- Jan Allaerts MC 1B Mk II Cartridge
If its in good company, a good amp, a good preamp, a good arm, good speakers, the higher up the better, it will allow this cart to shine. On lesser electronics, i was wasting my money running it. So it needs good company to show what it can do. In conjunction with good company i cant believe what it can do to render, harmonica, saxophone and voices. Those metal reeds in a harmonica sound so very real, like i can see feel and hear them moving and vibrating. Til i hear something better, to ME it sounds grain less. I have found its reproduction of timbres to be very sensitive to VTA. Too high and things become greyed, the "beauty","the magic" disappears. When i got into "hifi" in 2004 i expected the denon 103 to do what the allaerts mc1b mk2 can do. I had no idea! My personal opinion today is, that the REAL "hifi" is in the upper echelon of gear. The best testimony i can give to this cartridge is to say that if i had purchased this cartridge from the first i never would have become so jaded by products peddled as hi fi. This cart IS hifi. The allaerts can do ACDC very well too, that is... it can "growl"! but its FORTE probably leans very slightly more to Jazz, folk and classical and when it plays these genres its plays it at the level in the "class A, of Class A's". Rated life expectancy is ONLY about 7000hrs [its not fair!]. I keep a log. Describe a fine piece of 18ct gold jewelery and that is what it sounds like, to me, in my system. Rich, pure, lush, agile, delicate, gentle,seductive, powerful! and Beautiful. This cartridge is special from all others in that it uses solid 14 ct. gold binding posts. The inherent advantages of utilizing this material I think is what is contributing to it very unique sonic signature.
Swiss made. Built within extremely fine tolerances and with fine craftsmanship. At the moment i use all the dynamic tracking force available and the rest with the static weight on the back. I found this to reveal more information, inflections and nuances from the grooves, as opposed to going with less dynamic vtf and more static. It was designed with no armlift because it was said or believed that it would compromise its performance. I like their gusto! Its Sound, within the context of my system: Very agile, extreme transient responsiveness , gives ITS take on
"beautiful" music playback. It has a wonderful speed, resolution and timbrel realism within its inherent design limitations. Extremely low bearing friction so that it allows the cart to traverse the record unimpeded. No Din connection on this one. Only connections are from cartridge terminals to RCAs, that it. Its got cardas copper wiring. Because it works so well with the allaerts its staying! For awhile anyways. It nicely seasons the allaerts beauty, dynamics and lushness with MORE dynamics and reels things in a bit with its NEUTRALITY. Its like the Breuer is MATH [which in its own way is beautiful, [but its a different kind of beauty]] and the Allaerts MC 1B MK II is Art. One kind of beauty appeals to the head and the other to the Soul. Put those two together and you have something wonderful, special and unique. These are just words though...when the stylus hits the grooves, the words disappear, the arm disappears and suddenly youre in a another realm. After all why do you think you're attracted to music?
Great table.
- Lenco 78 Swiss Record Player
(Origin arm in picture has a new owner) I kept the original metal chassis cause i preferred its looks to a ptp3. Uk plastercine on both sides of the chassis and the aluminum platter to
- Audion 2 Box Quattro Pre-amp
Design Features: 17 active power supply stages, Hardwired in solid silver.Transformer less design direct cathode coupled mc!
