Dear Lawrence, You made a statement suggesting that your system had the capability to re-create something approaching the sound of live music in your home. Along the way you intimated that most of the rest of us fall short in that area (despite the availability of Viagra). Since I sing two or three evenings a month with a "live" jazz pianist and occasionally in public fora with a trio, and since I also attend live concerts once or twice a month, I can assure you that I too hold live music as a standard for the sound I want to get out of my system. My system is posted on A'gon for all to see, but I am interested in learning how others find their own facsimile of the real thing. That's why I asked you to describe your system. I agree that this can lead to endless carping, and I understand perfectly why you would rather not "go there". On the other hand, you can see I hope how remaining mysterious devalues your statement. Do you live in the Washington, DC, area? If not, your invitation to "come over", however generous and open it may seem, is disingenuous. If you do live in my area, by all means lets get together; you are more than welcome at my home, too.
You can hear how great that ruby cantilever "sounds" on my Grace cartridge, JCarr notwithstanding. But I have other cartridges too, if you categorically don't like MM ones (a position which I think is foolish and self-defeating). |
Larry, Now I think of it, I do believe I have seen other posts of yours re the Beveridge speakers. In fact, I had counted you as a big fan when I was making my buying decision. (We may even have spoken on the phone.) They are purely an interesting sidebar for me; my Sound Lab 845PXs are giving me great pleasure in my main listening room. I do not intend to do a mere parts upgrade on the Bev amps. However, all the electrolytic caps in my pair appear to be OEM, which means they are 30 years old. Thirty year old electrolytics tend to be leaky. I don't want to throw 3200V at leaky caps. So I plan to replace them with modern high quality like- value caps. Also, several of the tube sockets are grossly loose; the tubes tend to fall out of them, since they are mounted horizontally. Ergo, I plan to replace a few tube sockets. With professional input, I would also like to implement a balanced input, eventually, but that comes later... maybe. Sorry I was grumpy in my responses above. I have no issues with your being frank; I was more resenting the fact that you were/are unwilling to disclose your frame of reference. Thanks for keeping your cool.
Anyway, this thread is about MM and MI cartridges and the men who love them, or the men who are ambivalent. |
Dave Garretson and I went down the road of modifying our Atma-sphere MP1 preamps together. At first, I taught him a thing or two, but he has been flying on his own for some time. His workmanship is exceptional, really professional, far superior to mine. I can solder. Dave can do fantastic things with metals and wood. Take a look at the ingenious arm wand he made for his Terminator tonearm, with adjustable effective mass. Way cool. |
Me and Hannibal Lecter. I am flattered; I think. I don't much care for liver, however, fava beans or no fava beans. |
I was feeling bad for perhaps being too harsh, Nikola, but your responses were great fun to read. So thanks for your sense of humor, Balkan or otherwise. FWIW, I do not much care for parts swapping. I take much more pride in thinking up ways to change the circuit to make it sound better (or to make me think it sounds better, which is really not different).
Siltech wire: silver/gold, treated "in the hot way" and "in the cold way", for $6000. Ya gotta love it. Mr. Siltech is probably driving around in a Bugatti Veyron, as I write this. |
Dear Nikola, I must take issue with your last post. You do have a tendency to side with audio "authority" in most cases, and here you have done it again. I assure you it is quite possible to make real and meaningful improvements in analog electronic audio gear and often in speakers. You don't have to "know more" than the designer to do that; you merely have to have a good understanding of what you are doing, what the designer left undone, and why you want to do it. However, I like to think I know my limitations (like the Clint Eastwood character). I won't be messing with digital gear, cartridges, or tonearms, for example, or turntables except to re-do the plinth.
The response you got from the Usher designer was to be expected. It was his best line of defense. Do you REALLY think he sat around listening to many different wires before marketing his speakers? More likely he empirically chose a wire he truly believed to be "good enough" and went with it. Likewise, the rave review of the boutique hyper-expensive wire that was substituted by one owner is specious, IMO. Having gone to all that trouble and expense, he cannot be trusted to make an objective judgement of the result. You might even say that my claims are BS as well. Except 3 other guys in other parts of the world have made the same mods to their SL speakers and have the same opinion of the results. As regards the MP1 preamp, Dave and I agree on the merit of the improvements, even though we have never met in person. So I tend to believe "us". Anyway, this is all fun and games; for me messing about with the circuit where I am confident I won't blow myself up is part of the fun. Interestingly, my MP1 is about 12 years old; the current Atma-sphere product is quite a bit different from my original circuit, and my MP1 is more like the current product than it is like its original self. |
Was my dream too, in college, to become Dostoyevski. In medical school, I lived in a basement apartment by myself, in the Bronx (blue collar part of New York City). I hated medical school in that year of my life, but I did not wish to go to Vietnam, and so I spent much time writing poetry. I thought of myself as the "Underground Man", probable mensch in German. One of my oldest friends recently reminded me that during that period I sent him a poem I had written entitled "On being in the Bronx when spring comes to it". (Sadly, he remembers the title verbatim but not where he put his copy of the poem.) I of course have no recollection of that poem and would love to be able to read it now so to discover what I was like, then. |
Dostoyevski and Kierkegaard. Later, Sartre.
