I posted about this event elsewhere. As Jtinn suggests, it was not a valid comparison between two tonearms, but it was fun to see and be part of the enthusiasm for these gadgets, which is what they really are. For what it's worth, from where I stood in the back of the room, I slightly preferred the Schroeder/Sussuro/Artemis to the Talea/DynavectorDV1S/Atma-sphere, because the former sounded a bit more lush and dynamic (to me, from where I stood). There was no "loser". And I got to meet Win (Mosin), one of my icons. I wonder who David Shreve considers as an icon and if he got to meet him.
Good point, Syntax. The Schroeder is son of Well-Tempered, and the Talea is son of Triplanar (as are Reed and Grandeeza). |
By the way, a fellow named Rabinow invented the Rabco tonearm(s). He lived here in the Washington, DC, area, I think, and was a friend also of Herb Papier, who designed and hand-built the Triplanar. The Rabco tonearm was just a sideline for Mr. Rabinow, as I recall. I guess Dave Shreve improved the Rabco breed; I seem to remember when that happened, after Mr. Rabinow either passed away or just lost interest in the product. Successful audio designers seem to have a lot in common with other successful entrepreneurs; they are first of all smart/creative/insightful, but they also have the perseverance (and in some cases the cash) necessary to bring a product to market. |
Jtinn, So that was you with the iPhone displaying the db level. I was looking at your phone display over your shoulder, but at that distance (standing in the back of the room, you were about 3 rows in front of me) I could not make out the data read-out. I also noticed that you left the room early. Dre had a similar app on his iPhone. He was standing along the window side of the room. But I wonder why the discrepancy in volume was not corrected, since in my mind, anyway, Thom was running the show in terms of volume setting. I do not and did not think that Thom had a vested interest in the outcome, so I could only assume that the difference in SPL had been corrected, once you and others observed that the Schroeder was played at higher levels. On at least one occasion, it seemed to me that the Talea was louder than the Schroeder. Anyway, I pretty much hated all the musical selections, which is what finally drove me away (to Steve Dobbins' quieter, calmer atmosphere). FWIW, others told me the same, that up closer to the speakers, the Talea had an edge over the Schroeder. I did not by any means take my observations to indicate anything at all about the relative merits of the two tonearms, because of the phono stage and cartridge differences. Glad the MP1 did so well for the Talea, because I own one (an MP1, that is). As I noted, it was obvious from the get-go that this was no kind of mano a mano "shoot-out". And so what? It was fun anyway to see so many crazy audiophiles grinding their teeth and taking it so seriously. I include myself, of course. |
DT, That was exactly the situation in the Dobbins room, where one could listen to his "The Beat" direct-drive turntable with two Reed tonearms mounted. Both were connected to the same Allnic phono stage, etc. Speakers were MBL. The cartridges in use were the Verity Puritas and the A90. One could compare the two cartridges easily in that milieu, but there was still room for argument about proper VTA, VTF, etc. There always will be. And personal taste, listener bias, what your friend just told you, etc, will always affect one's idea of the outcome. But you know that already. |
DT, Herb Papier, inventor of the Triplanar, lived in Wheaton, Maryland, a suburb of Washington, DC. Hence the origin of the original full name of the tonearm. Triplanar moved to Minnesota after Herb died, so the "Wheaton" moniker is no longer appropriate.
The Triplanar has been my primary tonearm for 15 years. I like it very much, but I am perfectly willing to believe (i) that the overall excellence of phono reproduction depends nearly as much upon tonearm/cartridge matching as it does on the excellence of the tonearm design, and (ii) that some other tonearm design could be "better" using my favorite cartridges. I am happy to see that Talea, Reed, Schroeder are not afraid to attempt to advance the state of the art, and perhaps they have. We all benefit if these guys are successful. By the way, whither the Grandezza? |
Ummm... Syntax, I fear you have misunderstood my post, which you saw fit to quote. To say that the named tonearm designers "attempt(ed) to advance the state of the art" is not to say that in my opinion they have actually done so. I am not in a position to do that, because I have never heard any of the tonearms in a controlled setting, i.e., my own system. Perhaps you know better than I whether any of them succeeded. I intended only to say that it is nice to know that the art of playing vinyl is alive enough to elicit their efforts. As one of my sons likes to say, it's all good. |
None of this stuff, no matter how expensive, will ever get me back to that night when I was 17 years old, sitting in a tiny nightclub in New Haven (Connecticut), listening to John Coltrane play and watching him at work, as he was standing about 6 feet from my table. It was snowing hard outside, too dangerous to drive, really. So he and his quartet just kept playing on for many hours in the darkened room, while I tried to pretend I was old enough to be in a bar. But that experience and others like it is why I can enjoy Coltrane on my car radio, and at some level it is why I pursue this arcane parallel art form known as "hi-fi". It's all linked together but all different as well. I would rather not question it, in fact. |
Mike, I did not want to bring it up the other day on this thread, because I thought it was OT, but I thought the Puritas sounded fabulous in the Reed on the Beat turntable. In my brief listening, I preferred it over the A90, in that system. I guess it IS OT to have written this, but what the heck. |
Asa, Have you ever observed the course of a progressive dementia in a person you knew well at his or her intellectual baseline? If you had done so, or if you ever have to do so, you will see that yes, the physical brain, "your brain - the material matter - is you", even though there is no physiological map for the conscious mind. We all would like to think otherwise.