My unit is fitted with all Amperex white label, made in USA,
- Audion Elite 3 Box Monoblock Amplifier
General features: Operates in Pure Class A using the strong 845 tube. Output is 25 watts per channel. Additional tubes utilized
the 6922 tube and e182cc tube. Hardwired in pure silver, uncongested wiring layouts, minimalist sparse wiring keeping the circuits beautifully simple, spaced for improved signal to noise ratio, carefully selected parts, separately boxed transformer chassis attached by umbilical cords, heavy gold plated rca and speaker taps, chassis made of annealed, thick, aluminum. W9xL16xH7 inch chassis's. Specific to this particular unit: Half silver wound output transformer. Sound: I think its greatest strengths are its high degree of clarity, transparency, and speed. Bass with excellent weight and foundation , its special in that it isnt plagued with the typical poor bass of many Class A tubed designs. I think every amp or component has its own signature. I define SIGNATURE as
the CONTEXT a component utilizes as a means of providing an interpretation of the music. So with that said, I would say the Audion Elites signature is
a striving for purity of tone, uncoloredness, rich neutral timbres and textures mixed with a very fast transient response. Sometimes the best way to understand something is to look at its opposite. Its tone is the polar opposite of
dark. Dark being
failed transparency and failed speed which in turn fails to serve the music . Instead, the Elite is uncannily clear and fast. The air it produces within a soundstage is ALIVE not dead stale air or stagnent air that Ive heard some amps produce. A amps portrayal of AIR is something that I think is ESSENTIAL to capture the ALIVENESS of music. Go to a concert in a large hall space and listen when there is no music being played on stage. Even though there is no artist playing on stage you can still HEAR the AIR in the room . Well, I think this amp portrays AIR very beautifully. This sounds like nothing to go on about but I think this is one of many very important components to recreating a pleasing sound during playback and mimicking real life. I wont come close to exhausting this amps sonic attributes here
this is simply meant to give a general overview of my feelings about the amp based on the 4 years i've owned it [since 2007]. Even today i am still continuing to form my opinion about it and where it fits on the spectrum of world class amps as my exposure to other amps broaden's and my listening ear develops. The audion elite is a refined, sophisticated well designed, world class amp. Together with the rest of my system, working as one, it sounds colorless and just disappears once the music starts. Ill be conservative and hold back my enthusiasm by only saying its sounds VERY close to
sounding like
nothing. A fine amp.
In the Audion Elites:
KR845's (new brass bottom version) Nos Mullards gold pin E188c and Amperex PQ 6922's ,white shield made in USA.
Comments: The KR845's provide large solid three dimensional images that are extremely lifelike. I found them to be more articulate and expressive than the 845B tube. They are a bit more objective than the pleasantly warm 845B. The KR845 is very dynamic. Fascinating tube. I found it sounds best when pushed harder. Its like its envelope blossomed when pushed. (around 80db)
In the Audion Quattro: 8 Amperex PQ white shield 7308, made in USA tubes. Don't judge an Audion quattro without good tubes! It is very transparent. The PQ's forte are dynamics and clarity.
This system is just ho hum without the right tubes! I think it is sounding quite amazing these days with the above tubes.
I see cables for the most part as
tone controls. I also think of cables as fine seasonings. By fine seasonings I mean that they are not the
meat and potatoes, of the system rather they are the final FINE tiny changes that you use to dial in, tweak to compliment the components that you have assembled. But fine seasoning like in real cooking can make or break a dish. It wont change the meal into some other dish but you might fail to realize the inherent potential of a system with the wrong cables between the wrong components. Sometimes going from one cable to another or placing a cable in a different spot in the system you get negligible results but sometimes small changes in SYNERGY can make dramatic changes in their sonic emotional impact. Superb sound is a fragile thing! I think the right cables help great components shine and reveal their virtues. Cables are components helpers. Ive been theorizing that perhaps the mixing of variety of metals is vitally important for achieving breakthrough or at least close to perfect sound. So, an all copper wired system wont sound as good as a system with a blend of copper, silver and gold, mixed carefully, in the right proportions... in a system... by ear. So , when I consider my system, I ask myself what material is this cable made from? how much of it is in that cable? how many different metals am I using as a conductor in my system? and in what quantities? Where am I using it and might there be a better spot to use it? Here is some speculation on what I think these metals basically sound like. [I am generalizing.] Gold: Lush, beautiful, euphonic, wet, nimble, soft Silver: Transparent, airy, very fast, detailed Copper: relaxed, moderately transparent, average speeds Here are my cables and the metals they are constructed from and in what quantity. List of the Copper Cables: FiM Gold speaker cables: [Huge quantities [fat copper, solid core]] Between Audion amp speaker taps[which is internally silver wired]and Reference 3A Royal Virtuosos bass, speaker posts. Vh audio airsine power cord: [Small quantities, relatively thin wire][Location
