Medialux

The construction:

If we compare the Lyra Etna SL with its more expensive stablemate, the Atlas SL, we will discover that both cartridges share the same basic technical ingredients. Both feature the same line contact stylus cut, the same diamond coated cantilever as also the same coil technology and stylus material. They even have the exact same technical data except the weight of the whole cartridge. While the Atlas is made from one solid billet of Titanium, the Etna uses just a core structure made from this very rigid material. The side elements are made of special grade aircraft aluminium press fitted with the inner Titanium core structure additionally damped with some bronze inlets, a technology that Lyra started to use in a slightly different way with the Kleos cartridge.

The Sound:

It is somewhat a once in a lifetime experience to get the chance of comparing the sound difference between two cartridges which differs just in one single construction parameter – the body structure. This is a mindblowing experience, because it is hard to believe that just a body structure could make such a tremendous difference in the sound aesthetic which we will detect comparing the Atlas SL with the Etna SL. While the Atlas stretches the frequency extremes like no other cartridge I know, the Etna features one of the most natural mid band spectrums I am aware off. Do not think the Etna SL is rolled off at the top or has any weakness in showing anything less than the deepest octave of recorded music – far from that. But the Etna SL has such a pure and natural midband performance, that you are more aware of what happens in this frequency section, than listening to the explosive bass or treble performance the Atlas is capable off. The Etna breathes the tone, the Atlas trows it at you – both is an amazing experience. If I listen to Pop music, Electro, even Jazz, the Atlas sucks you into the performance with his sheer heft and tremendous speed and agility. The Etna SL in comparison has more flow, more natural Gestalt and an amazing integrity of the whole frequency spectrum. The dynamic abilities are also outstanding, but the sound does not so much explode in front of you, instead it unfolds a never ending colour scheme of tones and moods. There is a wide and deep stage, a tremendous realistic rendering of the recorded space – and on top of that you get a string tone to die for. The vocal performance is more integrated, than with the Atlas – there is more a human being in front of you – what you loose is the last drop of resolution and a very, very tiny bit of air around the singer. What you get instead is the body of the artist – you get a different kind of resolution – a resolution, were tiny shades of different moods, while the recording session took place, vary the vocals. Every tiny bit of feeling  – or – the soul of the music!

Lyra does not offer a small Atlas with the introduction of the Etna – Lyra gave us audiophiles a different view of the same picture. You can choose if you want to have the thrilling experience of the Atlas or the richness in midband colours of the Etna. It is unbelievable that just the different body structure could alter the sound of an otherwise identical cartridge. Jonathan Carr showed us, that body material and the structure can “voice” a cart in very different way. I think the monoblock Titanium structure of the Atlas allowed the cartridge motor to get the highest attack precision without any kind of smoothing out those first few milliseconds, while the Aluminium / Titan structure of the Etna emphases the resolution in the mid band – and rounds even so slightly the the leading edge.

Mating the Etna SL with a phono stage – tubed or transistor, as well as finding the right step up transformer might be challenging. If a cart has such a fantastic mid band purity, the last thing we would want is any colouration in this very important range. I opted for a tubed phono stage, and with this decision, you start to think about the right tubes to choose in this regard. Mullard and Amperex are well known for their low midband emphasis (Mullard MC1 Long Plates) and a certain offensive character in the presence department of the sound  spectrum(Amperex Foil D Getter Long Plates). To find really uncoloured tubes of the ECC family lets you think about Telefunken and very old Valvo ECC83 (M1 or MC2). Both tubes can give you an uncoloured midband performance while also having a tight grip on the bass and a sweet unforced treble aesthetic. With a tubes phono stage there is in most cases the need for a step up transformer – the Etna SL has a very low inner resistance and give us just 0,25mV, which calls for a 1:20 or 1:30 step up device depending on the gain of your phono mm section.

That brings me to one still relatively unknown transformer made here in Berlin by Michael Ulbrich and his company Consolidated Audio. At the beginning of 2019 I got my copper wound nano 1:20 transformer – and the pairing with the Lyra Etna SL is nothing short of spectacular. Michael succeeded in designing a SUT which is very, very transparent to the source. All starts with a speed this device is capable off, so that you get the last ounce of the leading edge – and – very important, the clicks and crackles are just very, very short signals – there is no tendency to lengthen those on the time axis. A short click is, what it is – there is no rounding, no smoothing and no side effects. This ultra fast reaction lets us “hear trough” all the clicks an crackles on our beloved vinyl. As I also work on vinyl restoration, I did some tests and comparisons regarding this aspect with other well regarded step up devices. If you transcribe the vinyl record to a digital workstation, you can measure the attack performance versus the timeline. What I found out is, that most of the SUT I had in for comparison do a more or less rounding on the leading edge of a click or the signal. With the Consolidated Audio SUT all those little nasties are clearly differentiable from the music – they get out of our musical awareness – awesome!

The “Monster Can” is shielded very well against electromagnetic interference – you can place it wherever you want – even near a power transformer there is no hum. All the typical High End rituals, like dressing the cables, finding the right position in your rack (most often the hum is gone if you hold the SUT in your hand, were no rack shelf is in existence;-)) are forgotten…Just find a place were you have enough height in your audio furniture, because the thing is big – really big!

With the “Monster Can” Michael Ulbrich also gave us the possibility to terminate our cartridge with resistor plugs. Between the input and output section you will find one extra RCA terminal per channel to plug in those resistor equipped RCA connectors. The built quality is outstanding – and the attention to detail second to none. The “Monser Can” comes with very smooth rubber feet – so any isolation platform is obsolete – and those feet hold the heavy thing securely in its place. All terminals are of the finest quality as is the built finish of the whole enclosure.

Sound-wise this thing is close to a wire with gain – do not expect an overly warm and coloured SUT sound – the Consolidated Audio device is very, very transparent – maybe the most spectacular aspect is the pureness of the mid frequencies as well as the unlimited bass fundament which it is able to produce. There is a complete absence of any harshness or artefacts – just music. Well done Micha Ulbrich, WELL DONE!!

If you pair the “Monster Can” with a low capacitance cable between the SUT and the input of your phono MM section, you are in for a treat. The Lyra Phonopipe does an impressive job in this regard, and the Etna SL begins to breathe. The string tone is spookily realistic, creating a 3D impression of the musical performance. Listen to a well recorded piano and you might think the damn thing is standing in your room – amazing!  If someone would have told us 15 years ago, that such mega performing carts, step up devices and tonearms would be available…..

It is very interesting what a huge step some of the cartridge manufacturers are meanwhile able to muster. The biggest downside is a very steep price tag such beauties have in our days – the race towards the € 20.000 is on – and we will see if this limit will be reached this or the next year. That is one of the biggest problems in the serious music reproduction industry – because young people, listening to music via their mobile phone and a docking station will be shocked if they enter a HiFi shop today and become aware of the sometimes completely over the top price tags. Lyra created one big exception from this course – they brought the Delos onto the market, the fist cart in the line up with the new specific damper technology. The Delos is also not cheap, but what J. Carr developed for €1300 is amazing! – In other words – it needs a very, very fine record player and tonearm to unleash what the Delos has to offer. And the price tag – a hint for all the crazy “what´s best” guys….the price tag says nothing about the quality of this awesome cart. If J. Carr would double the price – it would still punch above his weight.

Happy listening

E Strauss

If there is anything I would call the best phonographic cartridge…..

it would be the Lyra Atlas SL!

Normally it is very difficult to speak about “the best” in terms of audio equipment – because “the best” is most often system dependent and also personal preferences are a big deal in ranking such devices. But nevertheless, in this special case I would establish “the best” and here are the reasons why:

Construction:

Jonathan Carr of Lyra is one of those rare cartridge developers, who raised the bar with every new generation of high end pick up systems his company brought to the High End market. May it be the legendary Lyra Parnassus, the Lyra Titan i or today the Atlas, all these cartridges refined the performance of analogue sound reproduction tremendously. Jonathan seems to be one of those exeptional people in the audio industry, who are not satisfied with what is possible today and he is also able to think in a more radical way than others in terms of technological development. The new Lyra Atlas SL has a bunch of technical specials which are not seen in any other cartridge.

Lets start with the enclosure Carr designed for the Atlas – he used a single billet of titanium and milled it in a way, that there will be no parallel or symmetric surfaces or structures anymore. The reason for this radical design approach is to reduce any resonances a cartridge body is prone to. Think about the fact, that just a very small percentage of mechanical energy a cartridge tracks, is converted into electrical energy which we can use with our phono stages and step up transformers. A cartridge is a very inefficient transducer. The major part of the sampled energy a cart gets from the record grooves is mechanical energy which resonates in the cartridge body itself and has to be directed in the most immediate way away from the stylus tip. If that is not implemented in the construction, those energy portions will interact with the tracking process itself, and we will hear a smeared sound, a sound with phase anomalies and distortion. Carr addressed both problems in his Atlas cartridge – he constructed the cartridge body in the bespoke new unsymmetric way, to avoid standing waves and resonances, and he developed a very efficient path to enable the implied mechanical energy to travel directly into the tonearm tube. To reach the latter, he uses a knife edge system in which the whole motor assembly is press fitted to the cartridge body, and to make the energy path even more efficient he constructed the most rigid contact principle in which a cart can be mounted to a headshell system of our tonearms. The Atlas SL gets in contact with the latter with a small surface area at the top of the cart, which is milled out of the solid titan billet used for the cart’s body. So the specific surface pressure is raised by a large margin with a given torque applied to the mounting bolds. Think of putting your hand under your girlfriends or wife’s feet, if she wears sneakers as opposed to high heels….it would make a tremendous difference…..you get it now ;-)))

The material titan is also part of the whole idea behind this cartridge, because titan is a lightweight but ultra dense and hard material. It is very capable of transmitting energy, and if it is used as Carr did with his Atlas cartridge – just one piece with all complex structures and form factors implied – you will get the most rigid construction with an amazing firmness to weight ratio.

But Carr does not stop here….he implied a unique damper technology into the new generation of Lyra cartridges. The idea behind this unsymmetric damper technology is based on the precise observation of the coil placement in the magnetic field if we put vertical tracking force on the cartridge. Normally the coils will be deflected with vertical tracking force applied to the cartridge – so the angle between the coils and the magnet structure is not 0° anymore – we will loose efficiency and will gain phase anomalies. This is one of the reasons why cartridge manufacturers give us a certain maximum amount of VTF (vertical tracking force) – because of exactly this deflection angle.  In a traditional constructed cartridge we have to find the best compromise between tracking performance and vertical needle deflection – read magnet to coil angle. With the unsymmetrical damper the angle between the coils and the magnet structure is widened if the cart is lifted above the record – it looks weird if you see such a design for the fist time, because the needle looks in a way broken…..but it is not of course. If you put the needle slowly onto the record surface and observe this action with a magnifier you will realise that the needle together with the coils will be placed perfectly aligned if the correct amount of VTF is applied. Therefor the VTF “window” Lyra recommends is extremely narrow – so a good digital stylus gauge is a must have. And please measure the VTF at exactly the same height as the record surface will be. Dependent of the arm construction, you might face a huge difference if you put the stylus gauge just on top of your platter – or level it precisely beneath the platter at the exact same height as the record surface would be. As Lyra states in their technical specs of the Atlas, a VTF range of 1,65 – 1,75g with an optimum of 1,72g VTF  is recommended  –  you get an idea of the kind of precision we have to gain here! As the cartridge’s resolution is so unbelievably high, you will detect sound differences of every 0,2g more or less – so take your time and you will be rewarded with a perfect tracking performance and an amazingly balanced sound reproduction.