Albert, I am green with envy that you got that Stanton. Darnit! If you hate it, please keep me in mind. I have not been watching Audiogon for that gem. I gather you have not got your Mk3 back from Bill. |
Nikola would love Rocky and Bullwinkle, I think. There is a pretty good movie, but the original cartoons are better, Nikola. I bet you can find some on Youtube. |
Dave, The quoted ".06mV/cm/sec" is not actually different from "0.3mV"; it's just a different way of expressing output. Classically, cartridge output is rated at a velocity of 3.54 cm/sec. So that would be ~0.2mV by usual criteria for comparing the number to that for other cartridges. In the modern era of MC cartridges, some have switched to rating output at 5 cm/sec, which would put the 980/981 at 0.3mV. This would be in agreement with the number you reference. Subjectively, I would guess that's about right for my 980LZS, comparing it to the output of my Ortofon MC7500 via my MP1. You do need a clean, hi-gain MC-capable phono stage, which we have in the MP1. |
Addendum: Given the 1mH inductance, mating the 980/981LZS with a SUT into an MM phono stage would be highly problematic, I would think. At least it deserves some thought as to the choice of SUT. (A typical LOMC will have way less than 100 micro-henries (uH) inductance.) It's no wonder the LZS was not a huge success in the marketplace of the 1980s; in many ways (very low output/high-ish inductance) it gives you the worst of both the MM and the MC worlds to deal with. |
Dave, Despite all my efforts to cut back the gain in "our" modified MP1 phono stage, including going to the ECC99s and reducing the values of the plate resistors, I still can barely get the volume control past 9 o'clock with the Ortofon MC7500, a very LOMC indeed. The method employed by Allen Wright to make his RTP3C useful with MM cartridges, inserting a pair of matched low value resistors between the CCS and the cathode of each half of the dual-differential MAT02, does work to reduce gain dramatically, but to my ears it absolutely destroys dynamics. Nothing sounds quite as good with those resistors switched in. (I rigged up mine so I can switch the attenuating resistors in and out with the idea that I could then use the MP1 for MM cartridges. No such luck.) I am rather surprised that Allen never commented on this. I heard the same negative phenomenon when I applied a similar strategy in my Atma amps, which also use a dual-differential cascode input stage. Those resistors are now in the trash. The better way to reduce gain would be to switch from cascode to an ordinary dual-differential gain stage, but I have not bothered at this point. |
Dave, An issue that came up early on in this thread, and which was never definitively resolved, was what happens to the suspension of an MM or MI cartridge after 30 years post-manufacture. There is a good possibility that it may have stiffened up considerably and so gives lower than advertised compliance. Raul found that sending off some of his cartridges for a rebuild to include the suspension was tranformative. I have mixed experiences; the 980 seems to work great (but might it be even better with a rebuild? Quien sabe). So do my Grace Ruby and Acutex LPM320. On the other hand, by very own Grado TLZ, which I bought new in the early 80s and which was in storage in my bedroom closet for a couple of decades, definitely lost something, does not sound nearly as good as my aural mamory tells me it once did. So, it's kind of a crapshoot. On the other hand, even if you were to have an issue with the Stanton, it is not much additional expense to correct it.
Separate MM stage: Yes, I bought a Silvaweld all-tube SWH550 to use with my MM and MI high output cartridges; I run it into the MP1 linestage. It's a great piece. It has MC capability, in a pinch. |
Flieb, You wrote, "I can't help thinking that loading some carts at 100K and adding 200 or 300pF + cables, is the wrong approach." I cannot help but take Nandric's didactic approach to this statement. It would not be surprising that for "some cartridges" this would be the wrong approach. Could it also be true that for some cartridges, this is the best approach? Anyway, I don't think anyone advocated adding both R and C. Raul and I once discussed just using a 100K load vs 47K, with no added C. I can tell you for only one specific example, my old Grado TLZ, that it definitely sounded better that way, and in the treble region where one might most expect to hear the good or the bad of a choice in loading. But I appreciate what you and David have taught, that each cartridge should be approached on its own merits or demerits. (Actually, you're preaching to the converted.) There is no magic universal loading that makes them all sound their best. I am running my Grace Ruby into a 100K load right now, with no added capacitance and relatively low capacitance cables. It sounds wonderful is all I can say; if it could sound better with a different R and C load, tell me about it. |
"Astatic 4000DIII" = Empire 4000DIII?
