I still stand by my comments however. That was my honest opinion at the time.

Larry - At some point you're just going to have to live with the reality that your CD player will never quite catch up. Either that or you'll go broke trying to find a way to make them equal. As you know, I all but stopped listening to CDs/SACDs once I bought my Basis/Temper. Most of my funds now go to vinyl. Expensive vinyl. I think I spent over $500 this past month on about 20 records.

Speedy - I feel your pain. I had my pre in for service last year and went about 4 weeks without vinyl. I wasn't much fun to be around. It's like losing your best friend.

Larry,Hi Fi News and Record Review!
Also,if your CD sound was equal to your analog,before the Orpheus,than maybe I do not have egg dripping down my face -:)The Temper-V should have "smoked" a digital system(regardless of vintage,and I have a good one too)in areas of detail, and information retreival,ease,stage,etc.HMM! -:)

Best! And I do look forward to your future comments,but be careful because I don't want to irritate the ZYX crowd with too much Orpheus info,at my behest! -:)Just kidding!

BTW--If things go my way,and as the Orpheus is still big bucks to update from a Temper,I'm seriously thinking about jumping ship,and moving to one of the two top Allaerts models,next year.
I had ten years with different Koetsus,and now ten years with the Transfiguration vintages.I'm beginning to suspect that my loyalties don't go much beyond a decade,with small transducers.Of course I also suspect Raul may think I could go longer with an Allaerts,as I have a superb low noise,high gain phono section!
Time will tell!

Gary - Your comments are indeed honest as always, but note that your two comments above differed in tenor. I agree with both to some extent.

Gary and Sirspeedy - I've got too much good music on my CDs not to at least think about making sure whether I can or cannot make the CD player closer to the LP player.

Sirspeedy -- Steve Huntley has brought many otherwise ordinary CD players, including mine, much closer to analog. We'll see.

All,

The Orpheus was also reviewed in a German mag called Image HiFi. Bob Clark of Profundo, the US Distributor, plans to translate the review and make it available.

Andrew

Just a note about output with Transfiguration products: they use the JVC test record. Most other manufacturers use the CBS test record which gives values 1.6x the "JVC" values. In addition, most phono preamp gain specs are tied to outputs based on the CBS values.

So to make a fair comparison with (most) other cartridges, and also to determine what kind of gain will be required from the phono preamp, it's necessary to convert the JVC derived values to the CBS value.

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For instance the Orpheus is rated a 0.48mV output, but if it had been spec'd using the CBS record, the output would actually be 0.77mV -- fairly healthy by most MC standards.