Dertonearm, Now that I think more about it, I seem to recall that I did once encounter the "long scale" of big numbers, but since it was useless information in relation to my need to make scientific calculations, I must have shoved it off into some inaccessible corner of my memory. |
Thanks for defining synchronic and diachronic. I am a better person for it. |
I meant, dear Nandric, that the Talea and the Schroeder are just tonearms. |
And Copperhead is cheap? I guess it costs less than the Cobra, which would still put it at or above the cost of most of the other "best" tonearms, except perhaps the Grandezza. My mentioning the cost is not meant as criticism or sarcasm; I would love to hear any of those three. I just bought a Technics EPA500 with the lightweight arm tube, merely to see/learn whether it will enhance the performance of my collection of vintage MM/MI cartridges, which don't seem to like my Dynavector tonearm very well. (Haven't tried any of them in the Triplanar as of yet.) |
Before I studied electronics, I used to wonder why no one had adopted the strategy of building a perfect circuit using perfect parts, so there could be no doubt among end users that the product was "perfect". Now that I know something about electronics, I fully realize that there is a large number of ways in which to design a potentially great phono stage. And once that's done, the choice of parts with which to build said phono stage constitutes yet another determinant of the outcome. There can never be any such thing as a perfect anything in audio, as is true of our other very earthly pursuits. Because this is the way I think about it, I may appear dismissive, when I say that the Talea and the Schroeder are just tonearms, albeit very fine examples of the tool. For that matter, the Gladius was just a sword. (By the way, my perception was that the gladius was a factor in Roman dominance in part because its short length, relative to the battle swords of the opposition, allowed it to be particularly maneuverable and therefore lethal in hand to hand combat, not per se because of superior metallurgy.)
As to what my brain is doing when I am not thinking. I can't know, but I do know that it is doing its most important work on unsolved problems, when I am thinking about something other than those problems. That mysterious process must have been at work for Schroeder and Durand when they conceived their respective products and probably still goes on for them. For any of us in creative pursuits, it is always going on. |
DT: 2000 Billion in the USA and anywhere else in the universe = 2 trillion, or 2 times ten to the 12th power. Do you really mean to say that the CERN accelerator cost $2 trillion? |
So here's an interesting question, raised by Halcro's comment: The XV1-s and the ZYX Universe are very similar, in that they are both low compliance, low-ish output MCs. What property would cause one of them to sound very much better in the Grandezza compared to the other? Without ever having owned either, I am guessing that the Dynavector body may weigh much more than that of the ZYX; is that the case? |
Here is what Wikipedia has to say about "billion". But I must say you caught me out on this one; I had never heard of the "long scale", perhaps because I was educated entirely in the US. In any case, Wikipedia (an American invention, I admit) claims that the long scale is passe'.
"The long and short scales are two of several different large number naming systems used throughout the world for integer powers of ten (10).[1] Many countries, including most in continental Europe, use the long scale whereas most English-speaking countries use the short scale. In all such countries, the number names are translated into the local language, but retain a name similarity due to shared etymology. Some languages, particularly in East Asia, have large number naming systems that are different from the long and short scales.
Long scale is the English translation of the French term échelle longue. It refers to a system of large number names in which every new term greater than million is 1,000,000 times the previous term: billion means a million millions (1012), trillion means a million billions (1018), and so on.
Short scale is the English translation of the French term échelle courte. It refers to a system of large number names in which every new term greater than million is 1,000 times the previous term: billion means a thousand millions (109), trillion means a thousand billions (1012), and so on.