Dear Nikola, I think Fleib's proposition that NOT all cartridges will sound best into a 100K, high-capacitance load is more analogous to the proposition "NOT all Croats are traitors".
I'd like some of the collective wisdom here to comment on my earlier question: I have the Grace Ruby (ruby cantilever/elliptical stylus), which I have praised ad nauseam (sorry) as being great, in my system. I also have a second Grace Ruby that I bought in broken condition; it needs a new cantilever and stylus. In the US, SoundSmith can rebuild it with a ruby cantilever and their line contact stylus. What differences would you expect in terms of sound quality, resulting from a change to LC from elliptical? And also, can Axel repair it with ruby cantilever/elliptical stylus? (I cannot translate his website.) |
Nikola, Do you think Axel can do ruby cantilever/elliptical stylus, so as to restore my broken Ruby to its original equipment? Can he deal with an email in English?
It is interesting to me that most of us in the US, especially those who do not travel, are totally oblivious to the very powerful hatreds that exist between highly related populations, sometimes within the same country, in Europe. Here, yes there is some internecine virulence, but not on the scale of the centuries old resentments, e.g., in Spain (between Basques and everyone else), in Belgium (between Flemish and Walloons), in Ireland, and in your country (sometimes "countries"). |
Henry, Let's smoke a peace pipe, but please do put something illegal into it. (Maybe in Australia that "something" is not so illegal.) When it comes to my actual listening, I am very much a nihilist. Arguing about theory is sort of a separate kind of "fun". |
Don, My post on the possible identity between the two 4000DIIIs was a question, not an assertion. Hence the question mark. Does seem beyond the range of chance that the two companies could have arrived at identical names for their styli. Not important either way, however. Does this make Empire sinister, in your opinion. Like the Evil Empire or Empire Strikes Back? (Lame attempt at humor.)
Henry, That was a great post on the feelings that accompany switching back and forth between MM and MC. The two MCs that I have been using for the past few years are the Koetsu Urushi and the Ortofon MC7500. Right now, I am about to switch from the Ortofon back to the Urushi so as to compare it to my current favorite MMs. What I find is that I "love the one I'm with", for a while and then want to go back to the other technology for a while too. But I tend to find good qualities in both types. I am wanting lately to try a really top end MC, to get another angle on this subject. Based on nothing but internet scuttlebutt, I am interested in ZYX UNIverse (in this case, I heard it locally and really liked it), Miyajima Kansai, Transfiguration Orpheus or Temper, Blue Angel Mantis, and a few others. Ortofon MCA90 and Dynavector DV1t or s do not really tempt me; nor does anything costing more than $5K (generally available used for $2K to $3K).
I am trying to figure out why Raul cannot say which are his current MCs, since he has admitted above that he is in a mood to prefer them vs MM/MI. What would be lost by spilling the beans on this not so dark secret? |
No question about it, and this is the very first thing I noted about the very first MM I auditioned after joining this thread, the MM/MI alternative does piano better and more realistically than MC, plain and simple. There may be individual exceptions to that rule, but I have yet to hear it. I hear live jazz piano 2 to 4 times a month, when I go to my jazz vocal workshop. I also played piano as a kid and up until recently owned a Bechstein. "Nobody does it better" than a good MM. Why? The MM gets the harmonic envelope of a real piano as well as the decay of a piano note, better.
Another incident that was telling to me: Recently I had a very wealthy friend visiting for an audition of my system. He lives in France, where he owns a Verdier table, a Schroeder tonearm, and a very expensive MC cartridge. He also owns an Audio Note Kegon amplifier driving a fancy horn array (can't recall the brand or model). We were comparing the Ortofon MC7500 in a Reed tonearm on my Technics Mk3 vs the Grace Ruby on a Dynavector DV505/Lenco. Although the Technics is a superior table in most ways, it took him about 15 minutes, during which time he remarked frequently about ways in which he preferred my system to his, to decide that he preferred the Grace vs the Ortofon. "It's more musical", he said. I agree. |
Raul, "IMHO", I know what these terms mean and what they do not mean. I know what spurious "colorations" are and are not. I should have known better than to use the term "musical" on this thread. Some audio bits help convey the sensation that one is at a live performance, and some get in the way of it, mostly by a sin of omission. What my friend meant and what I mean when I say the Grace Ruby is more musical than the Ortofon MC7500 should be obvious. Please give me some credit, or come and listen for yourself. I can only agree on one thing: the word "musical" probably should be thrown out of our lexicon, because it does have an ambiguous meaning for an experienced audiophile. |
OK. The term "musical" to describe an audio component has indeed become controversial in some circles. Those who, like Raul, are on a quest to eliminate all distortions might take it to mean that the component adds a pleasant coloration. "Euphonic" is another term for the same thing. Of course, this is not at all what I meant to say about the Grace Ruby. I took umbrage in fact at Raul's implying that if I heard the Grace as musical, in this narrow sense of the word, then it must mean that I am not after the real truth in sound reproduction, for which he professes to be in a lonely search, like Don Quixote. Because we all know that live music does not always sound "beautiful". I know this too; that's why I was remonstrating with Raul. To me the term "musical" means that the component CAN reproduce not only the beauty but also the stridency and the cacophony of a live performance. Not to say anything is perfect in that regard. Also, this goes back to the fact that Raul has sworn off all tube electronics because of "distortions"; that's a bone of major contention between him and me. I gave up discussing the relative merits of tubes vs transistors with Raul, because he will fall back on his standard argument that I have not trained myself as a careful listener who can detect distortions, nor have any of you. |
Dear Raul, Perhaps I came down to hard on you, but that's because I know you can take criticism as well as deliver it. Anyway, as regards tubes vs transistors, we can agree to disagree. I surely do concede that solid state in the modern era has come a long way in a positive direction from what it was. (Note that this has happened despite the fact that the "measurements" have not changed much over the years; the old SS amplifiers that measured .000001% THD sounded like s**t. If anything, the newest SS products measure less well yet sound much better. Why? Because the typical lab measurements do not mean squadoosh when it comes to reproducing a musical wave form.)