The  electrical “motor” of this high tech figment is also worth being explained, which brings me to the special magnet technology Jonathan Carr uses in the Lyra range since the Helikon / Titan I generation. In a more traditional cartridge we will find a magnet bar with a yoke system to distribute the magnetic field close to the coils. With this technology there is a certain amount of magnetic energy lost, because the magnetism must be transported via a yoke system. Lyra does that in a radically different way – they use ring magnets, which are positioned directly in front and at the back of the coils – it is a complete yokeless construction with a dramatical increase of efficiency. And of course the used magnets are the strongest neodynium types available today. Carr also modified the coil structure of the Atlas and also the Etna cartridge. Instead of a square piece of core which the coils are wound upon (soft iron), he uses a cross structure core. With the cross structure he gains channel separation better known as crosstalk between the two stereo channels. Carr uses 6n pure copper for the coils – as far as I know Lyra never chose silver – neither in their highly recommended cables (Lyra Phonopipe) nor in their cartridge designs. This fits my needs perfectly, because my amplifiers, preamps, phono stages and step up transformers are also built with highly pure copper implied, and I am not a big fan of mixing up different materials with electrical conductors trough out my system.

The needle Carr uses with the construction of the Lyra Atlas is made to his specific specs by the Japanese manufacturer Ogura. The term specific means a boron cantilever is coated with a very, very thin diamond surface. With this technology Carr achieves a material which is nearly as hard as a solid diamond needle that for example Koetsu offers to their customers as a special upgrade. But in comparison to a solid diamond cantilever the composite material chosen by Lyra offers less mass and a minimum of elasticity which reduces the danger of breaking the expensive thing. The cut of the stylus is a refined version of the line contact stylus shape, which is modified in a way that it builds a “long foot” shape which offers an exceptionally quiet tracking performance and a fantastic contact to the grooves – in other words, the Atlas tracks like very few other cartridges do, and it does it very, very quietly. Last but not least Jonathan Carr avoids any conductive material near the coil assembly to avoid stray fields and electrical interaction between his magnet / coils structure and parts that are not involved in the process of transferring mechanical into electrical energy. This is the reason why you will see a lot of specially made non conductive plastic materials used in the whole construction. It all starts with the green enclosure, in which the front ring magnet is housed and ends with the mounting plate, in which the rhodium plated contact pins are fitted.

Entering the SL….

The standard Atlas version has an electrical output of 0,56mV combined with an internal impedance of 4.3Ohm. Since recently you can also order the Atlas in a special SL version – that stands for single layer, which addresses the amount of windings used on the coils of the cart. The Atlas standard has a dual layer coil structure were the SL uses just one layer of copper windings. This results in a serious reduction of electrical output (0,25mV) together with 1,52 Ohm internal impedance – and of course in a halved moved mass figure. Other than a standard Atlas cartridge which can be used with nearly any active phono stage, the SL version needs a very very quiet specimen – which is not easily achievable with a tubed RIAA stage – and also not an easy task if transistor technology is implied. So the Atlas SL is predestined to be used with a step up device in front of a high performance moving magnet phono stage. And as you can see in the technical specs I described above – we can use the same SUT, which fits an Ortofon SPU…..opposingly a standard Atlas likes to be mated with a 1:15 or maximum 1:20 step up transformer. A different, more exotic way to amplify such an ultra low output cart with its extremely low internal resistance is a phono stage that does not amplify voltage, instead the unit works as a current amplifier. Such devices work extremely well with low impedance carts, because Ohm’s law will tell you, that such cartridges are bad voltage suppliers – but good ones, if current is needed. My Air Tight ATE 2005 phono stage uses a current amplifier made with a Class A transistor topology as a head amp in front of the full tubed moving magnet RIAA stage – so I have two variants of amplification principles at my disposal.

Mounting and compatibility:

A cartridge which is cultured around the idea of the fastest and most rigid mechanical energy transfer needs a tonearm that can handle all of this. At this point the tonearm – market is divided in different classes. We will find tonearms like the famous SME V, that represent a category in which the manufacturer uses an arm tube of a very rigid construction (one piece magnesium tube), but with less ability to absorb energy – instead the initiated energy will be reflected – something which counters the design principles of Lyra’s Jonathan Carr, who did everything to avoid exactly this scenario. The SME series V needs a cartridge mounted under its headshell system, which does help the arm with energy absorption – a Shelter Accord comes to mind, which uses 5 layers of carbon for the contact area between cartridge and the headshell system.  The SME V combined with a transducer like the Lyra Atlas will sound smeared with a treble section that is overly analytic, abrassive and nervous – the bass performance seems to be impressive at first glance – but if you analyse it more carefully, you will detect a lot of coloration and also some amount of distortion. This very famous tonearm was designed at the end of the eighties, it was designed with completely different cartridges in mind than a Lyra moving coil will represent now – so use these arms with what they are designed for. A SME series V combined with a Van den Hul Frog is a good match – to name just one example…..

Another tonearm class might be able to handle the tremendous mechanical energy the Atlas cartridge sends into the armtube – but the bearings are not up to that task. Every little bearing shatter will now face a rigid transmission line to the needle (no armtube can dampen such a kind of energy) – and also vice versa. You will hear a thin, harsh and overly nervous sound reproduction.

You already got it – the kind of Formula 1 cart the Atlas is will expect a tonearm, which is constructed around Lyra’s core design principles. And as you also might expect – there are some designers on the market, who use Lyra carts to construct their equipment (amongst others), Alan Perkins of Spiral Groove / Immedia comes to mind, Frank Schröder, Bob Graham and Willi Bauer of Bauer Audio to name just a few! As you already know – I am a big fan of the Frank Schröder designs – and the Lyra Atlas allows me to explain one more time why this is the case…

Frank uses special treated wooden armtubes – natural wood is a chaotic structured material which is nearly impossible to recreate using synthetic materials. God “constructed” wood with such a complex structure, from the molecular composition to its macro formation formed over millions of years, it is  a hard to beat material in terms of damping and energy absorption. But it has also a lot of disadvantages a designer must address. Wood reacts to climate changes, humid conditions, and wood has in its natural form a specific sound. Frank Schröder is surely the father of wooden tonearms which are prepared in such a way, that external conditions do not affect the material itself anymore – and at least as important – those armtubes lost their specific sound completely.  A very time and labour intensive treatment with different liquids like solvent, oils and coatings are used to fill up the kapillar structure of the wood. The different wood types Frank offers to his customers are justified to reach a specific effective mass. They are not meant to be musical instruments or tone controls, but the choice of certain wood types will let him build a tonearm with a specific effective mass without changing the basic material and its fantastic attributes. And of course – there is also the option, if more than one type of wood will fit the needs, that a customer can also change the look of his tonearm, which gives these arms a huge variation of different appearances. As every single arm is completely handmade by Frank himself and his trained hands – you will get a unique product. Frank’s legendary magnetic bearing tonearm will also imply other design aspects, which are very important if you think about a cartridge design like the Lyra carts. The magnetic bearing is completely free of any stiction, shatter and resistance – it is a bearing which is ingenious in its simplicity and execution. As Frank will offset the two magnets implied in this construction, there will be the possibility to dampen the  arm with the implementation of eddy current. The amount of damping can be widely adjusted by changing the size of the gap between those two magnets, which gives the user a tremendous flexibility, regarding the precise match of the tonearm, and a specific cartridge in terms of damping mechanical energy. In simpler words – these Schröder tonearms are a match made in heaven with the Lyra cartridge construction described above. Recently Frank has developed a new type of headshell plate that is made of a certain aluminium “foam”, which works as an energy barrier without applying any energy reflection. These headshell plates can increase the ability of his tonearms to deal with even more implied mechanical energy.

To give you an idea about perfect energy transmission of a certain vinyl system – shut down your amplifier – put the needle down on the record surface and reduce the distance between the toneram and your ears….. do you hear some music??? We call that phenomen “needle talk” – an unmistakeable sign of energy which excites the tonearm and its mounting surface by the needle tracking the groove. The lower this “needle talk” phenomenon is, the better the amplified performance will be. If you get excited about what you will hear without any amplification and your toe is tapping with the groove of the unamplified music –  you should seriously rethink your cartridge – tonearm combination….

Adjustments:

Such precise and in a certain form unforgiving carts like the Atlas SL need a lot of attention to detail while mounting and adjusting them into the tonearm. As the Atlas features a very sharp stylus cut – it tolerates no mistakes regarding proper geometrical allignment. A good template must be used, extra diligence will be necessary in adjusting the zenith of the geometry – small mistakes are not accepted by the stylus cut Lyra uses in its top class of cartridges. If you will detect, after some hours of playing time, that your brand new Atlas cartridge will collect a strange geryish dust around the cantilever and the white Japanese Washi paper which protects the whole motor assembly, you should re-check your alignment, because the dirt is vinyl dust – and you start to degenerate the quality of your records – as well as the cart itself.

The VTF was set at 1,74g, wich gave me the best tracking performance with a profund bass, with no compromised performance in the treble and air spectrum and also the micro dynamic skills the cart has to offer. The VTA was set level to the record surface with a 180g pressing, and was adjusted accordingly, if thinner records were used – normally I am not a VTA maniac – but the Atlas reacts very sensitive to this parameter. The Cartridge was mounted in my Schröder Reference SQ and also in the Schröder CB tonearm with usage of the standard Certal headshell plate and the newly developed aluminium “foam” plate. For amplification I used the Air Tight ATC1 HQ full function preamp with a MM gain of 43db and an Air Tight ATH2A step up transformer, which was set to its 1:30 ratio with results in 29db of gain, while the cartridge “sees” 52Ohm. The ATH2A uses Hashimoto HRX step up devices internally, which were a fantastic match with the Atlas SL cartridge. To compare the performance with and without a step up transformer, I also used my Air Tight ATE 2005 phono stage, with its current amplifying class A transistor head amp, that offered me 30db of tubed mm gain and 34db from the head amp system itself!

The SUT installation gave me a total gain of 72db while the active MC preamp of the ATE 2005 phono stage offered a total amount of 63db gain, which is on the low side of the scale, if a cartridge of less than 0,3mV is used. As the ATE 2005 is a very, very silent hybrid design, it was nevertheless a fantastic performance, that was slightly different than the sound of the SUT – MM combination.

The use of the new aluminium “foam” headshell plate of the Schröder tonearms raised the total performance in terms of stability of the reproduced stage and created a top end completely free of any grain or harsh artifacts – amazing!

If you use such a headshell plate together with Frank’s magnet bearing tonearms, you are able to raise the gap between the magnets a little bit more – without any sign of underdamping – which results in a more open performance with a tremendous quality of transient reproduction and tonal pureness!

