It's been two days since I had my Helikon professionally installed and my TT tweaked in my home by a senior tech from a nearby high-end audio shop. Since my Stax dedicated amp had arrived just a few days before the Ear 834p phono preamp and the Scoutmaster, I've had to do some serious neurological adjusting to the new sonics. Allthough what I had heard up until today had had be somewhat divided between sacd and vinyl (excepting of course classic rock, which always sounds best on vinyl owing perhaps to some of its colorations), a listening session today resolved it for me once and for all. I listened to one of my favorite classical Lps which I hadn't heard since around the time I first bought my hw-19jr some years ago. It is an original Decca pressing in excellent but not NM condition (also needs to be cleaned, but is OK) of Stravisnky's Symphony in C, conducted by Ansermet. At first it sounded nice and textured, but i had trouble adjusting to where all the instruments were located spatially (after all, I am using headphones, even if they are Stax electrostats). Then I remembered a listening trick I learned when I was about 18, and have used from intermittently since then, whenever a recording or live performance is musically or otherwise challenging. I focussed all my awareness away from my ears directly, up towards the top of my head. Within a minute everything clicked into place, so to speak, and I experienced everything about which high-end proponents of analog (and perhaps very high-end digita)l have been raving for years - a sense of the music being totally liberated from its medium and playback system. Expressed prosaically, pitch, microdynamics, and timbres were spot-on. Expressed another way - a way doing better justice to the person within whose crushed spirit begs for this kind of sonic rightness - the music took on a playfully animated quality that transcended the genre and lit up the imagination as no recording and hardly any performance has ever done (save those heard 'under the influence' many years ago, and even then only rarely). I should add that I own this piece on redbook CD, and have heard it performed in concert as well, but my experience of it today defied categorization. For what it's worth, I was in a bad mood and was also having a little buyer's remorse about having spent almost every penny allocated to audio stuff on an analog front end. It seemed that every LP I removed from the cover was dusty and/or had some of my years-since deceased cat's hair on it, so I was hardly biased in favor of having this particular LP sound so damned good.
Questions about SACD vs.analog for classical music
I've just ordered a VPI Scoutmaster. A rather impulsive decision made at just the point when I was about to have my Sony 9000es modded. Not quite just at the point, but right after I removed my Hw-19jr/pt-6/Glider/blackcube rig from storage in order to get the parts ready for shipping to they new owners. I had what i thought would be my last night listening to the TT, after a several year hiatus, and you know what? There was that organic something, that harmonic coherence in certain recordings that I noticed only in the very best SACDs. In some of my LPs, that 'present' or 'real' feeling exceeded all but one or two of my SACDs (only the Rite of Spring on Telarc, a few tracks from the telarc classical sampler 2, and one other were superior to anything I heard on the VPI). OK, the SACDs were obviously cleaner sounding and more extended (I was using Stax sr-lambda phones) except when compared to a couple of the highest quality analogue productions lps I own, but it got me thinking: hey, if my humble jr. sounds this good now, I can only wonder how good one of the purportedly much improved high-end rigs would sound. The Sony mods would have cost upwards of $1300, but selling my jr. and lumping all that dough together and allocating it to a renewed involvement in analog looked, well, promising.
So I ordered a new Scoutmaster (at substantial discount) with the JMW-9 arm and am now by the way researching my options for cartridges and preamps. I've sold my blackcube, but have a Jolida JD-9 on load from a dealer, which sounds very nice with the jr. (the sold TT about to be shipped) - very vivid and harmonically satisfying, well articulated, etc - though it's not as quiet as the 'Cube and I even can hear some AM radio coming through my phones when I turn up my linestage preamp volume. But here I digress.
My main reason for starting this thread, aside from having some assorted questions about carts, preamps, and the like, is to ask for some objective and subjective opinions regarding the decision I just made. Bear in mind that my main interest is classical music, especially chamber (esp. string quartets, trios, wind quintets, etc) and piano with some orchestral, followed by classic rock and some Blue-Note era jazz. The SACD route seemed promising at first, and I told myself that, even though there were only a smattering of sacd recordings for many of my favorite classical performers (eg. Elly Ameling Soprano, Yo-Yo Ma, Rubinstein), there were so many truly talented lesser-knowns on the sacd scene (e.g. pianist Freddy Kempf on BIS, Csaba and Heisser on Praga digitals, and of course Paavo Jaervi on Telarc) that I deemed my chances of attaining long-term satisfaction with purely sacd (and a little redbook on the side) to be very good. Especially after sacd mods. As for classic rock, the SACD of the Police Synchronicity just blew me away (through Sennheiser HD600w/cardas cable).
But THEN it occurred to me that the only way to possibly hear my very favorite string quartet - the Vegh Quartet - in better than redbook fidelity was through vinyl. Ditto for numerous other performers who will never appear on sacd. Then of course there's always the Beatles, Stones, Jerry Garcia and others to sweeten the deal for vinyl. By the way, I sold my Ikemi redbook player in order to open up some new options and try something new. Even my girlfriend almost cried to see the Ikemi go, her having been converted just enough to an audiophile that she could absolutely see someone justifying having spent almost four grand on a source component (even a non-disc changer)
So what do you guys think? When my scoutmaster arrives, am I in for some visceral thrills and deep musical connection? I know that it's also dependent on the rest of my system, and so far I've narrowed cart choices down to the Lyras and the Shelters, leaning heavily towards the former. As for phono preamps I'm considering the Linto, Ear 834p mm/mc, and a few others including a modded Jolida JD-9 or something along those lines.