The point is and was, the Grace Ruby cartridge (the one I own, anyway) is very musical, in the best sense of the word. It offers remarkable sound stage depth and 3-dimensionality. It separates complex musical lines very naturally. If it has any "weakness", I would only cite the extreme low bass response, which may be a little "shy" but not lacking in detail. My MM phono stage (the Silvaweld) may be partly responsible for that shyness. The Ruby is so good that I am interested to revisit my other cartridges and also the ones I have not auditioned, so as to determine whether anything else is much better. This leads me to be interested in trying some of the highest regarded of the LOMC types, some of which I already listed. |
Dear Larry, Because I disagree with you completely on the subject of "3D". Some systems with some software sources can sometimes deliver an image that has "depth". Sometimes not. I perceive this, so you cannot legislate it out of existence by making a pronouncement. What does this mean? This means that when its happening, one can sense that the guy hitting the tympani is at the rear, the trumpets are a little more to the fore and the sax players are sitting in front of the trumpets and maybe the vocalist is standing in front of the whole entourage, for one example. Why is this so inflammatory? The fact that the conductor of the actual orchestra in real time may or may not hear it the same way is totally irrelevant to the discussion. Similarly, I doubt that any of the musicians hear it the way either I or the conductor might hear it. So what? |
Plenty of saxophones in a jazz big band. They generally do sit in front of the trumpet section or the trombones if such are present. I hear big bands live all the time in the DC area; I try not to miss such performances, because I do love the sound of a big band playing jazz. Or do you turn up your nose at the idea of jazz? Frankly, your taste in music and mine are irrelevant to this discussion. Please try another line of argument.
Banquo, Your logic is not so different from Raul's, when he responded to my description of the Grace Ruby as "musical". It feels like you are trying to turn my own statement against me by inferring that I am actually after some artificially pleasing result. (In fact, all of audio reproduction in the home is in pursuit of artifice, but I would leave that aside here.) Every Monday night you can go to the Bohemian Caverns on U Street in Washington, DC, and hear their house band playing live, unamplified music. No microphones. I submit to you that there is a very real sense of depth and musical space conveyed by the acoustics of the club itself. Ergo, I do not accept yours or Larry's thesis that there is no sense of 3D-ness in live performance. in many cases of live performance, we are actually listening to huge speakers placed above and beside the stage, superimposed upon the direct radiations of the instruments; this can indeed destroy the dimensionality of the image, if not done well. |
And yet it appears that in Australia there is yet no law limiting the use of question marks. (We kid, because we love.) |
I am sure you are all nice guys, but this is going nowhere because we are all talking past each other. We are having to take turns denying that what the other inferred about our position is accurate. Yes, I agree that the language of audio is often inadequate. No, I did not write a treatise on it like Larry did. No, I did not say that I seek artifice; I inferred that what our systems give us IS artifice, no matter how sincere is our desire to hear "the truth". How can anyone deny that? But we all want some semblance of what is real-est to us. We are all in the same boat. Yes, we can never quite get where we want to be. Finally, I have a feeling that Larry, who has a unique understanding of how music sounds, should get together with Raul, who has unique capacity to hear distortion. No, I am evidently not qualified to talk to Larry about how live music sounds. I would rather spend the time listening to live or even electronically reproduced music. On to other subjects. Anyone who shows up at my house can have a drink and a listen. |
No question that when a particular LP gives a sense of depth and stage location with a particular cartridge in a particular system, there is a lot of serendipity involved. And it certainly has a lot to do with microphone placement and the original recording process. I find in general that older recordings made with only a few microphones and without elaborate mixers and digital processing are more likely to provide that illusion than are modern 24-track electronic wonders. Case in point: I was listening to Duke Ellington/Johnny Hodges, "Back to Back" on Verve last night. Great stuff.