The Sound:

What struck me most in the first instance was the quietness in which the Lyra Atlas SL tracks the grooves. There is – a clean record provided – nearly no noise from the tracking process itself – the only thing you will hear is the tape hiss of strictly analogue recorded music without any noise reduction system like Dolby A or SR (recordings made before the mid seventies). The next thing that blows your mind is the tremendous, really shocking ability of this cart to start and stop with the flow of the music. This thing is so amazingly fast that my brain was often too slow ;-))) – It is as if someone connects you directly to the musical performance – a sort of direct to brain technology. And this is exactly what we will have if we listen to live music. There is no delay in reaction if you do not sit miles away from the sound source – the Atlas SL will place you in the first to third row of a concert hall. The rhythmic precision makes me speechless. drum attacks, piano, orchestra percussion, bass attacks and slaps – ohhhh….it is so unbelievably real, that it feels spooky in a certain way. The difference between the SL and normal carts from Lyra is profound. A standard Lyra lets the attack explode in front of you and is always better at the rendition of the leading edge than it is with the sustain of a tone – it excites you with a pure and tremendously precise rhythmical Gestalt of the music, but it suffers a little bit in showing the beauty of the tone itself. The SL version can deliver both – transients do not explode in such a dramatic and of course also very exciting way – they will be delivered softer in a very special manner. To understand that – let me give you an example. Imagine you are trying to cut your finger with a scalpel – you have to use a certain amount of pressure to make the blade split up your skin. The sharper the knive is – the less pressure is needed. Now lets change a very sharp scalpel to a device the biologist uses for microscopic preparation – a special tool called “Ultra Microtom” – this thing is able to split a sleeve of paper into 400 slices…..!!!! – And in such an “Ultra Microtome” way the Atlas SL shows us the attack – there is no pressure needed anymore – the performance comes as natural as breathing. It is so fast – even faster than the standard Atlas – that our ear does not get a form of energy conglomeration while reproducing an attack – there is no further energy needed – so the explosive character changes. And with that the balance of the reproduced sound changes too – because now attack and release have a tremendously natural relationship. The excitement while listening to such a very, very rare sort of performance with a cartridge results from the comparison to the real thing:

Our memory tells us what is real and what is a reproduction of reality – it does this with pictures, and also with sound. With the Atlas SL your special excitement comes from the fact that your memory is so loaded with all the extremely complex information collected during your whole life on how reality sounds in comparison to a reproduction, that your brain cannot devide between those memories and what you are hearing here and now.

I mean – this is really a glaring finding. A cartridge which is able  to fool our memory full of experiences of the real thing in terms of reproduction of attack and release of recorded tones, so much so that we cannot differentiate anymore – wether we are hearing a real performance or a recorded one (a good recording is of course mandatory) – this is a gift we have to send a BIG THANK YOU to Jonathan Carr and the whole Lyra team!!!

The Atlas SL does not stop to impress me with its performance of attack and release or sustain of music – there is much more – MUCH MORE!!!!

The cartridge gives us a sort of unforced resolution that is astonishing. You can differentiate the violins from the violas and those are perfectly seperated from the celli – a sort of phenomenon you can only have in very good concert halls like the Berliner Philharmonie, if you sit close to the sweet spot of the orchestra. You can follow the musical performance with the score placed on your knees and listen while reading the accolades, enjoying a spectacular ride through the micro-structures of a composition. But you can also relax, sit back and listen to the whole beauty of the music – the cart enables you to zoom in and out whenever you like – an educated way of listening is not necessary – it can be done by everyone! It is a sort of resolution that frees up our brains while listening – less work has to be done by your brain to correct things you hear, which do not fit in your tonal memory. The space around the different instruments and instrument sections, the kind of resolution between a note and silence is spooky. You can get deep enjoyment while listening to the most complex music – because it is not a dense wall of sound anymore, it is an organised and perfectly arranged composition – there is not the slightest sign of compression or stress in such passages – the Atlas SL sails through the most demanding passages with an ease and gracefulness it is hard to describe. The pin point accuracy is even more spectacular – the instruments of an orchestra, the vocalist and even synthetic instruments are placed, if the sound engineer does not change his panorama position, as if they are nailed on their position. The phase coherency is outstanding, which makes the whole Gestalt of the music so real and great!

To give you a picture for a better understanding – which brings me to the title of this essay – the Lyra Atlas SL behaves like a Shaolin fighter. Complete mental strength, absolute precision and discipline together with a tremendous speed of motion and power our eyes (read ears) can hardly follow – combined with a graceful Gestalt – that is what the Atlas SL is all about. The cart sacrifices its character to support what it is made for – to bring music to life! This is an exceptional gesture which divides the absolute top class of cartridges from the lesser ones – and the Atlas SL stands out even at the zenith of what is possible with a needle tracking a record groove today!

It is obvious that the Lyra has a very balanced performance in terms of frequency reproduction. The very, very important mid band is as liquid and neutral as it can be. There is not the slightest coloration detectable – well done!!!!

The bass performance waived every little touch of being more impressive than it is captured in the microgrooves of our records. No slight low mid or upper bass bump, no deep bass augmentation – nothing. Instead of this, the extension in the bass spectrum is without any limits – the bass itself is ultra fast and articulated – the tonal substance is frightening and – yes I know it is boring – it sounds sooooo REAL!

Presence and treble both need some explanation – gone are the times were a Lyra top performance cart was a little bit over the top in the higher and highest frequency range – now we face a neutral tuning of the presence and treble region, which is not muted or damped or rolled off. The modern Lyra carts get their treble excitement from dynamic resolution and the ability to render a tonal substance even at those frequency-extremes. A cymbal is never an acoustic event like white noise, instead of that you get a very, very fine detailed picture of what and how the drummer is playing on his ride cymbal – frighteningly REAL.

Step up transformer or active gain stage??

With the use of a step up transformer the Atlas SL gains a little bit more a holistic expression, the treble and air range is more integrated as is the midrange, which is also perfectly linked up to the presence and treble section of the spectrum. The whole picture is a tiny, tiny little bit warmed up. The ability to render recorded space is astonishing and there is not much on the market that could do this better – than a good transformer combined with an Atlas SL. The expanded rendering of the acoustics of an orchestra hall is done in a style that you close your eyes – and there seem to be no walls in your room anymore. Sometimes little details come from angles were no speaker is placed, and you get goosebumps…. It is also possible, that you think someone entered your room or flat – more than once I dropped the volume and asked my wife if she is back from work – but there was no answer – and I was alone with my Lyra Atlas and my record… Small details are rendered in such a realistic way that your brain is often not able to realize if it is coming from your record or if it is generated in your room by someone else – spooky – but GREAT!

When I use the active head amp of my ATE 2005 phono stage the picture gets a little bit different. Now the Atlas SL shows a more neutral character with some more sparkle on top and maybe also a little bit better dynamic range, especially in the deepest bass regions – but less good micro dynamic Gestalt. The big swings are reproduced in a more spectacular way, just like the pinpoint accuracy and the space between the instruments. But the ATE 2005 lacks slightly the holistic performance of the step up transformer. The performance is more savoured in an intellectual way, while the step up transformer will give you a little bit more the heart and soul of the musical performance.
With Singer Songwriter and Classical music – as also Jazz I would prefer the combination with a step up transformer – if you listen to Electro, like Kraftwerk, Trentemöller or James Blake, the ATE 2005 will be my phono preamp of choice, the more accurate and slightly shinier performance fits the needs of such music perfectly as does the spectacular bass performance.

Some people could miss the analogue warmth in the presentation of the Lyra Atlas – its neutral Gestalt and the ability to disappear as a transducer might not fit the bill off everyone. It is not the analogue sound you might know or adore, it is something new, something really outstanding, that we have to get used to. The Atlas SL is not fighting against other cartridges anymore – it defines a new chapter in analogue reproduction, which can compete with any new media, be it high resolution digital streaming machines or the last development in sound reproduction technology itself. It is not about being the best cartridge in the world it is about making a statement in terms of music reproduction in general. It is as close to the mastertape as I have ever heard it from a cartridge!

If you want to have more analogue Gestalt, more sexy midband performance, maybe more texture in this frequency region, and if you miss some of the so exciting punchy bass hits – than Lyra has also something for you. No – I do not mean the Lyra Olympos, which starts a whole new chapter with Lyra transducers, and is for a large group of Lyra fans the best cart they ever brought to the market till today (if you could get your hands on a donor Parnassus and its platinum magnets). Jonathan Carr realised the euphoric reaction to the Olympos – and he apparently knows how to dial in some different sound aesthetics in his products (an ability I admire!!!) – so he finished his 5th Generation of Lyra transducers with the successor of the famous Lyra Titan, which is named after the legendary Sicilian volcano Etna! – I think you already got it….I mean if Carr is using this name for a cartridge – it might give us an idea, what he had in mind….and the best news for us Lyra devotees – also the Etna is brought out in a single layer version – the Etna SL.

But that is another story for another day…..

Stay tuned

E. Strauss

The forgotten tube

If we analyse the HiFi market today, searching for an amplifier witch is constructed around the 6L6 GC penthode, we have to face the fact that there is near to nothing on offer. In the opinion of many HiFi and High End enthusiasts this tube is made for musicians and their guitar amplifiers – not good enough for serious listening purposes.

This is completely wrong!

Some of the most respected Mcintosh tube amplifiers used the 6L6 GC, the amazing Mc30 monoblocks come to mind or the Mc240 stereo amplifier. The 6L6 GC has one great advantage compared to KT66 or KT88 as also EL 34, you can get new old stock quality without searching for months and spending crazy sums. The supply will vanish in the next couple of years but here and now there is still a great chance to get a matched quad of nice vintage 6L6 GC tubes.

The 6L6 has a very long history till it reached its last incarnation the GC variant, which is the most powerful example of them all. The tube was originally made for military applications and for that reason it is a very robust kind of a tube, the construction had to withstand a lot more when used in applications of the US Air Force, as we would ever could think of in our music reproduction systems. There is a good chance that a vintage set of well matched 6L6 GC (NOS) will work for many, many years of regular use in your power amplifier without the need to be replaced.
Something modern tubes from China or Russia can only dream of.

The Air Tight ATM4:

But all that is worthless if you won´t find a good amplifier to put the fine glass into it. One of the rare examples of exceptional modern built tube amplifiers constructed arround the famous 6L6 GC or one of their equivalent the 5881 will be the Air Tight ATM4 manufactured by the small Japanese company A&M Ltd. The founder of this company Atsushi Miura was born into the audio industry, because his father, who begun to wound transformers for the Japanese audio industry back in the 30ties of the last century, became the head of the Luxman Cooperation, a brand name well respected in the history of HiFi or High End. Under his fathers guidance, Miura made his way through the company and ended up as an audio designer, who was responsible for some of the most famous tube amps this company had to offer. Miura learned the “art of audio” from the ground up, and took over the reins at Luxman. In the 80ties the company was sold to the Alpine cooperation with now biasing towards the more commercial aspects of that industry, something which Miura san was not intended to tolerate, so he left Luxman and founded his own brand, A&M LTD, with the brand Air Tight and Acoustic Masterpiece.