Is the scoutmaster, fitted with a $1000+ cartridge and a similarly priced phono preamp, going through Cardas golden reference into either a Bryston B60 integrated (and then to Sennheisers or B&wdm603) OR into a Stax srm-t1 tube driver of my Stax electrostats, going to 'knock my socks off' as suggested by Mike at VPI yesterday? How close can I get to SACD (especially to the 'pure DSD') fidelity through this setup? I know speed stability and noise floor will be drastically improved, giving tones accuracy and timbral accuracy, and i expect bass to be better and overall macro and microdynamics as well BUT... am I going to be able to achieve some of the same absolutely organic, sparkling, and pure sound of some of the better DSD recordings? What about the musical clarity per se of redbook, in particular when listening to string quartets and the like? Will I get a 'clean' sound in the tonal sense, not overly dark, but a sound that seems right? What about the upper octave of piano?
I once read an article long ago (i believe it was in stereophile) in which the author admitting to prefering cassette tape over vinyl due to it having cleaner and more pitch accurate upper octave reproduction. That was then, this is now. What do you guys think? (last time I'll ask that, I promise!)
Ted
So I ordered a new Scoutmaster (at substantial discount) with the JMW-9 arm and am now by the way researching my options for cartridges and preamps. I've sold my blackcube, but have a Jolida JD-9 on load from a dealer, which sounds very nice with the jr. (the sold TT about to be shipped) - very vivid and harmonically satisfying, well articulated, etc - though it's not as quiet as the 'Cube and I even can hear some AM radio coming through my phones when I turn up my linestage preamp volume. But here I digress.
My main reason for starting this thread, aside from having some assorted questions about carts, preamps, and the like, is to ask for some objective and subjective opinions regarding the decision I just made. Bear in mind that my main interest is classical music, especially chamber (esp. string quartets, trios, wind quintets, etc) and piano with some orchestral, followed by classic rock and some Blue-Note era jazz. The SACD route seemed promising at first, and I told myself that, even though there were only a smattering of sacd recordings for many of my favorite classical performers (eg. Elly Ameling Soprano, Yo-Yo Ma, Rubinstein), there were so many truly talented lesser-knowns on the sacd scene (e.g. pianist Freddy Kempf on BIS, Csaba and Heisser on Praga digitals, and of course Paavo Jaervi on Telarc) that I deemed my chances of attaining long-term satisfaction with purely sacd (and a little redbook on the side) to be very good. Especially after sacd mods. As for classic rock, the SACD of the Police Synchronicity just blew me away (through Sennheiser HD600w/cardas cable).
But THEN it occurred to me that the only way to possibly hear my very favorite string quartet - the Vegh Quartet - in better than redbook fidelity was through vinyl. Ditto for numerous other performers who will never appear on sacd. Then of course there's always the Beatles, Stones, Jerry Garcia and others to sweeten the deal for vinyl. By the way, I sold my Ikemi redbook player in order to open up some new options and try something new. Even my girlfriend almost cried to see the Ikemi go, her having been converted just enough to an audiophile that she could absolutely see someone justifying having spent almost four grand on a source component (even a non-disc changer)
So what do you guys think? When my scoutmaster arrives, am I in for some visceral thrills and deep musical connection? I know that it's also dependent on the rest of my system, and so far I've narrowed cart choices down to the Lyras and the Shelters, leaning heavily towards the former. As for phono preamps I'm considering the Linto, Ear 834p mm/mc, and a few others including a modded Jolida JD-9 or something along those lines.
Is the scoutmaster, fitted with a $1000+ cartridge and a similarly priced phono preamp, going through Cardas golden reference into either a Bryston B60 integrated (and then to Sennheisers or B&wdm603) OR into a Stax srm-t1 tube driver of my Stax electrostats, going to 'knock my socks off' as suggested by Mike at VPI yesterday? How close can I get to SACD (especially to the 'pure DSD') fidelity through this setup? I know speed stability and noise floor will be drastically improved, giving tones accuracy and timbral accuracy, and i expect bass to be better and overall macro and microdynamics as well BUT... am I going to be able to achieve some of the same absolutely organic, sparkling, and pure sound of some of the better DSD recordings? What about the musical clarity per se of redbook, in particular when listening to string quartets and the like? Will I get a 'clean' sound in the tonal sense, not overly dark, but a sound that seems right? What about the upper octave of piano?
I once read an article long ago (i believe it was in stereophile) in which the author admitting to prefering cassette tape over vinyl due to it having cleaner and more pitch accurate upper octave reproduction. That was then, this is now. What do you guys think? (last time I'll ask that, I promise!)
Ted
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- 56 posts total
- 56 posts total