I am trying to remember the particular recording that we were listening to which provoked me to assert that the Grace Ruby can create that the illusion of depth. It may have been Dave Brubeck with Gerry Mulligan on MoFi; I will double check. |
My pet theory is that the harmonics produced in real time in a live performance are typically not well reproduced in the home, possibly because of microphone placement within the recording venue or possibly for many other reasons. What I mean by this is suppose the primary tone is reproduced with exactly the same intensity in live vs recorded. Lets give that a score of 1.0. Suppose that pure tone is 1000Hz. Then suppose that the amplitude of the respective first harmonics (500Hz and 2000Hz) are present in the live venue at a relative amplitude of 0.8 at the listener position but are recorded only at a level of 0.6. Right there we will lose some of the reality which one might perceive of as "richness" to the musical signal (choose your own favorite noun). However, electronics with benign first order harmonic distortion will artificially restore some of the amplitude that was lost. This will actually sound more real to us. It's not an ideal way to reach Nirvana, but to some degree it works. So, I don't worry about a little THD. |
Dear Tim,
I believe you are incorrect. Simple harmonics are tones conventionally one octave apart, both above and below the fundamental tone frequency, by definition. However, for midrange fundamental tones, most of the harmonics will be higher in frequency, simply because one rapidly runs out of room when going downward and one also runs out of the ability to reproduce the extreme low harmonics. But, think about it, this is (one reason) why, for example, Frank Sinatra singing middle C will sound different from Johnny Hartman singing the same note; Sinatra's voice tends to contain more high frequency harmonics and less of the lower frequency harmonics, compared to Hartman's. Or to put it even more extremely, compare Ella Fitzgerald to Billy Eckstine, both singing middle C. You will hear a lot of bass harmonic frequencies in Eckstine's voice. It is my belief that the brain learns to identify well known vocalists by their harmonic signatures, along with other signatures of course. (This is something I conclude from thought experiment; I never read much about it. But I sing for an avocation, and I listen all the time to vocalists.) |
Frogman, In the formal definition, you and Tim are correct. I stand corrected. I was thinking about it in a different way. Serves me right not to have Googled before I posted. |
Mike, Interesting you were listening to the Beatles. I had the same impulse. On Saturday, I was blowing my mind with the Abbey Road album, played at a high db level. That album came out in the same year that I purchased my very first pair of "high end" loudspeakers, IMF Studios, which I bought from Mike Kaye at Lyric Audio in NYC. Mike helped me to load them into my car. The Studios and Abbey Road will always be linked in my mind, because I used to fret whether the 8-inch KEF woofers in the transmission line were being overloaded on "Come Together". But the whole album is a masterpiece. "Come Together" on my Sound Labs, played with the Stanton 980LZS, is to die for. By the way, I am listening to the very same copy of the album (on Apple) that I purchased originally in 1970. Was singing "Maxwell's Silver Hammer" this morning whilst brushing my teeth. (Not easy, with toothpaste in your mouth.) |
Mike, I had a Pontiac LeMans with the V8 and a floor shift. My dad thought the GTO was "too fast". I could not talk him into it. Later, in med school, I bought myself a used Alfa Duetto with my own money. Liked the LeMans but loved the Alfa. The Beatles seem even greater today than I thought they were then, because of the crappy music with which we are bombarded on a daily basis. Only the Stones and a very few others can compare. I remember now that my system in 1970 was AR XA turntable, CM SS preamp (a small now defunct company based in CT), an SAE SS amplifier, and those IMF Studios, all crammed into our apartment when I was an intern. Interestingly, I may have had a Stanton 681E cartridge at that time.
Dave, I first started at 100R load on the Stanton. I am sitting there thinking that the cartridge sure sounds "dark" and not much highs. Then I realized that I still had the MP1 set up for the Ortofon MC7500. (I installed switchable loading in the MP1, so I can now choose 100R, 1000R, and 47K via a single 4PDT switch on the rear.) So I switched over to 1000R. Big big improvement. I need to try 47K, but I was so taken by the music after that that I stopped worrying. It was interesting to me that even though the Stanton has a 3-ohm internal resistance, lower than many LOMCs, it just does not sound right into a 100R load (no treble). Perhaps this has to do with its 1mH inductance, as opposed to the ~50 microhenry inductance of an LOMC. |
Re the classical vs rock discussion, Duke said it best. There are only two kinds of music, "good and bad". And of course, jazz is the only "good" music. Just kidding. Beatles, too. Dave G's remark made me want to drag out my copy of Heifetz playing the Sibelius Violin Concerto. That was the first classical LP that made me appreciate that classical music was subject to personal interpretation and creativity, almost to the same extent as jazz. What Heifetz does with that music is genius. |
I never thought about a single instrument having a "3D" aspect. I am satisfied if and when my audio system can give me a sense of the space around that instrument, rather than of its dimensions. For example, the differences among the sounds of that trumpet outside in free space, in a large auditorium, or in Raul's apartment with the low-ish ceilings. When I spoke of depth and 3D imaging, I was thinking of an ensemble of composed of a variety of dissimilar instruments.