A living legend:

Miura san is one of the last living legends in the famous Japanese tube scene today, which had to suffer so many losses in the last couple of years, the passing of Kondo San as also Shindo San comes to mind. Very sad news for those of us, who want to enjoy a classic tube amplifier with that typical Japanese attention to detail and therefor a sound characteristic, which is hard to describe. Those amplifiers are maybe not the last word in neutral music reproduction, but they can deliver a sound which becomes a sort of hyper realistic picture of real music played by real musicians. Very often you can forget with these amplifiers from Kondo, Shindo or Miura San (Air Tight), that you are listening to your HiFi setup, and not to a real performance. They share all in a different way the same goal – you should relax and you should be able to take the musical performance reproduced from a vinyl record or CD for something real. To reach such a goal, there are some tricks, these old Japanese masters put into their “music machines”.
It could be a very common practice, that such an amplifier will bei the last one in your live – forgotten is all the technical stuff, all the technical reference data delivered by the most famous High End companies today – instead you get something very seldom found in the enthusiastic HiFi scene – you get satisfaction.
No “upgraditis” anymore – you relax and you start to enjoy music – instead of that typical self-questioning – is there maybe too less air around the cymbals ? – could the singer maybe need some more sparcle at the top end? – is the bass dry enough – and is it deep an powerful enough?….all that comes to a sudden end and you will listen to music.

The ATM4 form Air Tight will remind you from its outward look to some designs made in the 60ties (last century), the Marantz 9 monoblocks comes to mind. It is an amplifier with no exposed tupes, which could be a good thing if you have pets or little children…..

A very classic no nonsense design which takes his beauty out of a puristic “form follows function” appearance.
The front plate is dominated by a round bias meter (a quote from the Marantz 9), which shows the bias (DC) balance between the two pairs of output tubes. Under a screwed-in plate you will find the corresponding bias – balance potentiometers. In normal use this potentiometers are covered by the bespoke aluminium plate with the engraved manufacturers name. Left of this plate we will find an input switch, the ATM4 comes as most of the Air Tight amplifiers with two sets of line input terminals. If you just want to use two sources with these amplifiers, they could be used as a very puristic integrated amplifier. On the right hand side of this input switch we will detect two input gain potentiometers. Use them to adjust the power amplifier in terms of gain, to match the characteristic of your preamplifier – and you are also able to use this feature to match the whole amplification system to a cartridge with very high output (EMT JSD series) or just the opposite – a cart with extremely low output (AN IO for example).
The potentiometers are hand selected Alps Japan Blue Valvet potis, which are high quality parts – so there is no need to get rid of them, they are acoustically invisible, a precise gain matching feature ist worth to keep them in the signal flow!!! The second pair of input jacks could be also used together with a CD player or DA converter with adjustable volume on board. In such a case, you can skip the line preamplifier and connect the digital device directly to the power amplifier.

On the right side of the amplifier we will find the bias switch, which is used to select the two pairs of tubes displayed on the bias meter. And of course there is also an on and off switch.
The rear panel is fitted with 2 pairs of RCA input jacks, and 2 speaker terminals with the possibility to configure two impedance settings. The factory standard is a 4 and 8 Ohm tap, which could be also configured internal to 8 and 16 Ohm. Last but not least we will find the IEC power socket for a dedicated power outlet cable.

Tube rolling:

If we unscrew the top cover of that amplifier, we will see a special feature – the Air Tight ATM4 is able to be comfigured as a monoblock amp (we will need two of them in this case) or in stereo operation mode. For the Mono conversion we have a toggle switch together with a switching knob both lettered with Mono or Stereo – keep in mind – usage of these switches wil presume to shut down the amplifier first.

In Mono operation mode the output power is doubled, so the ATM4 is able to handle even more complex loads.
The tubes implied under the top cover are:
4X 6L6 GC or 5881
2X 6CG7
1X 12AT7 /ECC81

It is a classic Mullard design layout were the splitter tubes (6CG7) are also used in the driver stage.
The one and only line level gain stage is accomplished by a single 12AT7 double triode, which gives us an input sensitivity of 1,5V, that means you need 1,5V to modulate the amp to its maximum output power, which reaches its maximum at 2X 24W in Stereo Mode or 2X 48W in Mono operation.
If we compare this figure with the famous Mcintosh MC40 amplifier, we have to consider, that the MAC has a maximum output power of nearly 2X 40 watts with the same output tube compartment.
Miura San opted with his design for a higher damping factor to handle more complex loads, for that purpose he used no global feedback but a good amount of local feedback implied into the ATM4 amplifier which results in  a very good “drivability”.
In other words – the ATM4 ist designed with electrostatic speakers in mind, like the Quad ESL 57 or the ESL 63 for example.
The ESL 57 needs just around 15 – 20 Watts to reach its maximum sound-pressure level – but it is everything else than an easy load.
Please read my article about the Quad ESL 57 Quad ESL57, for the closest approach to the original sound. Part 1 you will get much more information about that topic.
One of the most asked questions regarding the famous british electrostatics would be the question, “which amp is able to drive them whith ease an precision?” – the ATM4 will be one possible answer to that question.
And it is a much, much better choice as the original Quad II monoblocks designed together with the ESL 57.

Signal flow and design:

With the 6L6 GC we will face two very famous specimen of this famous output tube, the RCA 6L6 GC Black Plates and the General Electric 6L6 GC Grey Plates, double side getter.
Both are very good choices to get one of the finest 6L6GC ever made.
If we listen to the basic sound of the Air Tight, which is very, very transparent and open, I would give the General Electric 6L6 a slight advantage in terms of smoothness and a grain free treble.
The RCA variant is much more “zippy” on top, which does not correspond as good as the GE6L6 to the basic sound of the ATM4.
One of the reasons for that openess and transparency might be the legendary output transformers from the Japanese manufacturer Tamura.
Those output trannies are one of the finest options available today – and are broadly used in the Air Tight portfolio. Another amazing power tube option could  be also  the Tung Sol 5881 – the tube might look small from its appearance – but the sound is  big and bolt with a smooth sparkle on top, which Tung Sol also implied in its very famous 6550 black plates.
With the splitter /driver stage, we have to find a tube, which has an equally good performance in both stages.
There are two very good options for this tube position – one option will be the RCA 6CG7 clear top, and the other one is the Sylvania 6CG7 metal shield grey plates. The RCA clear top gives us a more sophisticated treble, there is more resolution in this frequency range and a very good ability to render recorded space. If you choose the GE 6L6 GC output tubes this will be a fantastic match. If you choose the RCA Black Plates 6L6 GC the Sylvania 6CG7 might be the better option.
The last tube we haven´t spoken about till now is the 12AT7, which represents the input gain section. This is not such an easy task as it seems to be. To get the most out of this tube position, I have to give some more detailed descriptions about this tube and the problem to find one, which fits our needs in this amplifier.

If you think about the 12AT7 you can basically divide the whole bunch of them in two sections. One category is more suitable if the 12AT7 will be used as a driver stage, such design we will find in new Mcintosh amplifiers like the MC 275 MK IV – VI.
Mcintosh skipped the utilisation of the 12BH7 which was originally used in the old vintage MC 275 as a driver tube for the KT88 and replaced it with 12AT7 in this stage.
12AT7 tubes which are very good at this specific task are the US made types such as RCA 12AT7 black plates, Sylvania gold brand black blates or Tung Sol 12AT7 black plates.
If you use one of them in an input stage of your amplifier or preamplifier, you are in for a big surprise – gone is the ability to render a wide soundstage or the ability to place sound sources in front of the speakers or behind them. The whole spatial performance will be negatively affected.
Also the treble performance and the resoulution are very restricted – in one word – it sounds bad – really bad! – But if you use one of those famous US tubes in a driver stage, it is an amzingly good choice – maybe one of the best you can get. This is one good example for the importance to know which job in a given circuit a specific tube has to do and  why the opinions about the quality of such a tube differ so much.
One person tells you a black plates RCA 12AT7 is heaven on earth – and the next calls it crap…..
This makes us aware, that we alway have to tell the people in which part of the signal chain in an amplifier we listen to a specific tube – because the conditions in different stages of an amplifier are very specific – and the same tube could be bad in one stage and shines in another.
With the Air Tight ATM4 we can nearly skip any US 12AT7 the only exception is the Sylvania gold brand, black plates 12AT7 which is a good performer.
If we dig deeper, we face now the whole European ECC81 elite at our disposal.
But it is also not an easy task to get the right tone out of these ECC81 –  at the end it is one of the most complicated tubes to roll.

Mullard had just one very good ECC81 it is portfolio –  the very old dark grey (nearly black) plates design with 3 round side holes (plate construction) made between 1955 – 1958 – and those are rarely seen today in the used market. And this Mullard ECC81 might be very good – but its sound is too polite in the treble area to work well in our Air Tight ATM4.
The exact opposite direction will be adopted by the Siemens Halske E81CC double getter support, triple mica – this is one of the most analytic ECC81 and also one of the most dynamic tubes in its class….
But – you guess it already – it is too much for what an Air Tight ATM4 might need!
There are some rare variants which can sound outstanding but in spite of hunderets of different well made ECC81 just a few options are really outstanding with this amplifier.Lets start with the cream of the crop….this might be an expensive option, and it is also a very, very rare tube – but the Valvo Hamburg made 6201 blue print, gold pin, pinch waist is a hell of an ECC81 tube!!!
Maybe this is the best or one of the best ECC81 I ever listened in an input or gain stage of an amplifier or preamplifier.
It has it all – resolution, dynamic, deeb and articulated bass, a very sophisticated treble without being too analytic, an amazing spatial sound and more so – unique qualities in the department of rendering micro dynamics and inner detail which is hard to beat!
But this little “super hero” is sooooo rare and sooo expensive – that I will give you also more common alternatives – but if you want the best – the Valvo will be my first choice!
The second best is also not very common – it is the same Valvo described above but without the pinch waist glass structure.
Beneath these exotic tubes it is also a fantastic idea to use a Telefunken ECC81.
If you can find the first series with the slanted O getter, it will be a very good choice, as it will be the Amperex Bugle Boy /Philips ECC81 with the large O getter.

Coming back to another output tube option – the tung Sol 5881 will be a very good alternative to the 6L6 GC from General Electric. The Tung Sol will deliver a warmer tone with a unique character in the upper midrange – I would call this characteristic somewhat a creamy presence with a colourful and complex sound character. The Tung Sol 5881 might be not as common as the 6L6 GC – but it is worth to search for it. Do not be surprised, if the appearance of this tube might differ somewhat from the picture above, this tube came with a large variation of base colours, and also the mica clips at the side changed over the years.

How does it sound??

The Air Tight ATM4 will give you with the following tube setting a sound quality, which is completely amazing:
4X General Electric 6L6 GC double side getter, grey plates
2X RCA 6CG7 clear top
1X Valvo 6201 blue print, gold pins (pinch waist) or Telefunken ECC81 slanted O getter.

It will perform in such a powerful way in spite of its apparent restricted output power of “just” 24 watts per channel, that you will be stunned.
Be it the Quad ESL 57, a pair of BBC LS3/5a or some 12 or 15″ classic Tannoy with Alnico drivers, the ATM4 will handle them all with great easy and with a sound quality normally not associated with the 6L6 GC power tube!
The sound is very controlled, slightly on the analytical side of neutral, you will never think of an overly warm and rose tinted tube amp – instead you get tremendous speed and accuracy.
The bass is immensely fast and articulated, and without the slightest emphasis on the upper bass region so many tube amplifiers could be characterised of . It is a bass performance a lot of very sophisticated transistor designs would be proud of.
In the midband there is this difficult to describe miracle happening, a kind of “being there” – sound, a floating midband, which is as natural as breathing. The treble has some seldom heard three dimensional characteristics with a very rich palette of different colours.
The resolution is mind blowing and to all that the ATM4 adds the ability to render recorded space in such a realistic way – that you might forget the existence of the walls in your listening room.

