Grand Prix Monaco review in new Stereophile- OUCH

I think MF was politely saying its not his cup of tea.

Yes, one of their better issues, especially like the Dynaudio C1. However I feel nowadays they seem to be getting anorexic, or is it just me?

Its all about system matching. Get the right cart with the arm, TT AND phono, you will hear magic. Get it wrong, and nothing you spin will sound right.

I believe that up to a certain price point, any TT worth its salt, should perform at the top level, class "A" or whatever you like to call it.

Triode
To take the alternative view, for an owner of the GPA to achieve this "harmonically ripe" sound, one could simply acquire a Koetsu, perhaps a RSP, and match it with an equally competent tube phonostage and you would feel any lack of harmonic development, nor will your wallet be so challenged.

Whenever a ground-breaking product comes along, we sometimes have to revaluate our frame of reference, and see if what we are listening to is indeed better, or just different.

I'm like many of you, I read Mikey's column and do believe he's telling it as it is, in the context of his system. For that I do appreciate his consistency and minimum standards which Stereophile maintains.

In this particular instances, you have one TT which is DD and the other a belt drive. The comparison was done with the same equipment, same arm/carts and the conclusion was that the Monaco was thin sounding in comparison with the Caliburn.

Certainly the one key thing about the Monaco is its touted speed accuracy. I'm a little perturbed that no mention was made of this parameter in comparison to the Caliburn, since this is one of the Monaco's key selling points. So is it indeed more accurate than the Caliburn or not? I disagree with the assertion that speed accuracy and consistency is not an important criteria for a TT, let alone one that costs over $20k or 4x that amount.

Certainly if one is more accurate, it would extract more detail and/or possess the more correct presentation of the music. This is fundamental to good analog playback.

If you agree that the more accurate TT is presenting the music correctly, then the next obvious thing is to build up the rest of the system around its strengths - base, arm and cart/phono which are complimentary/sympathetic to the TT. Unless you evaluate the piece of equipment with the best matching anciliaries, how would you know what is its performance envelope? Here I agree with Raul, that perhaps the tables (pun intended) were stacked in the Caliburn's favour, the outcome was therefore obvious.

Where then does this leave the potential customer who's looking for a state of the art analog playback system? If you accept Mikey's conclusion and write off the Monaco, I think you missed the point completely. Go listen to both tables and gain an appreciation of what each has to offer, listen for its "sound", and choose the one which ultimately matches your system and musical preferences. Its all about getting the right "mix". At this level and price point, the balance can easily tilt either way.

Mikey, thanks for bringing these new technologies to our attention and giving us your honest opinions on their sound, and more importantly, the context of your review!