I really like Raul's last point, and I noticed this too in a small jazz club when I was sitting about 6 feet away from a trumpet player and a trombone player standing side by side with the bells pointed right at me; the sound was very loud during crescendos but never "irritating". It was just, for want of a better word, "pure". So clean! Even the best audio system will eventually exhibit distortions at high volume levels, due to being overdriven. |
Dear Froggie, OK. Semantics got in the way of our understanding each other. When you wrote "3D" and based on your subsequent language, I thought you were talking about the 3D image of a trumpet per se. |
Regarding the Stanton 980LZS or the 981LZS: A friend purchased an NOS 981LZS from pickup naalden (Cris). He uses a SUT. Suffice to say that he is not happy with the sound he gets via the SUT. He says it sounds closed in and lacks "transparency". The max load resistance he can achieve with the SUT is less than 300 ohms, and I think this may be the problem, since I too found that the cartridge does not bloom until you raise the load R to at least 1000 ohms. I think this may have to do with the fact that the inductance of the 980 is much higher than that of a typical LOMC (1 mH vs typically about 50 uH [microhenries] for LOMC). So, even though the internal resistance of the 980/981 is very low at 3 ohms, I do not advise mating it with a SUT. You need a true high gain phono stage. I would appreciate the comment of Dlaloum or Timeltel or anyone else regarding the validity of my hypothesis for why there seems to be a problem. I remain quite thrilled with my 980LZS driving the high gain phono stage in my MP1 phono stage. Will be interested to know Dave Garretson's results as well. |
Dear Nikola, I am sure the Atlas is a great cartridge, at $9500. But for Fremer it is merely his flavor of the month. Don't take it too seriously.
Dear Thom, I must confess I cannot make heads or tails out of your post just above Jorsan's on 4-26. What is it you are trying to say?
Dear Raul, We are in complete agreement; the 980/981 was not made for use with a SUT. I think I even posted my concerns on this matter prior to this, but now I know for sure based on my friend's experience. I had a conversation with Dave Slagle, and he agrees that the problem is its relatively high inductance compared to a typical MC. I was merely trying to warn anyone here who might want to purchase one of those NOS 981LZSs from naalden; don't do it if you plan to use a SUT in order to achieve the necessary gain.
As to the rest of it, I can only report to you that my 980LZS does not perform up to its maximum potential when I accidentally listened to it with a 100R load. It sounded dull, closed-in, and lifeless. It came to life at 1000R. I think 1000R is what I used previously when I was so happy with it. Based on what Dave and also Bill Thalmann said about the specs of the 981/980LZS, 47K or even higher might be even better. I plan to try it. If you have based your judgement of the LZS series on its sound with a 100R load, you owe it to yourself to try a higher value, at least 1000R. And here's why: the nominal internal resistance is indeed very low at 3 ohms, which makes one think that 100R should be fine. But the high-ish inductance adds a reactive component to the total resistance seen by the phono stage; as frequency goes up, resistance goes up. At hf, the net resistance is much higher than 3 ohms. Thus there is a significant roll-off of hf response by the time you get up to 10kHz and higher, into a 100R load.
Although you are not the first to suggest that the phono circuit downstream from the load resistor has something to do with the choice of load resistance, I have yet to read a clear explanation for why that would be, apart from the possible effect that the net input impedance of the circuit might have in parallel with the chosen load resistor, but that's a no-brainer. Is there something more to it? |
Dear Thom, On second reading, I do understand your post, I think. Anyway, 100R does not do justice to the 980LZS in my system. In my friend's system WITH the SUT, the cartridge is seeing about 270R, and that is evidently not sufficient either to bring out the best from the cartridge. (Dave Slagle calculated a 3db rolloff at 20kHz with that load.) I did not try values in between 100R and 1000R, but clearly 1000R is far superior sounding. In any case, the hybrid you are listening to is not identical to a 980/981LZS, so perhaps that accounts for your experience vs mine and that of my friend with the SUT. Also and finally, the step up ratio of the AT630, with which I am not familiar, may be quite different from that of the built-in SUT in the Allnic, which could also make a diff. Beyond that, quien sabe'? |
Thanks, Al. Here are the specifics: The typical inductance of an MM cartridge is on the order of hundreds of mH, and the internal resistance is tens of ohms. The inductance of the 980LZS is 1mH, and its internal resistance is 3 ohms. The typical inductance of an MC is tens of microhenries, and its internal resistance is similar to or a bit higher than that of the low output Stanton. Thus the 980LZS is a 'tweener. That is to say, it's inductance is around 20X higher than that of a typical LOMC, but its internal resistance is comparable.