Between power box and Audion Elite Center chassis where transformer is located in isolation.[internally silver wired] Vh audio Airsine power cord: [small quantities, relatively thin wire][location
Between Acoustic Revive RTP-4 power conditioner [copper wired] and Right channel of Audion quattro 2 box preamp [silver wired] Cardas tonearm cable: [Tiny and thin] [location
between cardas cartridge clips and eichmann bullet rca connectors] Generic cable: [small, thin, impure] [Between oyaide silver plated wall receptacle and lenco motor] Cardas Golden Reference: [average wire thickness and quantities][location
Between Acoustic Revive RTP 4 power conditioner and Left channel of Audion quattro 2 box preamp [silver wired] Cardas Golden Reference: [average wire thickness and quantities][Location
Between power box and Acoustic Revive RTP 4 power conditioner [copper wired] Generic wired power box: [average thickness and quantities][Location
Between Amp / RTP conditioner and Stove Receptacle. List of Silver cables: Acoustic Zen Silver Reference II [small quantities, relatively thin] [Location
Between Audion elite amp [internally silver wired] and Audion quattro 2 box preamp [internally silver wired] List of Silver over Copper cables: Jean-Marie Reynaud jumpers:< [Small quantities, relatively thin][Location
Between Bass and Treble speaker posts. Note:The system is mostly comprised of copper and silver. The only Gold is located in the Jan allaerts MC 1B MK II [copper coil windings]. Its connecting posts uses some 14ct, solid gold. Does the fact that the gold is solid and not plated and the fact that it is at the very front of the playback chain play a pivotal role or a negligible role?
Simple. Satisfying. Natural sounding speaker.
The following are used in various places to control how vibration interface with components. Over 3 inch rock maple board. One inch slate shelving. Aurios classic bearings. Large 13 ounce brass cones. Herbies Grundgebusters. Duelende tube rings. Turntable wallmounted shelf.
By the: Acoustic Revive RTP 4 passive power conditioner. In a nutshell, this thing works! Its not snake oil. I burned a lot of calories, pulling cables into and out of it as I A/B/A tested this. Several times too. Listening to a variety of different generes and records. In the context of my system there were too many drawbacks having the amp plugged into it, namely a significant loss in Macrodynamics, impact and soundstage but not so with the preamps. With the RTP 4 in the system [ only the Audion quattro preamps plugged in and nothing else] there is a few degrees of loss in the area of macrodynamics and inner detail but quality of timbres were much more natural and satisfying. A mechanical, lifeless hash enmeshed between soundstage details was replaced with a sense of organic wholeness and rightness. Like going from listening to a older master analog tape to a fresh analog mastertape, though again there is a slight loss of inner detail. This loss, was
. Negligable, because
. you are left with something so much more satisfying. The RTP is like an "editor" in the movieroom. He takes the bulk of the film, decides whats important, leaves in the bulk of whats important and cuts out some bits of the film but in the end it makes for an overall better final watching of the movie. To do this he has to sacrifice some important bits but overall its make for a better movie. More pleasurable. Without the RTP there is more detail but timbres arent as tonally dense, rich and satisfying. Timbrel beauty is lost. Without the RTP4 there is a slight bleaching of timbres , a slightly larger soundstage, increase in detail and macrodynamics. It is not that there is more actual physical impact... because with the rtp it does this just fine but without the rtp
with the micro and macrodynamic detail a subjective experience of more dynamics is perceived. There is more resolution but the information that is retrieved fails to convince. It comes across slightly as "manufactured" sound without the RTP. The RTP is a great piece. I guess it has a tough job to do. Maintain ALL the dynamics, resolution AND clean up the noise and improve timbre. In the process of cleaning up the noise it seems to catch things in its net that it never intended but unfortunately does. But its benefits outweigh its faults. Timbre and tonality are more an important audiophile value to me and worth the few degrees of loss in the area of detail and dynamics. The improvement in the area of timbres is more valuable than the slight loss of detail. The extra detail is no good to me if the timbres arent exhilerating! Whats the use? The RTP feeding only the preamps provides blacker backgrounds, improves timbres, slightly changes your experience of the soundstage for the Good! Its relatively expensive but it makes the other pieces in my system seem more valuable as they are allowed to sound better. Experiencing what I experienced I could not go without it. Small, subtle but very meaningful improvements.
