Field coil dava cartridge

Hi Raul,

You said my target is very clear from report on Mike’s system. I don’t think so. As then you go on to say “I like the natural color, power, transients speed, dynamic, rythm and the like of live MUSIC seated at nearfield position where between you and the MUSIC sources exist only the AIR.”

Before the pandemic lockdown I used to do around 50 concerts a year in London. Many London halls were frequented – Barbican and Southbank for orchestra, the same and Wigmore hall for smaller scale, sometimes King’s Place, and my favorite, Sheldonian at Oxford which is a 1600 century hall. I have also been to other halls in Europe. I have also watched rock bands indoors and outdoors.

My target is to play various recordings from RCA, EMI, Telefunken originals, some reissues from classic records, speakers corner, ERC, and enjoy realism as well as transparency to recordings, i.e. different LPs should give different feel of the concert, there should not be a system imposed feel of all concerts sounding the same.

My main system target is SETs horns, and some very simple small systems as well which are good value for money. I feel that with expensive stuff, price has to be earned, not demanded like many pieces of gear do these days.

Mike’s system is an exception to the kind of systems I like. He is the hardest working audiophile I know. I often tell people if you simply take Mike’s recommendations and add it in your system, it might not work for you like it does for him. If someone wants to replicate Mike’s system, they will need to buy his room and hire him as audio butler.

That said, you are ignoring the fact that Leif, who started the DaVa thread on WBF, has a 7 watts sets driven full range horn system with very high resolution TAD 4003 drivers (one up from what is used in the half a million Cessaro), and has DIY unshielded silver cables (only phono cable shielded). He has no phono, just a SUT, directly into a TVC passive preamp. As simple as it gets.

Another, has an EMT 927 with internal phono, class D amp, and low priced Alfred Bokrand arm. Nothing fancy. There are a 100 Davas in the market already over the last 2 years, and queue has grown from 4 months when Mike bought, to 6 to 8 when I ordered, to 1 year now. The more the people hear, the more they are buying.

Regarding Lyra, they are neutral but Lyra was never musical for me till the Lambda, it usually sacrificed decay to create illusion of speed. Yes the Olympos was musical but colored. Lambda seems to be the right balance.

A couple more points to my previous post:

I have heard the AN IO field coild cart, also mentioned in my blog on an Italian trip write up. It was also briefly compared in another system with Etsuro Bordeaux and Decca London. The owner of the system, quite rightly, decided to retain his Decca London. WBF has the mention of an AN IO field coil owner who heard the DaVa and put his AN up for sale.

Keep in mind this is selling without push from dealers. This is a dealer nightmare, to have a cartridge that sells directly AND can be chosen over their retail product. Carts as a commodity, many are bought without listening, based on price and hype. They often sell at discounts to retail, carts like Lyra and Zyx are costly to retip (vdh, Red Sparrow are not), and eventually you have to either exhaust their life or sell used with some loss. The DaVa apart from a great sound is something I welcome as being sold without retail margin, show margins, reviewer sample cost. That itself makes purchase for trial a no-brainer. I can totally understand if someone is apprehensive of trying a 16k retail cart even if it has great reviews. 

@dover 

the verisimo was mounted on a Durand tosca arm playing on a wave kinetic nvs reference turntable. The Lyra lambda was mounted on a sme v arm on a sme 30 table . Swapping the cartridges made the Lyra lambda even better through my system. 

@newtoncr 

Thanks. I have heard Lyra's on the SME V/SME TT  on a friends system and did not think it was a great match compared to other cartridges on the same TT. 

Sounds like the Durand works better.

It is all apples and oranges and there are hundreds of varieties of each. Laminate  individual human bias over it all and you have a real mess, an undecipherable mess.  

Without knowing exactly what any individual is listening to it is impossible to interpret what they are describing when talking about any specific component. 

@mikelavigne , That DAVA frequency response curve has the resolution of a 15th century apple cart. Anything greater than +- 0.5 dB between 100 Hz and 12 kHz will influence the overall tonality of component. 

When any of us say they like the "sound" of any given component what we are most often referring to is it's tonality as reference by the system/room they happen to be listening to. It is amplitude response that most influences what we hear assuming distortion levels are low. 

@rauliruegas, apparently Darius Valiunas  was considering a cantileverless design but in reality his design effectively is that way. There is a yolk that his cantilever lies in directly behind the coils. This yolk controls the compliance of the system more so than anything happening at the fulcrum, but the effective mass of the "system" is still determined by the size of the mass and it's distance from that fulcrum. Regardless of what anyone hears this is a terrible design from that perspective. The quality of construction is also suspect from the pictures I have seen. I would never consider purchasing one, regardless of whatever anyone said about it.  I suspect it will just be another flash in the pan.