Up to, but excluding, a thousand million (< 109), the two scales are identical. At and above a thousand million (≥ 109), the two scales diverge by using the same words for different number values. These false friends[2] can be a source of misunderstanding.
For most of the 19th and 20th centuries, the United Kingdom uniformly used the long scale,[3] while the United States of America used the short scale,[3] so that usage of the two systems was often referred to as British and American respectively. In 1974, the government of the UK switched to the short scale, a change that is reflected in its mass media and official usage.[4][5][6][7] Although some residual usage of the long scale continues in the UK,[8] the phrases British usage and American usage are no longer accurate nor helpful characterisations.
Usage of the two systems can be a subject of controversy. Differences in opinion as to which system should be used can evoke resentment between adherents, while national differences of any kind can acquire jingoistic overtones.[9] |
Jazdoc, Your first sentence almost made me laugh. I thought you were going to comment on the respective tonearms. Instead you commented on the cartridges. (Surprise is the core of humor.) I think Halcro was talking about tonearm/cartridge matching, not about the relative merits of the two cartridges, but that is for him to say. Did you also come away with a "feeling" about Triplanar vs Talea? |
Halcro, How ironic that the least expensive cartridges, as a class, sound best on the most expensive tonearm (the Cobra). But by some accounts, they should sound good on relatively inexpensive vintage tonearms, like the AT1100, the Black Widow, the Micro Seiki CF group, etc.
I guessed that the XV1s would outweigh ZYX, because the latter just looks to have a minimal lightweight structure, whereas the XV1s looks "built like a tank" and therefore may weigh more than average. I've seen the DV1S whilst haunting audio salons in Tokyo. |
What Palasr said.
I sensed that most of the listeners came into the room with a bias, and since the test was hardly blinded, let alone double-blinded, most people I talked to "heard" differences that were ascribable to their own perceptions of how the two designs SHOULD differ sonically, given the differences in their construction. I am not saying this is the case for Mike L, since I did not get to talk to him after the session. Anyway, he has a much better data base (extensive listening in his home environment) for making a judgement.
All I could tell was that I heard two different tonearm/cartridge/phono stage systems that sounded different from each other, not surprisingly and given my rather poor listening position. |
I am really sorry I did not stay long enough to hear the Basie LPs. I am very familiar with that music and that session and might have gotten a better idea about what was going on with the tonearms. Prior to that, and up to the time I retreated to Steve Dobbins' room, none of the musical selections were my "cup of tea", so to speak. Mike, the Beat is fabulous and delicious; I am envious. |
What do you mean by "too clear"? I ask because "clear" would seem to be a desirable quality, and I don't know that one can have too much of it. Do you mean to imply that the sound is "clinical", in the way that solid state can sound if you are used to tubes? Yes, it would have been best to listen to the Talea initially in an otherwise totally familiar milieu (i.e., with the ZYX). Still got the Koetsu? Oh, and does the Talea beat up on the RS-A1? It's probably a silly question.
Out of curiosity, what happens with the early adopters who bought the Talea I? Do/did they get an upgrade? |
Thom, Back in November of 2010, did you really mean to say that one would lose a lot of hair, needlessly, or that hair is not needed? As a hair-impaired person, I would tend to disagree with the latter proposition; I really miss my hair and do feel I need(ed) it. |
Umm dear Vertigo, You are a true optimist. Here are problems with your proposal:
(1) It closely matches the original plan for the 2010 shoot-out, which did not happen as planned BECAUSE the two tonearm makers could not agree on cartridges, or more correctly, one tonearm maker would not agree to use the Ortofon A90 (I think that was the plan) and at the last minute he also demanded to use a different phono stage.
(2) See #1. What would make you think that the situation next year will be any different?
(3) One thing I came away with for sure: The two tonearms do sound different in and of themselves, so in the end it will be a matter of taste.
(4) Do you think poor Win Tinnon has two 200-lb Saskias that he wants to schlep to Denver from North Carolina, just so two prima donna tonearm makers can argue over cartridges and phono stages?
No offense intended to Messeurs Schroeder and Durand. They have good reason to protect their small bit of turf. |
Dear Vertigo,
I was trying for humor too, in conjuring up the image of Win lugging two Saskias to Denver. Anyway, for me it would be much much more thrilling to meet Penelope Cruz than to hear a bunch of old farts argue about the "sound" of two tonearms. |