- A Space to.... 'woo the music...to come.'
Music kinda has a life all its own doesn't it? Its like it's a separate entity...its going to do whatever it wants and sometimes "it shows up and sometimes it doesn't!" But when it comes you're transported aren't you? The gear disappears as the music enters the room. Well... i try to do things to the room so that the music "will want" to show up here! [smile] The Room. Often over looked or forgotten altogether is the place... WHERE the equipment has to play and how well or poorly it is interfacing with that room? Here's the little bit that i've picked up over the years. The shapes of rooms, the materials they're constructed from, the materials that cover or don't cover the wall, floor and ceilings.... where speakers are placed in that room and whether or not the first reflections are treated are very important for good music playback. I have gleaned some of the books and online sources about this topic which can get very sophisticated and technical. Some of it i understood and some of it was starting to give me a headache [smiling] but i did take away some basic useful info that i could easily apply and use to help make the hifi system sound as best as it can. One of the reasons why i have listed "the room" as one of the components in my "systems list" is so that those who don't already know, or to whom it even has not entered their mind... your room, really and truly is a part of your SYSTEM ...and... it is a vital 'component!' The second reason is to re remind myself of that fact and so that overtime i dont forget to remember [smiling] and so i can re visit the question of "room treatment" again when time permits and when the feeling comes to do so...to do it! Room Facts: 17L x 13W x 8H in feet. [opened to other living areas] Wood framed,insulated with gypsum board for walls and ceiling. Floor is all wood, suspended, covered by synthetic 3/4 inch carpet. 4 by 5 FT window in the left side of the front wall 7 by 7 FT glass slide door in the center of the right side wall open hallway entrance at the far left of the back wall 7 by 7 FT opening to the kitchen area directly to the right and behind the listening position The size of the room is ok in that it is not a perfect square. That would be a "tougher" room to work with. The walls and the short synthetic carpet make it a very reflective, ie "live" room. In other words, frequencies that emanate from the speakers are able to hit one wall, bounce, hit another wall, repeating, colliding with other frequencies, at different points in the room, amplifying or canceling a certain, frequency, then in time, those begin colliding with new info that leave the speaker and then colliding with those too! So, what you get, through no fault of the components, is varying degrees of distortion. What I've done to try and ameliorate this is to treat one of the two parallel walls with 4 inches of a special brand of fiberglass called "Rigid Fiberglass" I think its called 703k or 705k. Both are the same product. I have two, 2FT by 4FT by 4 inches sheets on the right side wall and two of the same on the wall directly behind my listening position. I covered it with a loosely stitched cloth [ if they are too tight the material itself will be reflective! and the fiberglass can't do what it is meant to do] First Reflections: First reflections are the first reflected sounds that hit you from the closest surfaces from the floor, side walls and ceiling. Sound travels in a straight line like light, so to treat your first reflections points or to find where exactly they are.... put a chair with a mirror on it at the side wall. Do you see your speakers woofer and tweeter from your seating position? Where you see the speaker in the mirror is where you should add a absorptive material or a diffuser. I use absorption. ie the rigid fibreglass. I have two, 1FT by 2FT by 2 inch thick sheets treating the first reflections on my ceiling. I also have two that are movable for side wall first reflections. Because i have a 37 inch TV in the center and behind the speakers i also have a sheet that is removable which i place over the tv screens hard reflective surface when i listen so that it does not destroy the centre image focus. Hard, parallel surfaces are the enemy so to speak. If you had wall to wall of 5 inch wool you would have no reflective surfaces in your room. It would be very dead. One time out of curiosity i thumb tacked all the sleeping bags and thick blankets i had to the wall, floor and ceiling and listened to the system like that! The room looked like a room for the audio insane! [laughing, smiling] It was pretty dark too! Anyways...that produced a profound change in the sound and it was an interesting little wild experiment that spoke volumes to me about how you're not just listening to a cart, or arm or amp or a speaker, you are listening to those as a system as they interact with what you've got going on in your room!...for the better or for the worse[ or for the mediocre]. Many a great speaker has been sold due to poor