mulveling
Responses from mulveling
| What Ampliffier And Magico A3 Anytime I've heard Magico paired to VAC at my dealer's, it's been excellent - extremely musical. Any of the current VAC lineup, including the integrated, are fantastic. | |
| PrimaLuna Dialogue Preamp = emotionless? @paulcreed I had a BAT BAT VK5i a long time ago, with a similar experience - based on reputation I thought I was in for an amazing preamp listening experience, but it definitely was NOT a joy to listen to. Tried tube rolling, including Tung-Sol 58... | |
| Question on phono input noise levels That hiss is normal noise from a phono stage. Be thankful you don't also have a hum or buzz from a grounding issue to track down. For a low or medium output MC cartridge you can try the combination a step-up transformer with a phono stage in MM mo... | |
| Koetsu black, lacking bass His Magnify arm is a hybrid magnetic bearing (not as bad as the fully magnetic Clarify, but still), so I’d be wary of adding mass to that system (e.g. the tail wags the dog). Koetsu seems to like high mass AND rigid bearings, AND I haven’t had goo... | |
| Turntable recommendations Second the SOTA recommendation - especially in this price range you're looking at a nice Nova VI or Cosmos. Get it in an exotic wood of your choice and you'll love it for life. | |
| Koetsu black, lacking bass That doesn’t sound right for a Koetsu, even fresh out of the box. I personally didn’t have stellar results with the Clearaudio pivoted arms and Koetsu (Jade on a Universal 12” arm), but I’d still suspect something else going on, like the phono sta... | |
| Oracle Origine MkII or Music Hall mmf-7.3? With the MMF you’re just getting another ProJect build - and they’ve never really impressed me. My dealer carries ProJect and occasionally has in a mid-line MMF - I’m simply not impressed with the painted MDF planks sandwiching sorbothane dots, an... | |
| Really...My favorite power tube is reissue that's not widely popular @noromanceEicos are awesome too! I had an HF-87 with the most incredible vintage tube amp tone (it was even a good tone with cheapo EH EL34, but better with Mullard XF2/3/4 and a bright-ish 12AX7 to balance, e.g. Japanese). Small sound stage thoug... | |
| Dream/upgrade list: rogue ares Yeah, just to reiterate - I would expect you to hear a nice difference with an Ares (or that quality of phono stage) in your current system. I didn’t mean to infer you must have that $6K rig before getting the Ares. Used deals do pop up, and it’s ... | |
| Really...My favorite power tube is reissue that's not widely popular I wasn’t even aware there was a vintage Tung-Sol 7581A to "reissue". Obviously New Sensor / EH doesn’t have rights to the Philips / Sylvania, RCA, or GE names, so perhaps they just pick their "Tung-Sol" label as the go-to for reissues of power tub... | |
| Dream/upgrade list: rogue ares Phono stage is pretty important, so you may be able to hear more with an Ares right now. Having owned the Ares a few times now over the years, including the Magnum, my sense it that it’s a good stage that will hit its stride with a table in the 3K... | |
| If I were to replace my VPI Airies1 with a 4k or so budget? I'm very happy with my SOTA Nova V, but the new advancements in the VI series look pretty amazing, as mentioned, especially the Eclipse / RR package. I'm also a big fan of their vacuum hold-down platters (unfortunately the entry price for a new va... | |
| Phonostage Advice Modwright is adding the 11dB line stage gain from the 6SN7’s, which I think is deceiving. So if you had an outboard phono stage with an actual 63 dB of gain, you’d get a net gain of 74 dB. My experience pairing under-0.5mV cartridges with phono st... | |
| Phonostage Advice Just looking at specs, you’re probably going to be hurting for gain with the 0.3mV Dynavector and only 52dB of MC phono stage gain (in the specs they add the 11dB of line stage gain to get 63dB total gain). Probably sounds like it lacks dynamics r... | |
| If I were to replace my VPI Airies1 with a 4k or so budget? Not a VPI fan here but the Aries 1 is simply beautiful. And these days 4K doesn't get you very far :( |