The treble performance is one of the reasons, why this amplifier is a great match with the somewhat dfensive treble performance of the Quad ESL 57.
Those stats do not like overly warm amplifiers – to get a realistic top end, you have to match the ESL 57 with an emplifier, which sounds very open and uncompressed in that area.
But if there will be the slightest glare in the high frequency spectrum, you will detect that in less than a second with these legendary speakers.
There are so many transistor amplifiers, which seem to have a tremendous resolution in the treble – but they sound harsh and awkward. The ATM4 ist one of the very rare examples, which can easily compete with the treble performance of the best class A transistor designs at the very low impedance settings the ESL 57 brings along – but shines without any hint of grain or synthetic treble performance.
In other words the Air Tight ATM4 is one of the best amplifiers I have heard till now teamed up with the Quad ESL 57 or the BBC LS3/5a!!!

Classic design:

The ATM4 is made in a very high quality fashion.
The whole casework is made out of welded steel.
The bottom of the amplifier is constructed with a thick sheet of copper – the whole enclosure is able to shield the electronic parts inside of the amplifier – the copper bottom plate has also the function to isolate the amplifier from vibrations.
The casework is extremely sophisticated – all tubes are located on top of the  main case, the whole electronic is located inside of this case, the power transformer, an EI core type, is shielded and placed beneath the output trannies on the right hand side of the tube compartment.
The whole circuit is made without any use of printed boards!!!
If you open the electronic section of the amlifier you will detect top class components selected with a certain sound in mind. The whole construction is made by hand and the quality and craftsmanship is of the highest standard – those amplifiers are not cheap, but there is a great chance, that you can pass them on to your children – a timeless piece of audio gear!

Some Tips:

Air Tight amplifiers do not like to be treated in the newest fashion of upgrades achieved with “High End” gadgets and accessories the HiFi industry has on offer.
These amplifiers do not like any isolation base or replacement of their original feet with spikes or other constructions. Put them on a stable wooden piece (solid wood is preferable) of audio furniture as companies like Box Furniture in the US or LignoLab  from Germany offer to you – and they will perform perfectly.
Miura San made the amplifiers and preamplifiers in a very special way, they bring their own damping devices with them – the heavy welded steel chassis and the special applied copper bottom plate is everything these type of gear needs.
The same could be said about the usage of tube accessories like tube dampers –  spend your money elsewhere!!
Any damping gear like HRS isolation devices for example will make the sound slow and overly ripe, the leading edge sounds compressed and the whole sound looses focus and speed.

The usage of heavily screened power cables, more so with some magical boxes in between the cable structure is a also not recommended with these classic amplifiers. Use unscreened power cables or – my tip – the traditional Belden power cords and you will receive the best performance.
Keep in mind that Miura San designs his gear with pure copper only – so keep it that way – in my experience a mixture with copper and silver as a conductor will result in  a strange behaviour of upper frequencies,  which is seldom predictable. So there might be a great chance, that the newest fashion in silver cable development will end up at selling platforms like ebay.
Keep it simple – use Belden interconnects made with pure copper, or if you want to have something special, which I highly recommend, try to get some Chris Somovigo designed cables made with a copper tube inside. Chris made in the last couple of years a confusing amount of cables branded under different names like “Stereovox”, “Stereolab” or “Black Cat”.
Not all of his designs are worth to be tested – but those with the copper tubes inside are one of the best matches, you will find for your Air Tight gear.
Beside Belden and Somovigo designs, there is also the German company Auditorium 23, which developed a range of interconnects and speaker cables, which will also sound excellent!

To make a long story short – skip power conditioners, exotic power cables, silver wired interconnects or speaker cables, forget about all the expensive and exotic damping devices and platforms – my strongest advice is: Let this type of gear as it is!
It is fully developed and it does not need any help from any HiFi accessory company!
To prove that: In the Air Tight stable there is no latest fashion. It might be no surprise, that some designs Miura developed 30 years ago, are still unchanged in the companies portfolio – something which is quite unique in the audio industry!

All classic Air Tight amplifiers are made with the 600 Ohm standard in mind. So any of these classic power-amplifiers will have an input impedance of 100 Kohm and needed to be paired with a preamplifier with 600 Ohm output impedance or less  – to get the full frequency range this gear is capable off.
For example the very, very good Hovland HP 100 preamplifier with its unusual high output impedance will be not a good match with Air Tight power amplifiers, you will get a rolled off bass performance.
A logic step would be to mate these amplifiers with their stablemates  – the also amazing Air Tight preamplifiers – but that is another story for another day….

Stay tuned

E. Strauss

Impressions

Sometimes one could ask if an Ultra High End System is really made for the music lover – or if it is something like a Bugatti Veyron, a car with can deliver over 1000 PS (hp), wich needs an air break to reduce its speed within an acceptable distance and it is not able to be used in a fashion it was originally designed for – because the people who have such a thing normally do not own their own race track.

If you want to drive from A to B you will get into big trouble with such a “Super Car” – you cannot park the damn thing because you have an extremely compromised round visibility, the clutch is like a digital converter – on or off – and nothing in between – and if you have the typical stop and go situation, very common with todays traffic, it will over heat.

It is the epitome of idiocy! – But all your “friends” will be jealous because they think, that you could only take up the “super sexy” blonde sitting on the passenger seat with their impressive silicone artwork under her shirt, her sprayed lips as well as the nice Botox expression  on her face with such a monster car.

But be aware – great lovers do not need big cars…..

I listened to nearly every Ultra High End (read Bugatti Veyron) installation at this Munich High End show, and to tell you the truth, it was mostly disgusting, you had to leave the room just after a minute of listening, because the played music was extremely disfigured, the whole demonstration was not longer sustainable.

It is strange, that you have to spent several € 100 000,- to be rewarded with something, which can be so bad and ugly, that you will maybe shock your neighbour or some of you best HiFi friends with just the size and weight of such systems – but you can never  show them how your super expensive purchase will sound, which is in my book the purpose of such an Ultra High End Audio System….If you do so, playing some well known tunes with those monsterous Installations, you have a good chance to be capacitated by your family, friends and maybe by yourself….

I know, that a HiFi show is never a good place to judge the sound of a component or a loudspeaker, but I can differentiate what will be a problem caused by the given room acoustic and what a completely imbalanced sound reproduction in the whole midband will sound like. I do not judge the ability to show recorded space, nor the resolution a system is capable of – and of course below 80hz there is in most cases a more or less disastrous boomy reproduction common practice. But what I judge is the frequency spectrum from 150 – 5Khz – which is not so much affected by the room acoustics – it should be a very easy task to get a balanced midband reproduction in a price range of € 100 000,- but it is far from that!

It is interesting, that the real highlights of this years Munich High End show was none of the bespoke Ultra HiFi installations, you had to dig much deeper, and the findings were mostly very small companies, or not even that – sometimes it is just ONE developer with ONE product. The scene changed in the last decade dramatically, today real development (I mean development and not bigger, heavier, more expensive) occurs not necessarily in connection with big companies, or big money, more and more a different view at the topic is originated by “underground” developers.

Sometimes I thought that I was part of a TV – show like “The Hidden Camera” and in the next second someone would tell me, “hey this was just a prank” but the bitter truth is, there was no “Prank Patrol” (kids TV show), it was damn serious.

Maybe some rare examples of “Think Different” presented by independent, little manufacturers could give us back some faith in an industry which completely missed the warning shot.

Some of my personal highlights:

One of the best Step Up Transformer of the whole show was this thing here…. from Michael Ulbrich. The name “Monster Can” is chosen a little bit bold, but if you hear the performance, you will forget about the funny naming….

One of the most impressive turntables was  the L´Art du Son Transcription Reference from Martina Schöner. This machine showed most of the other installations, which often looked like the space ship of the “Borg” from Star Trek (Brakemeier Apolyt), how awesome pitch accuracy, weight and speed as also agility and neutrality will sound like! A dream! And yes, it is very expensive, but it was in my book the only very expensive deck, which had something like a realistic price performance ratio.

One gets confused, when a broadband loudspeaker chassis from the 30ties last century was one of the highlights of the whole show – in this case the legendary (rightly so) WE 755. Truly amazing!!!

Another great example of a very good turntable setup was the Thomas Schick 12″ tonearm combined with a Garrard 301 and a Vinylista plinth.

Something most people are not aware of – the Schick 12″ with the Grafite headshell can handle a very wide range of cartridges – and not just an Ortofon SPU or DL 103 – in this case, the arm is fitted with a Van den Hul Colibri. A cartridge which is not an easy task for a tonearm, often this little “bird” can sound very forward in the treble section. With the Schick 12″ arm the sound was very balanced!

Frank Schröder showed his latest tonearm creation the “Broadcast Arm”. It is a stabilized uni pivot design with a variable effective mass (13 – 23g). Frank mated the “BA” arm with a Miyajima cartridge, and the sound was sublime. An outstanding combination!

The turntable Frank used, was a fully restored and modified Gray Research HF 500. The sound was very detailed and natural with a bold colourful midrange and a fantastic drawing up of speed accuracy and an agile renedering of the leading edge as also a superb sense of three dimensionality.

In combination with the BC arm one of the very rare decks which could deliver a sound reproduction, which was amazingly real!

The chance to listen to an original Western Electric London Horn was assuredly one of the highlights in Munich. The whole system had a slight colouration in the range of around 580 – 800hz, it was a touch too forward in this frequency spectrum, but if you once got used to it, you were in for a real treat in the dynamic compartment. Maria Callas with one of their amazing arias from Giuseppe Verdi was so intense, so real and so emotionally touching, something at this sensual level you would hardly find with any other installation at this audio fair!

It was completely amazing, to realise that in the 30ties last century the audio industry was able to create a kind of sound, which  reproduceed music in such a realistic and touching way.

Sometimes I think it can´t be tue, that with all the computer power, the modern techniques and all the “high tech” we have available today , everything we can do is delivering some real torture, we could find in most of the so called “Ultra High End” rooms.

A side aspect of such an audio fair is also the product design we have to face today – form follows function is not modern anymore – today the designers have no more ideas, and therefor we have a lot of products, which could be probs of “Star Wars” or”Alien”.  Sometimes it is embrassing and sometimes you have to lough, it is probably the same situation which we can see within the car industries design departments – I mean – do you think a Toyota Prius is really beautiful and an example of outstanding design??

This I would call a classic design…..

Silbatone amplifiers are maybe one of the best money can buy. They are manufactured with special in house wound silver foil transformers and are designed with very special and distinguished circuit principles. They use throughout the finest NOS tubes of the audio history as also very good components from suppliers like Silvercore or Dave Slagle (Intact Audio) to name just a view.

The amazing WE London Horn System…..

A very discrete “branding”….;-))) seldom seen at this show.

Stay tuned

E. Strauss

Introduction

In Part I of the SPU story I gave you an overview about the history of the Ortofon SPU and the technical aspects to use one of these classics within your stereo system. In this episode, I want to give you a specific view of one of the many different types Ortofon has to offer, the SPU Royal (N).