In reading your corrected statement, it seems you might be saying that a lower load resistance might be beneficial to the Stanton. I am here to tell you that is not the case; it sounds dull, rolled off, closed in, slow; choose your own adjective from that family. My friend heard it the same way via his SUT. This is not because the low load resistance is dampening some resonant peak that I had become accustomed to (or maybe it is a resonance necessary for flat response); this is in comparison to any other "good" cartridge in my collection, as well as in comparison to the Stanton itself with a load of 1000R or greater. Further, we have the testimony of Dave Slagle, who, given the parameters above, was in agreement that the top end would be rolled off with a too low load resistance. This is what I hear. Maybe I am totally misunderstanding the intent of your post, for which I do apologize. I am probably exaggerating the "badness" of the sound with a 100R load, but I would never choose it over what I hear with a 1000R load, and I mean to try 47K and 100K as well. |
Henry, Thank you so much for your last couple of posts comparing high quality MCs to some of the ones we have been discussing here. It puts a perspective on things that helps my decision-making.
Timeltel (Thom), Can you say what is the turns ratio of the AT630 SUT? Quality aside, therein may lie the difference between what you are hearing with a low output Pickering vs what my friend hears via his Allnic SUT using the low output Stanton. Also, can you confirm my assumption that the resistor on the secondary (phono stage) side of the AT630 is 47K ohms? (Knowing the turns ratio of the SUT and the resistance on its secondary, we can calculate the actual load on the Pickering.) Thx.
Almarg, Thx for your response. Good to know we are on the same page. I always feel insecure if and when we are not, as I do value your fund of knowledge. |
Raul, Have you listened to your LZS with a 1000R load or higher? If not, then your opinion that it sounds "good" with a 100R load is neither here nor there. Further, what we need to know is the turns ratio of the AT630 and the resistance across its secondaries; it may well be that the net resistance seen by the low output Pickering that Timeltel is using is equal to or higher than 1000R or at any rate may be much above 100R, which might account for the difference between his observations and mine. Can we approach this question scientifically rather than by fiat? |
As far as I can find out, the AT630 gives "20db" of gain. This implies a turns ratio of 10:1, which means that if Timeltel has a 47K resistor at the input of his phono stage, the Pickering is seeing 470 ohms. It might well be that 470 ohms would sound already substantially better in the ways I described, compared to 100 ohms. |
I theorize that the sense of increased detail with LOMC cartridges is due to their lesser ability to re-create the harmonic envelope of a voice or instrument, compared to the best of the MM or MI types. Your comments fit with my notion, if you think about it. Just substitute harmonics or harmonic envelope for "volume and naturalness, etc". And to think, you are upside down on the other side of the planet. You are entering winter, and I am entering summer. Your toilet water rotates in the opposite direction from mine when you flush, and yet we hear the same way. |
Timeltel, The SUT in the Allnic is built in to the MC inputs. You can't avoid it, if you want MC-type phono gain. He reported to me that the max net resistance that can be presented to an MC cartridge (and in this case to the Stanton) is 278 ohms. (This is hearsay; I have never personally examined an Allnic H3000.) Granted, there may be other reasons why the high-ish inductance of the 980LZS makes it not work well into a SUT. I had not thought about it until now, but the limited capacity to adjust load R is another sacrifice of using a SUT. One could not, for example, experiment with running an MC into a 47K load, as some do recommend. I talked him into at least listening to the cartridge via the MM inputs, but we both do not expect the gain to be sufficient. Still, I am curious about what he will report. |
Henry, Sorry for my indiscretion. I am sure that the direction of the rotation of the water in your house, in sink or toilet, as it goes down the drain is politically correct. It's interesting to me now; for years I read the reviews of REG in TAS. REG is an old-timer who always insisted that his MM cartridges were more realisitic sounding than MC ones. I viewed him as a quaint eccentric back then. Raul pointed out the fact that REG was in the vanguard.
Raul, Sorry to learn that you are still deprived of sounds. I remember the many long months that it took me to revise my OTL amplifiers, which finally led me to buy a solid state amplifier I did not even want, just to have music. You have my sympathy. |
Dover, Note use of the word "theory". In other words, I made an observation and I then have advanced a hypothesis to explain it. I just threw it out there. Also, it was very late at night when I wrote that, with kind of a snootful of booze on board, as well. After I went to bed, I realized I should have qualified my statement in the following way: I cannot claim to have heard a large number of samples of what are considered to be the very best MC cartridges available. Therefore, my personal data set is limited. But it appears that Halcro has more observational data than I and that he hears it the same way. It would be more "presumptuous" of me had I stated my theory as fact; I did not intend it that way.