rooms! So when you listen to your amp in some sense you are really also listening to your room. When you are listening to a cartridge you in some sense are really also listening to your room. etc etc. Why does treating first reflections help? When the woofer pulsates in and out once it sends out some sound but it disperses the sound out in a spray patterned shape. Some of the sound goes directly from the woofer to your ear at the listening position BUT... others travel [with the same initial action] from the woofer, to the wall, THEN to your ear ....at the listening position. The time and the release of the initial woofer pulse leaves the same time for both but one has to travel a longer distance therefore it arrives slightly late! Thats the key! The energy arriving from first reflections has the most energy because they have not had time to lose their energy by travelling throughout the room repeated times and therefore has a higher capacity to introduce distortion, that is why treating first reflections helps and why it is important to do so. Treating first reflections in the context of my system increased soundstage resolution, image focus and musical and spacial cues by a few ...."perceptible and meaningful" percentages. It was easily discernible but not profound but worth doing if you want to extract every detail out of your system as best as you can and know how to. I am still considering if my room would benefit from even more absorption of sound waves or not. I'm sure i can still improve on what i've got but i think i got the bulk of it attended to. I listen on a "long wall" set up. My speakers are currently about 3 and a half feet out from the front wall and toed in a few degrees. I use a 3 dollar dog laser against the speaker cabinets to perfectly align them to my listening position. I use a level to make sure the speakers are firing identically ahead in the same fashion as each other and i make sure their distance from the front wall are identical with a tape measure. I have heard it is better to have your speakers more than a few inches "off center" in the room. [ i cant remember why but the source i remember seemed reliable] The walls, floor and ceiling: I'm sure with low bass my wood and gypsum combo produce a drum skin affect. That is the wall are not very inert and depending on the decibels they can act a bit like a woofer. Maybe brick would be more ideal, but i dont know, harbeth designs their speaker to vibrate a certain way as a virtue in their design ? they "tune" their cabinets to vibrate in such a fashion to produce what they perceive is a pleasing sound? So belong to the "dial in the ideal vibration camp" Not the "dead is best camp". Can a wall be too dead? I think the question looks easy to answer but i venture it is more complicated then some might think. I DO know that my suspended wood floor will effect how my speakers perform.... for better or for worse. I am exploring and experimenting with different materials between the two to see which brings out the best in the overall sound. My room has a sofa, tv, some pictures on the walls, a small record shelf, some plants and a few other pieces of furniture which help a bit to reduce unwanted reflections by diffusing "secondary and third" reflections and reducing the "liveliness" of the room to some degree. I say... tune with your ear! Your room can sound too dead or too alive! My turntable sits about 6 inches from the front wall supported by a wall shelf. They say bass pressure builds up around the walls so one ideally should keep the player at least 8 inches from the wall if possible and never in the corners of rooms...its even worse there! I can literally jump up and down a distance of 2 feet on my suspended floor and not have the cartridge skip. Not bad! If i wanted i could have a dance party here and the footfall would not affect play at all. I like that. Before i have a "serious" [smile] listening sessions, I ... 1.Remove my 2 canaries. [ they love to sing when it gets noisy!][sometimes i just leave them to sing out!] 2.Set up my movable first reflection absorbers 3. Unplug the fridge so the motor doesnt make noise [this makes a difference]or pollute the ac line 4. Close windows to block out noise pollution I haven't used computers to find an ideal space in my room based on room dimensions and speaker type, I have placed them simply where they allow for good walking flow in the room, where i spend a lot of time and with that as a baseline i move them around a bit to find the best sound based on listening. This has worked out for me alright i think and i am pretty happy with the sound of my system in this room. No system is complete without thought taken in regards to... "the room" [as described above] and speaker placement experimentation[listening position too]. The room should be a visually appealing place to YOU, with appealing lighting, quiet and attended to in such a fashion that the system can shine, this together facilitates the likelihood of... "the music entering the room". [not just...noise] [i'm trying.]