A kind of blue

The SPU Royal N differs in some specific design aspects from the SPU Classic and its stablemate the Classic – E (elliptical stylus). First of all, Ortofon uses with the Royal version a special stylus, which they call Replicant 100, a derivate of the common line contact stylus shape. With the implementation of such a “modern” shape Ortofon managed to reduced the moved mass of the stylus tip, because the Replicant stylus carries nearly 50% reduced mass, than its opponent used in a SPU Classic. Reducing the mass within the moving parts of a cartridge results in betters tracking performance as also the ability to follow the music in a more immediate way. The leading edge will be rendered in a much more accurate way as it will be also the case with the presentation of micro dynamic shades of our most demanding vinyl records.With reducing the moved mass of the Royal (N), Ortofon  was able to design a slightly different suspension system, wich results in a decrease of the recommended vertical tracking force from 4 – 5g to “just” 3g. The coils of this cartridge were also modified, a hybrid construction made from gold plated silver wire is used, and therefor the internal resistance of the SPU Royal changed from the 1,5 – 3 Ohm resistance of the traditional SPUs to 6 Ohm in the Royal (N). With a 6 Ohm internal resistance we do not gain any increase in output level, the Royal produces the same 0,2mV as the Classic or Classic – E would do.

Consequences

The impedance change up to 6 Ohm has some consequences in considering the use of a step up transformer (SUT). With the traditional SPU cartridges we use a 30:1 SUT  and will get, around 29db gain with such a device. The 30:1 SUT is virtually made for the Ortofon SPU range of cartridges – but those traditional SPU carts share a very low impedance of at most 3 Ohm – and only with this impedance value our SUT will deliver those 29db of gain.With the 6 Ohm Royal (N) cartridge we will face a lower gain value, because of the doubled internal resistance – the 30:1 SUT will deliver under this circumstances something about 27db (impedance mismatch) which results in a serious drop of gain. And to make the things more complicated, Ortofon recommends with the Royal (N) a load impedance of 100 Ohm instead of 50, the latter will be the optimum load for a SPU Classic.

A 30:1 SUT is not the best match with the Royal (N). If we look at the technical specs of a 20:1 SUT, we realise, that such a SUT will be a much better partner for this modernised version of an old classic. The 20:1 SUT gives us 26db and the cartridge will “see” 117 ohm load impedance which is exactly, what we need. In terms of gain, and load impedance. We achieved now a perfect match but we have to face the fact, that we still deal with a 0,2mV cartridge which will be decreased in gain about 3db in comparison with a 30:1 SUT and the SPU Classic series of cartridges.

Lets calculate that:

Example 1: SPU Classic, 2 Ohm, 0.2mV, recommended load impedance 50 Ohm 30:1 Step Up Transformer

Input:         0.2mV

Gain:           29db

Output:       5,64mV

Example 2: SPU Royal, 6 Ohm, 0.2mV, recommended load impedance 100 Ohm

20:1 Step Up Transformer

Input:         0.2mV

Gain:           26db

Output:       3.99mV

This little gain calculation clarifies different technical requirements for both types of SPU cartridges , if we want to use a cartridge like the SPU Royal N, we must have a phonostage which is able to compensate for the lower gain values we will get with a 20:1 SUT. As most of the SPU aficionados will use a tubed phono stage, you will have to verify the technical specs of such a device – everything less than 43db is not suitable for the SPU Royal (N).

Lets do some math again:

Example 1: SPU Classic, 2 Ohm, 0.2mV, recommended load impedance 50 Ohm

Output:       5,64mV

Input:         0.2mV

Gain:           29db

Output:       5,64mV

MM Gain:  43db

Total gain: 72db

Total output level:ca. 0,8 V

Example 2: SPU Royal, 6 Ohm, 0.2mV, recommended load impedance 100 Ohm

20:1 Step Up TRansformer

Input:         0.2mV

Gain:           26db

Output:       3.99mV

MM Gain:  43db

Total gain: 69db

Total output level:ca. 0,5 V

Both values are under 1V, which would be the gain level of a FM tuner, in comparison a CD player will deliver an output level of 2V if it is made with the Sony/Philips specs once adopted.

And in case of the Royal (N) we will get only 0,5V which is half of the output level a FM – tuner is able to deliver. Now you will understand, why a line preamplifier is indispensable teamed up with a very low output phono cartridge.

Lets assume our tube power amplifier will handle 1V at its input for delivering its maximum output power (a very common value), than the signal we will feed in our line stage is not high enough in both calculations shown above to reach the headroom of our power amplifier, the line stage has to provide additional gain to reach a value of 1V.

With todays CD players, which often produce an output level of more than 3 or 4V, our line preamplifier is degraded to be a very expensive attenuator (In a later article I will describe that subject in depth)! But everyone should understand now, what the purpose of an active line stage originally was – this thing had to give us additional gain, as it was also designed to bring input and output impedances to common values, compatible with our source devices as also our power amplifiers!

And the sound??

As we realised with using the Ortofon SPU Royal (N ) we have to meet some requirements prior of use – a 20:1 SUT and a phono stage capable of delivering a minimum of 43db of noise free gain in a moving magnet configuration.

If both requirements are met, we will get something very special….this is not only the traditional SPU sound, there is a lot more to discover. The Royal (N) will bring to the table an increased resolution as also a refined tracking performance. It has still the bolt and holistic sound we adore so much, but the cartridge is able to show you a lot more resolution as also a better understanding of the micro dynamics of the recordings. The resolution is on par with a lot of super modern constructions but lacks to end in itself. The resolution is given to you in a very charming and smooth way, there is no shining light on this aspect of the sound reproduction,

The tracking performance is superb – the most demanding cuts are played with no hint of a grain or the slightest roughness, Ella Fitzgeralds most frightened vocal performances are shown in such a relaxed way, that you will be stunned. The ability to show us more pin point accuracy in terms of reproduction of recorded space is on par with some very good high tech carts out there. The Royal (N) is something like “Two Face” in the famous Bat Man comics. There is the classic SPU sound in its full glory, but on top of that you get a higher level of performance, and sophistication normally associated with modern high end cartridges. The Royal (N) is maybe the squareness of the circle, on one hand there is the smooth and holistic gestalt of the classic SPU, and on the other hand, their is a good portion of modern aspects which are not a betrayal of the original sound.

A great opportunity to dive into the culture of the oldest of all moving coil cartridges, a true classic slightly modernised – a masterpiece – thank you Ortofon!

Stay tuned

E. Strauss

Belgian chocolate candy

Jan Allaerts is a cartridge master builder from Belgium.

A Legend in the history of High End audio!

As Belgian chocolate candy and other world famous sweets from this little European country, the Allaerts cartridge is wrapped in a very noble golden outfit, packed in a sort of chocolate or jewelry box. The beautiful appearance is just the foretaste of what you can expect sound wise….

To listen to such a rare audio exotic is for most of the audiophile world something which is seldom possible, because Jan has a very limited production output (he builds every cartridge by hand), and therefore those cartridges are not widely spread in the market. If you once listened to a cartridge like the MC1 Boron or even a higher classed moving coil out of his workshop, you will never forget that experience – and you won´t sleep till you have one for yourself…

Looking closer

The technical data Jan publishes on his webpage is in some aspects hard to believe. You will find informations about the tracking ability of the MC1 Boron which tells you, that 200 mü/mm will be possible and also the channel separation of 50db at 1 Khz is a figure seldom seen in this context. These superlatives would not mean, that such a cart would sound exceptional, but I have found nothing comparable with any other cartridge manufacturer – and if you talk to Jan, he is rooted in the soil and not one of these braggarts with are not so rare in the audio scene, instead you have a very modest person in front of you.

The MC1 Boron has a motor unit which is based on an EMT developement – Jan modifies this classic in every aspect except the internal resistance of around 20 Ohm per channel (the original EMT has 20 Ohm, Jans self wound coils have 22 Ohm internal resistance). The cartridge uses a boron cantilever which is equipped with a Geyger special polished diamond tip. The coils are hand wound using incredible fine wire on a 2mm x  2mm soft iron square. The basic housing is made of solid brass wich is completed with a 0,3mm thin brass cover coated with a 24ct gold foil. The latter acts like a Faraday cage! In opposite of what some very “experienced” high end freaks will tell you – let the case were it belongs and do not strip the cartridge down – I know something naked has its charms – but not in this case….;-)) Jan uses 14kt massive gold connection pins – which is as far as I know unique in that area and guarantees a perfect contact between your tonearm – wire – plugs and the cart itself.

Jan Allaerts did a lot of research in the field of the molekular structure of different materials and found out that material wich is not stressed during its manufacturing process makes it a better electrical conductor. The pole shoes of the magnetic circuit are handmade to avoid any changes in their molecular structure and Jan uses rare earth magnets (Alnico) which are rechargeable if after a long time of use, they once loose their magnetic energy.

As you might guess the attention to every single detail is unbelievable – Jan must be a perfectionist in its purest form!

Matching with a tonearm

The cartridge has a compliance of 12cu, which means that you need an arm in the so called medium heavy class – which meets the specs of most of what is on the market today. That does not mean that every tonearm in the medium heavy class is appropriate to get the full performance which this cart is capable of  – far from that. If you google Jan Allaerts cartridges you will see a lot of illustrations showing an Allaerts matched with a tonearm from Simon Yorke or Frank Schröder.

As I own a Schröder Reference it was a logical consequence to pair this arm with the MC1 Boron – actually the presence of the Reference arm was my inducement to get such a cart….. My Reference arm has a effective mass of 13g with the usage of the “Certal” (special aluminium) headshell plate which is in terms of the effective mass a perfect match…

I think Jan uses beside Simon Yorke tonearms also the SME Series V to develop his cartridges, so this tonearm will be also a great opportunity to listen what an Allaerts cart has to offer.

The MC1 Boron needs a very precise VTF (Vertical Tracking Force) adjustment – Jan pretends you just a range of +/- 0,1g – which makes the usage of a digital gauge and some endurance indispensable! The VTA (Vertical Tracking Angle) should be set at the beginning in a way that the top of the cartridge will be set parallel to the record surface – from that point on there might be small – or better –  very small corrections necessary – the MC1 Boron reacts very sensitive in that regard!

If the sound tends to become some glare, you have to adjust the tail of the tonearm slightly down – if there is too much “bloom” in the upper bass and midrange, the armwand must be slightly raised.

A good sign that you nailed the sweet spot is a wet, smooth and extremely detailed treble performance with the absence of any harsh sound artifacts a pinpoint accuracy in rendering recorded space as also a very, very natural reproduction of the human voice.

The cartridge should be used with 100 Ohm termination with an active phono stage and is also a fantastic match to a 15:1 step up transformer. Both possibilities sound somewhat different, with the usage of an active phono stage you will get a more spacious and open sound with tremendous dynamic abilities together with a bass punch which is terrific. As the output of the MC1B gives you a very healthy signal of 0,5mV the usage of a step up transformer is not essential – you will gain with a step up transformer a better wholeness of the music, but you will loose some of the dynamic abilities and also the delicate openess will be restricted.

As I am a big fan of using step up transformers together with moving coil cartridges to maintain enough noise free gain, I would give preference in this case to a full active phono stage. In my setup I use an Air Tight ATE 2005, which offers on one of its three phono inputs a Class A transistor headamplifier, which is fed into a full tubed MM stage, a very nice combination!