I actually think this difference between MC and MM or MI should be demonstrable on a 'scope. I have a 'scope, but I am not sure how to do the test properly. Anyway, it's a topic for conversation. I start with the consistent observation that piano sounds more real with MM/MI compared to the best of the LOMCs I own or have owned. I think it sounds more real because I hear more of the natural harmonics of the piano and more of the attack and decay of each note. So then I extrapolate that phenomenon to voice and other instruments, or rather I wonder whether it does extrapolate. I agree completely with Raul, if there is any truth to my rash generalization, it has a lot to do with superior tracking (higher compliance) of MM/MI cartridges. It may also have to do with the absolute voltage output of a typical MM vs a typical MC. In the latter case, the voltages of the signals that comprise the nuances that cue us to the reality of the voice or instrument (e.g., attack and decay) are much more minute than those that are generated from an MM or MI. Thus the information we/I sense as lacking from an MC may actually be present in the signal but may not be "sensed" by the phono stage in proportion to its actual magnitude. IOW, the fault may be in the high gain required. I could especially see this happening with a SUT, where the tiny signal has to cross from primary to secondary of the transformer. Hysteresis, etc, could rob us there. An analogy to this would be found in the comparison between systems that use flea power amps driving very efficient speakers, especially horns and more conventional audio systems. I am not a fan of the former, but I would not argue that those systems are very revealing of nuances like attack and decay, and I think it is because of their very high efficiency.
I will now proceed with haste to my bomb shelter. This is all free association on my part. No harm is intended. I am certainly not done with LOMC cartridges in my system. |
Dear Raul, "Happy", yes. "Satisfied", never. That is the hallmark of our disease. |
JCarr, Thank you for one of the most thoughtful and informative posts ever, among the 7000+ posts on this thread. I am going to copy and save it on my desktop for reference. When I qualified my perhaps ill-conceived hypothesis by admitting I have not had the pleasure to audition many or most of the very finest LOMC cartridges in my system, the Titan, the Olympos, and now the Atlas are certainly three among those I had in mind.
Dave et al, When I saw those NOS 981s for sale from Naalden, I had some concern in fact that they were "NOS", which means they were sitting around on a shelf for ~30 years. Nevertheless, I too ordered one based on my predilection for my well-used 980LZS. When I get it, I will be able to compare my two samples to perhaps shed some light on the question of suspension deterioration or stiffening that might be ameliorated by use. Even with the well broken in 980LZS, I can understand why some would call it "dark"; I think of it as being very rich in detail. It certainly does not roll off hf, which is what usually elicits the "dark" descriptor. "Rich in detail" is an interesting dichotomy. We usually talk about cartridges that reproduce what is perceived as detail as being "clinical". This one is not; it is both "rich" and "detailed".
FWIW, I have heard my 980LZS on my Kenwood LO7D using the Kenwood L07J tonearm. I do not know its effective mass, but the headshell alone is surely at least 12 gm in weight. Now most recently I have it mounted on my Reed 10.5-inch tonearm, which has effective mass around 14-17 gm. (I forget what the previous owner told me; the info is on the website). Tracking at 1.2 gm. Playing into the phono section of my Atma- MP1, which is very similar if not identical to Dave's MP1. (We modified our phono stages in concert with each other.) We use a hybrid dual-differential cascode input voltage amplifier, with an MAT02 bipolar transistor on the bottom and an ECC99 triode on the top of the cascode. |
Mike, For heaven's sake, don't drop the needle until you have properly set VTF. Otherwise, it will go right back to Axel.
Nandric, Like a lump of sugar, I am sweet. Like a piece of copper wire, I am able to conduct electricity (briefly). And I am probably "satisfied" at least transiently, not "never". In fact in certain other endeavors, I am always satisfied. I myself was excavating Raul's sentiment, if you know what I mean. |
Dear Timeltel, Two comments: (i) The price of that 4500S stylus is why I went ahead to purchase the NOS 981LZS; for only about $100 more, I get a whole new cartridge AND a correct NOS D98S stylus. (ii) Regarding your son who thinks "loan" means "give", shouldn't he be a natural for the TAS staff? I have heard they have a similar idea of the meaning of those two terms.
Dear Dave, The words you chose to describe the 981LZS are in accordance with my thoughts and feelings about that cartridge. Compared to the Acutex or even to the Grace Ruby, the 980 puts less of a "spotlight" on the featured performer and gives me more of what the sidemen or the rest of the orchestra is doing. This per se is neither good nor bad, just "what it does". However, the net effect is to make me feel more involved in the performance. (The Acutex spotlights the main performer, sometimes at the expense of the other musicians, IMO.) |