- Unorthodox but Seriously Fun experimentations
The final acceptance or rejection of an experiment is based solely on how it sounds, irregardless of looks or price or whether it is endorsed by any other audiophile or manufacturer or not, irregardless of spurious logical assumptions about whether or not it should or should not work. How it sounds with the rest of my original system and components and trusting myself and my own ears will be the deciding factor. More to follow, check back if you like: 1. Record Mats The interface between record, platter, mat and cartridge is a very sensitive area and can bring small, negligable or sometimes profound changes emanating from the speakers. My modded lenco platter. i have both sides of this ringy platter already damped with uk plasticine. i will experiment to extract as much as i can through its use by trying several different "incarnations" of its implementation. currently i am using something very unorthodox but it is working for me. so, the top of my lenco platter has uk plasticine. then i have the stock lenco rubber mat. On top of that i have two graphite wall receptacle covers! attached via plasticine, then next to those two, two neoprene rubber circles about 2 inches in diameter and 4mm thick attached the same way. Best of both worlds. deadening with a bit of rubber and low mass draining by the receptacle plates. better than felt better than just rubber good resolution and maintains the integrity of timbres.
I buy records that look like they have a good chance of having quiet grooves. Usually buying AT LEAST vg+ in appearance records. Usually NM though. Then i only clean the dust off the SURFACE. I almost never scrub grooves , ONLY remove surface dust with the edge of a miki WHISKEY bottle, a guitar polishing cloth and distilled water, added with a syringe to the edge. I makes sure there is a liberal amount of water on the edge so that dust will stick to it. It is the short, narrow, convex side of the bottle not the wide side that i use to clean with. It's works well because of it is curved shaped. I lower the bottle and make sure i have the entire width of the record surface covered and hold the bottle at a about a 60 degree angle leaning it to the side that has the record traveling into it. Then i hold the bottle as still as possible and with my other hand rotate the record. As i am rotating the record i slowly change the angle going from 60 degrees to about 110 degrees. This way each area of the record is assured to get a fresh section of cleaning cloth area as the record is rotating and i am not just redistributing piled up dirt! To do another side i then shift the cleaning cloth a bit and add a fresh shot of water and now its ready again for another pass. After cleanings i let the cloth dry, then i whip it against something hard and back and forth a few times to beat the larger loose particles of dust away. This is good enough because the next time i go to clean i add distilled water and anything that got left behind will stay with the fresh water applied. If the cloth is getting a bit stained and too dirty i will then actually give it a good washing in dish soap and then let it air dry. The cloth is stored in a sealed plastic bag to protect it from house dust when not in use. I have two different cloths for different uses. One i call "fine" which is for light surface dust and one called "bulk" which i reserve for record surfaces that have quite a bit of dirt on their surface. I clean one side. Remove the record, resting its label on a glass or mug, while I clean the mat on the record cleaner that will accept the JUST CLEANED side of the record. This way the dirt from the uncleaned side which was just sitting on and against the mat does not pollute the just cleaned side when i go to clean the uncleaned side! No cross contamination. Thats about it. If some records have dirty grooves i let my cheaper denon 103 cart do the job of "kicking up and out" dirt and grit out of the grooves and onto the records surface and then clean as indicated above. I play the record through again with the denon 103 and again see dirt but this time much less. I Clean again. Several cycles of this cleans the actual grooves and from there I determine if the record is a keeper or if it will be sold or given away if groove noise is too high and beyond repair. I picked up the cleaner already built at a second hand store for a whopping $20. This approach is all about starting with records that are already in close to superb condition, avoiding cross contamination and using something 'sticky' as a method of removing dirt, dust and the occasional cat hair. The ionic bonding or in other words what i'll call 'the stickiness of water'is superior to a DRY carbon fibre brush which will get the bulk of dust off but unfortunately also at the same time pushes some bits into the grooves or leaves some of them behind altogether. Not so with my method. Its like a 'renewable dust magnet' I try to only let the good clean records reach the Allaerts MC1B MK2.