Azimuth

As the Frank Schröder Reference tonearm has not a fixed headshell / azimuth as an SME series V, you have to dial in the correct azimuth whenever you change a cartridge. To explain the adjustment of this very, very important parameter we will use a record with a vocal performance placed in the mono center of the stage. A good help will be strong produced sibiliants on that record.  A perfect aligned speaker system and good roomacoustics is a must in this case, also you should place yourself exactly in the sweetspot of your speakers. Start the adjustemt using a gauge, which is normally a plexiglass block with engraved parallel lines on it – place the block in front of your cartridge and drop the needle on the naked platter or the record surface. If your platter has a slight bowl shape – this method has to be refined – in this case you need a piece of thin glass (the makeup mirror of your girlfriend or wife comes on handy…..;-))) which reaches nearly from the center of the platter to its outer section.

Now use a good magnifying glass (I use one which is made for watch makers) and get a fix on the horizontal planes of your cartridge. If that is not precise enough, use a pencil mine, which you have to place on top of a horizontal aligned part of your cart – look again through your magnifier – every little variation is now easy detectable!

Adjust your azimuth accordingly!

If you finished this basic adjustment you ave achieved an azimuth of 0° – if the stylus is perfectly aligned you are finished know – if there is a slight offset implemented with your cart, you have to listen carefully… A wrong azimuth adjustement is clearly detectable – you get sibiliances of the human voice wich are not anymore placed in the mono center, they will move very, very fast between the channels – reverbs, which are isolated (last snare drum on a ballad for example) do not vanish symmetrically – and the whole sound is comparable to an out of focus camera lens . A good sign, that the azimuth is not correctly adjusted is also the achievable quietness of the cartridge tracking the grooves. If you will detect an abnormal raise in the noisefloor, it will be a good sign that your azimuth adjustment is not spot on. Adjustemts have to be made in tiny steps – so, please be patient – azimuth adjustments needs a lot of time, and some experience.

Another possibility is to measure the correct azimuth – for that you need an Oszilloscope in X/Y depiction and a very, very good produced test record (Ortofon 001).

I am not a big fan of software based systems – because these have to deal with the sound card of your computer – if you do not spent serious money to get something professional, you have a measurement system equipped with minijacks and computer based AD converters.

If you spend serious money and you have a good sound card which is calibrated, you could use a professional Hard Desc Recording software as Avid Pro Tools – with the software package comes a bunch of measurement tools, which are able to detect the phase relationship between both stereo channels.

But at the end a pair of good ears is never a wrong way;-)))

With the MC1 Boron I was finished with adjusting the cart at 0° azimuth offset – this thing is perfectly build!

The sound experience

Put a vinyl record on your platter with some natural instruments recorded in a real space like classical music or Jazz. Drop the needle into the groove and you will get a soundstage,  a size of the reproduced music, you will never forget. If I had to crown the king of sound stage reproduction – it would be a Jan Allaerts cartridge! It is not just the width of the virtual stage – there an Ortofon SPU performs also in a very special way, it is the space which will be reproduced in all three dimensions. The ability to show the depth of a concert hall is so special, that you will listening to well recorded classic for the next months!

Every instrument seems to be not a point on the stage instead you will hear a three dimensional event, if you close your eyes there is  no localisation of your (well placed) speakers possible anymore  – a miracle. But there is more….

The Allaerts cart has the ability to reproduce the dynamic swings of the music in a way, which is not far away from  legendary DECCA London cartridge (another story….), it can produce the finest dynamic shades as it can deliver the big picture in a enormous way. The MC1 Boron can be brutish as well as smooth and tender in a fraction of a second, it can reproduce the dynamic shades in an instant, the speed of that little golden HiFi candy is outstanding.

But if you think now – ok, that  sounds as if an Allaerts cart will be an anlytical and ultra precise piece of equipment – you are not totally right – because the MC1 Boron has a type of a velvety performance which is hard to describe. The basic gesture of this cart is neutral – very neutral – but there is a oh so slightly smoothing at the top end and there is a very, very little emphasis in the midband which is a tiny portion of 1 db in terms of gain – but the Q of it is very broad – you will not face a shining light at a small portion of the midband – it is the whole midband which is affected in a very sensitive way. The Bass performance is also one of the best I have ever heard – it is not the heavy hit, you get with a My Sonic Lab cartridge nor is it the punchy style of an EMT JSD5, it is all together dressed in a fine Giorgio Aramni suit.

The three dimensionality  of the MC1 Boron is sometimes spooky, it has the ability to display sound sources far away from the point were your speakers are located, this ist true for the width of the stage as also the depth. If you listen with your eyes closed, there might be a good chance, that you sometimes think something or someone is with you in your listening room. The palette of shades the Allaerts MC cart can produce is so colourful and saturated, that, your brain does not have to abstract from the instruments or vocals to accept the reproduced sound as something real.

If there is one section were we can find a small foult it will be the quiet ride in the groove – the Allaerts is not the pinnacle of what is possible in this regard, it shows you clearly the state of your vinyl collection, so a proper vinyl cleaning machine is welcome. For such a highly detailed cartridge this small restriction must be accepted.

Is there something comparable to a Jan Allaerts cartridge?? – I am afraid it is not….It is no surprise that these little gems gain a legendary status in the ultra High End scene – it is one of the best MC – cartridges, money can buy!

As Jan Allaerts rebuilds used cartridges to their original specs, which means retipping, a new cantilever and also recharging of the Anlico magnets – your journey to an Allaerts cart could start with buying one in the used market, but be sure it is in its original state, because Jan denies any inquiry if the cart is modified in any way, which is something I can perfectly understand! If you want to have ONE super cartridge, a Jan Allaerts could be the end of your search, it does not have any favourite discipline, it can rock, swing, and boogie it will give you some unforgettable moments with classical music or Jazz as it can give you goose bumps while listening to a well recorded vocal!

Stay tuned

E. Strauss

Listening to a monophonic record

A lot of great music was delivered before the year 1958 were the first stereo recordings appeared on the market.

Most of the great Beatles songs were mixed in Mono – and the Mono mix – sessions were the really important ones in those days – the artists and the producer took great care to deliver the finest sound they could achieve, the later made “pseudo” stereo mixes were not so inportant, and often done without the artists or the producer witnessed that procedere.

So a dedicated Mono system is not something for completely outdated, crazy freaks, to have the possibility to listen to a mono record in a technically correct way has something to do with loving music, overcoming the ignorance that there was a world of fantastic recorded music in existence before Stereo was invented.

A Mono Setup

As the Quad ESL 57 was originally designed to listen to Mono recordings, because Stereo wasn´t invented in those days, also later on it was not very spread at first, it will be a great opportunity to built an outstanding mono system with this first commercially made electrostatic speaker.

Adjustments

The needle – make your choice

Some thoughts

During the period of 1957 – 1959 Robert Gudmandsen invented the legendary SPU (Stereo Pick Up) moving coil cartridge for the Danish company Ortofon. The typical customer of that day was not the HiFi enthusiast, it was the professional broadcast industry which used this cartridge for their on air music program.

In 2018 you can still buy this cartridge – 61 years is close to an eternity in the entertainment electronics industry. And in spite of all the inclinations, it is not a dead product for some wise, grey, old men with their vintage gramophones – generation after generation there is a still growing number of audiophiles, who will sooner or later discover the sound of an Ortofon SPU.

Old versus new

There must be a certain fascination listening to your record collection using this legendary vintage design, otherwise this long lasting popularity can´t be explained. Today a growing market is the Far East – and to tell you the truth, the Japanese audio enthusiasts were always ahead of their time, otherwise it can not be explained why the Japanese High End scene was the first to rediscover the Single Ended Triode amplifiers or Western Electric horn loaded speaker systems, which the American scene thought were a load of scrap metal in those years. And even we German enthusiasts discovered the fine quality of professional broadcast equipment, like the EMT 927 and 930 as well as Studer CD players to name just a few, long after they were hip in the Japanese scene. With South Korea it is now the same story – or do you remember any better sound demonstration at the last couple of audio fairs in Munich, than those carried out by Silbatone together with their huge Western Electric installations?

By the time we muzzy European audiophiles got it, the prices had gone up to stratospheric regions or the cool stuff had vanished from the market and was in solid collectors hands! Indeed most of the “scene” here believes, that newer is always better, and more expensive is a guarantee to get the best sound – so they will never realise that in some areas of our beloved hobby, the peak performance was already reached a long time ago.

How else can we explain the intoxicating sound of an original Wesetern Electric 300b engraved base – a tube which is today not rare, it has vanished completely from any circulation on selling platforms – and you might guess who on this planet has a stash full of them???

Until today it seems to be impossible to build something that equals the sound of this tube legend. And the younger audiophiles among us, just as the modern tube industry, who both eventually never had a chance to listen to the original WE 300b engraved base, won´t get tired of telling us that a modern 300b of the brand “xyz” can match the sound quality of the old American tube… Friends – that is a fairy tale until today!

So, it is not a bad idea to look at Japan or South Korea and also China, if we want to get an idea of the latest fashion in High End audio! That makes us vinyl junkies who were yesterday old fashioned and behind the moon, today, the latest fashion. We are now hipsters!!

Apparently those people in the Far East have a better understanding of sound and the beauty of it, and they might have a better understanding of traditional and modern culture and how to bring both things together??

Maybe there is a reason, why the legendary Ortofon SPU is so popular in the Far East and maybe we should get in touch with this all time classic!

Restoration job

I discovered the Ortofon SPU 20 years ago, having a job project were vinyl restoration was implied. I had an assignment to digitise (oh yes, I know that is hard stuff…)  1200 vinyl records for a German archive. The records were all together in a mediocre shape – after endless cleaning processes with professional record cleaning machines, I found out that a modern high end cartridge with a compliance of around 12cu or more, will lengthen a scratch on the vinyl surface on the time domain. The scratch is not anymore as long as it is, there is so much energy traveling up the needle and tonearm, that the scratch has nearly doubled its length on the timeline. This means that later applied interpolation algorythms of my Sonic Solution workstation had to do a much tougher job to get rid of the scratch and bring on the original modulation at the given timecode address.

What to do….??

One day – when I was close to a nervous breakdown, I discovered the history of the moving coil pic up – it was a sort of skipped action, because I had no further idea how to bring a proper signal to my DCS AD Converters to get the most out of the scratched vinyl surface. And as you already know – I stumbled upon the Ortofon SPU…

20 years ago you were a nutcase if you entered a HiFi shop asking for an Ortofon SPU – and so I had a long discussion with the gentleman behind the counter, who wanted me to buy a Van den Hul DDT instead of a SPU cartridge. But I was steadfast and ordered an Ortofon SPU A with an elliptical stylus.

Weeks later I got the vintage cartridge and mounted it on my EMT 997 tonearm. And guess what – the beast sounded wonderful – and it made out of a scratch what a scratch really is – a short spike and not a huge monster! After the job was done, I had heard 1200 records with this thing – I mean for a very long time I had listened to nothing else than an Ortofon SPU. As I was finished and felt some passion to listen to my own records at home again, I was not prepared for a huge surprise – a sort of cultural shock.

My cartridge at this time was a a Dynavector Karat, which I loved very much. The Dynavector had so much more surface noise and told me about every scratch on the vinyl surface as a racing car would do with the given road conditions. But that was not everything, there was a cut in the midband of this cartridge, a treble rise and a thin bass. From that moment on, there was a SPU in my home at anytime!

The Tonearm

To dive into the world of an Ortofon SPU there are a lot of requirements necessary to bring out the full potential of such a cartridge. The first thing is a proper heavy tonearm. That might be one of the biggest challenges, because in our modern HiFi market such tonearms are nearly forgotten. If you do not want to use a 12″ arm, the problem to get an arm with a high effective mass is even more difficult. The candidates are mostly vintage examples, which we can get in the used market with some luck. Think of an Ortofon 309, Fidelity Research FR64S or 66S (12″), or the SME classics 309 or 3012 – both of the latter have to be the first generation of this classic. But if you discover these vintage warhorses,  there are some problems you will find, which nobody is talking about.

The FR64 and 66S – both are among the best tonearms ever made using steel for their armtube – do not sound especially good with such an SPU cartridge – do not ask me why, such FR arms matched with a Koetsu cartridge or on Ikeda 9 would be audio nirvana, with the SPU both sounded ok – but not extraordinary.

The SME 3009 and 3012 at their age today often have problems with their knife edge bearings – and, they are both not compatible with the G shell geometry of our SPU cartridges – so you have to deal with a compromise in adjusting the cart in a geometrically correct way.

The vintage Ortofon tonearms are one of the best possibilities, but you have to restore them, overhaul the bearings – also a new tonearm cable would be a good idea.

A great opportunity would be a Shindo tonearm, which is a variation of the old Ortofon tonearm, but these things are very, very rare.

The EMT 997 is also a good possibility, and they are available again brand new at Audiotorium 23 in Germany or Tone Imports in the USA.

Maybe the Thomas Schick tonearm, which you can buy brand new, has the best price to performance ratio of them all. This thing is an amazing opportunity to use an Ortofon SPU to its full potential.

Thomas offers a long version which is 12″ long, and a shorter version which has the size of 9.6″. The latter can be a direct replacement on most EMT turntables with their 9.6 EMT tonearms (which are not the wisdoms last conclusion to say the least….). A Schick tonearm and an Ortofon SPU is a match made in heaven – and if you now think, ok, some day I want to be able to change the cartridge – do I need another arm then??? I can reassure you – a Schick tonearm will also sound amazing with a Lyra cart, a DL 103, a Benz Micro and whatever you like, it is one of the most versatile tonearms on the market and one of the very rare “best buys” in the audio business.

I went into a slightly different direction, which has something to do with my turntable, which does not accept a 12″ armlength (Grrrrrrr!!!!). One day I contacted Frank Schröder, the famous German tonearm designer – because he uses different woods achieving different effective masses on his famous tonearms. Frank doesn´t use different kinds of wood, because they might sound different, as it will be the case with the construction of wooden instruments – far away from that. Frank uses a lot of different tinctures, oil and God knows what, to get rid of any sound variation of the different wood types. In the end you choose one specific sort of wood, because you want a specific effective mass at a given armlength.

So my approach was to get around 22g eff mass with a 9,5″ tonearm – something you cannot buy off the shelf. Frank listened carefully to my wish list, made some notes on a piece of paper and told me I have to wait nearly a year, because he had so many orders….. One year – that is hard stuff – but I knew in this moment that it will be well worth the wait, because this arm would be my second Frank Schröder designed – so I had a good idea what kind of outstanding performance was at stake!

Finally after 8 months (faster than promised!!!) I got my brand new Schröder DPS tonearm made out of snakewood, which is one of the  hardest woods on planet earth. The arm has 22g eff mass with an aluminium headshell plate and can reach 27g with a plate made out of brass – Bingo!!!! – that was my SPU tonearm.

And to tell you the truth – it is not used only for the classical Danish cartridge, I use it also together with a Miyajima Zero mono cart (in my book THE mono cartridge at the moment – but that´s another story), an Ikeda 9, and also with different Koetsu moving coil carts.

The Step Up Transformer

Next thing in our SPU requirement list is the amplification of this classic cart…..this old lady wants to see a step up transformer performing at its best. Such a transformer should have a turn ratio of 30:1 or even 40:1, depending on the achievable gain level of your moving magnet phono stage.

The Ortofon SPU Classic has an electrical output of just 0.2mV and an internal resistance of 2.5 – 3 Ohms depending which classic SPU you own. That is a tough task for nearly every phono stage – 0.2mV is half of what you get with a Koetsu Rosewood – so the decision to use a step up device is not a bad idea, if you want to have a jet black background while listening to your favourite records. But things are not as easy at it seems – because the higher the turn ratio of a step up device (more gain), the more degradation we can expect soundwise – so it is much more complicated and expensive to make a fantastic sounding 30:1 step up transformer, than to build one with a 10:1 turn ratio….

Finding a proper Step Up Transformer

There are some very, very good candidates on the market – mostly relatively unknown, because such devices are not made anymore by the large, well known audio companies. But there is a small hardcore scene, which delivers outstanding products.

What do we have??

Here are my top five:

1. The Hasimoto HMX and HM7 – both are 30:1 trannies and their sound is astonishing.

2. Auditorium 23 T1 step up transformer – there is no technical data available, but this step up device is specially made for the Ortofon SPU and sounds amazing.

3. Michael Ulbrich – these are huge trannies, bigger than CocaCola cans – but if you ask me, this is the best of the best at the moment! They look strange at first site – but the sound is audio nirvana! My number 1!

4. Mitch Cotter MK II L – an old classic, but a great step up transformer, you will get this unit only on the used market. It is not made anymore – and it is not a cheap affair – but really great!

5. Kondo Audio Note Japan S6 and also KSL – both are extremely expensive, the S6 is only available on the used market, the KSL could be bought new, even though there is a newer model coming up – some High End dealers will have the old KSL still in their shops. But take a deep breath – these units are ultra expensive – and they are good – but in my book way too expensive – Michael Ulbrich can do it much better for far, far less!

The cable between the step up transformer and your phono stage

The last difficult chapter is the cabling. If we use a step up transformer the cable between this unit and our MM (moving magnet) phonostage input is as important as the tonearm cable itself – both are the most important cables in the whole audio chain!

What the heck is so special about theses connections? The tonearm cable distributes the tiny voltage our SPU is able to deliver – that is 0.2mV – which means milli Volts – and milli means millionth Volts!!!!! This cable is connected to the input of our step up device – this unit is completely passive – so no power cable or power supply is necessary. To put it simple – our step up device is changing current into Volt – with a given turn ratio. The cable that distributes this signal to our phono stage has to be a cable with an extremely low capacity. Because the given capacity increases exponentially depending on our turn ratio! So you have to get the lowest capacity in a fully shielded cable you can get.

One of the best possibilities off the shelf is the Lyra Phono Pipe – maybe there are also DIY solutions I am not aware of – but the Phono Pipe is a very, very good cable for that purpose. It is perfectly shielded – which is important, because the signal coming out of our step up transformer is not a line signal – it is a high Z signal, which is prone to picking up noise, hum and EMI. The Phono Pipe has the lowest capacity at the moment of all cables I am aware of on the market, and it is beautifully made – and of course it is anything but cheap. But the sound and the ability to solve so many problems regarding that specific connection between step up device and phono stage makes it a very good solution.

What we get

The SPU mounted in the headshell of a top flight heavy arm, amplified with a very good step up transformer driving a tubed MM phono stage can deliver a sound you will never forget. The bass ist tight and full bodied – it doesn´t reach down to the absolut deepest regions, but what the cartridge delivers in this frequency band is the DEFINITION of punch!

The midband is warm, natural and beautiful – there is nothing distracting in it, no harshness, no glare, no roughness, it is a smooth, almost uncoloured midband. The treble is very special – it sounds wet as well as light and sweet. It is not the last word in resolution, but it has enough of it, if the music calls for it. The treble is never fatiguing – a SPU has the ability to project the treble in a three dimensional way – it is not just a sort of white noise we will detect on a lot of other cartridges, even in price regions in which normal people would buy a small car. This treble has gestalt and flow and a very high ability to follow even the biggest dynamic swings.
The dynamic abilities of a SPU are also very special – this thing can start and stop with a tremendous speed – it is anything but a slow performer, if the tonearm has the correct effective mass. The projection of space is one of its strongest sides. If you have never listened to an Ortofon SPU tracking some well recorded classical music – then you are in for a big surprise. These cartridges have the ability to show the stage in a manner I would call cinemascope style! In that very wide stage the SPU is able to render, you will have a slightly up front picture of the monophonic center stage. A vocal will come out of your speakers and is placed a good margin in front of the speaker base! A SPU is able to be big and bold, just as it can be intimate and fragile at the same time – that is something very, very special!

In the end it will give you the music as a whole experience, it is this holism, which makes it a perfect cartridge to discover music. It is all about the composition, the emotion and the feeling – not so much about every single detail and nuance a recording will show. It is also not a technical sounding cartridge – it shows music in its whole beauty – even if the tracks are not so well recorded or mixed and mastered – it is the perfect tool for a music lover!

Many variations on one theme

If you look at the Ortofon webpage, you will be surprised how many different SPU cartridges are on offer…..it will be too much for this article to describe every single SPU cartridge (in depth discussion of that will follow) – so I have to choose my favourites…

First of all – if you don´t have a tonearm with a SME bayonet connector to use the traditional G shell cartridges, you have to choose the 1/4″ mounting version, which is called Ortofon SPU N.

As I am using a Frank Schröder tonearm, it is not possible for me to use the G shell SPU cartridges – so I am limited to the N style SPU carts. Many SPU hardcore freaks claim that the N style SPUs are not real SPUs because the shell is missing – and I will tell you that is true – and a good thing – because the naked SPU doesn´t have the shell in which it resonates. If you don´t mind – call the N style carts more neutral.

If you are a novice my advice would be: buy the cheapest and most original one, the Classic SPU with a conical needle. In 2018, this is the closest thing to the original cart from the 50ties you can get – and it is maybe the best entry into the SPU-game!

If you want to have a little bit better tracking quality and some more resolution, then you pick up the Classic SPU with an elliptical stylus – it has a slightly modernised sound but dosn´t miss the traditional tone of these legends. A true classic with some upgrades in different sound categories – but it is as close to the classic sound as it can be.

The SPU Royal N or Royal GME (with the G shell) is something different – it is also a SPU but with a more modern sound character – the differences are the coils, the mass of the needle tip, and the stylus shape. Here, Ortofon uses a line contact derivate which they call Replicant 100. This SPU is a perfect starting point if you want to have a great portion of the classic SPU tone, garnished with some modern sound reproduction aspects – one of them is a much better resolution as the Classic SPUs will have. It is also the quietest SPU you will get regarding vinyl surface noise.

And last but not least, my personal favourite SPU – the Meister Silver….in the 1.5 Ohm version! This cartridge is placed soundwise between the Classic SPU with an elliptical stylus and the Royal N – it is not modernised as much as the Royal N – but it has more resolution than both Classic SPUs. It has maybe the best integration of the classic SPU tone with some very distinctive implemented modern aspects – a dream to listen to!

No matter what you choose – you will hear a high portion of realism in yor music, which is presented tremendously un-technically, fluid and emotionally touching – one of the all time classics.

If you are more a music lover and not so much an audiophile, then this cartride is for you!

Stay tuned.

E. Strauss