17dx

The Fascinating Lifecycle of Our Stereo Cartridge

Robert Brook runs a blog called The Broken Record, with a subtitle explaining what the aim of his blog is:

A GUIDE FOR THE DEDICATED ANALOG AUDIOPHILE

We know of none better, outside of our own humble attempt to enlighten that portion of the audiophile community who love hearing music reproduced with the highest fidelity and are willing to go the extra mile to make that happen.

The FASCINATING LIFECYCLE of Our Stereo CARTRIDGE

An excerpt:

Whatever the number of hours our cartridge will last, and however long we can expect it to perform well, I’d say most of us who do avoid breaking it will run it too long. Which is completely understandable and not totally without its merits. Great cartridges are expensive and the degradation of their sound is often gradual and not necessarily universal across every record in our collection. Plus it’s really not all that easy to know exactly when our cartridge is starting to sound audibly worse.

So how do we know when it’s time to replace our cartridge? Before I answer that question I need to point out that audiophiles are too focused on stylus wear and not enough on degradation of the cantilever assembly, which plays a sizable role in the quality of sound our cartridge delivers.

As Robert makes clear in his piece, a properly setup, fresh-sounding cartridge is fundamental to achieving high quality playback.

In both his system and mine, it starts with this little fellow right here.

If you are interested in acquiring what we consider to be the best sounding cartridge on the market, please contact us. We are dealers for Dynavector and can get you a 17dx at a good price, and typically in short order.

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Better Front Ends Actually Reduce Surface Noise

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Tchaikovsky Available Now

This record has no marks that play appreciably, but that RCA vinyl is up to its old tricks again.

Mint Minus Minus with constant light surface noise underneath the music in the quieter sections is the rule. The first half inch of side two is where you will notice it the most.

We are of the opinion that good sound and good music allow you to pretty much ignore surfaces such as these (scratches being another thing entirely of course). 

Better Front Ends

I would make the further point that the better your front end is, the less likely you are to have a problem with vinyl like this, which is the opposite of what many audiophiles perceive to be the case. In other words, some of the cheaper tables and carts seem to make the surface noise more objectionable, not less. (They also tend to collapse completely under the weight of a mighty recordings.)

On the other hand, some pricey cartridges — the Benz line comes to mind — are consistently noisier than those by Dynavector, Lyra and others, in our experience anyway.

Vintage Vinyl

As long as vintage vinyl is the only vinyl with sound worth pursuing, as is surely the case these days and will be the case for the forseeable future — we have ample evidence to support this statement for this who are interested in that lamentable reality — a quiet cartridge and a very high quality arm are essential to your being able to recognize good records and reproduce them properly.

Our Dynavector 17Dx gets down deep into the groove, where vintage used records have the least number of problems created by their previous owners.

And we run it nude for even better sound. I discovered this possibility more than a decade ago — so long ago that I cannot remember where I came by the information — but the sound was immediately so much better that all questions were answered moments after dropping the needle.

Not a lot of things are obvious, but that sure was.

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Is That a Good Record, Or Just One Your Cartridge Really Likes?

More Turntable Setup Advice

An anonymous person commented as follows about the 17dx he bought recently:

I think it’s worth mentioning here that when it comes to cartridges, not only are we rarely in a position to demo a cartridge that we don’t necessarily have to keep, but even if could remove a cartridge we’ve tried and return it, the installation process can be a significant deterrent to doing that.

Plus, as ab_ba points out, that cartridge is likely to like some of our records. So what do we do? We just end up playing those records more often and buying more records like them so we have more records that our catridge likes. IOW, we adapt to the circumstances.

When one day we put on a record that we used to love and discover we don’t love it so much, and we realize it’s the cartridge that doesn’t love it, some of us will do what I did and buy a Dynavector 17dx from Better Records because we can then rest assured that anything that’s on that record that’s lovable, or not so lovable, the 17dx is going to show it to us either way.

I repied:

Dear Sir (if I may assume your gender),

Well said. The reason we have an entire section devoted to test records is so that audiophiles can find out what the strengths and weaknesses of their equipment might be. Whether the relatively few audiophiles who choose to test themselves with these recordings will go on to fix the problems they find is something we can only speculate about.

Most of the audiophiles whose systems I critiqued didn’t seem to appreciate what I had to say and none as I recall acted on my ideas for improvement.

I am glad you like what your 17dx does for your system. Its output is ruler flat, and that is its biggest benefit for those of us who want to hear our records sounding they way they actually do sound, “lovable” or “unlovable,” as the case may be.

It has been my experience that many audiophiles are not in favor of removing mostly-euphonic colorations from their systems. This is especially true when it results in the imperfections and shortcomings they have failed to address, or even acknowledge, are exposed and become irritating.

The modern Heavy Vinyl pressing tends to be overly smooth. This, judging from the sales and overall customer satisfaction of such records, must be helping to solve some of the problems in the systems of those who have found these pressings and their artificially adjusted tonal balance to their liking.

Accurate playback is not the be-all and end-all for everyone in our hobby. Some people just want to play a record for enjoyment, and if the colorations or limitations of their system helps them to do that, I say more power to them.

It’s not what you want and it’s not what I want, but clearly the audiophile community has outvoted us and proceeded down that road.

For those who want to make progress in the quality of our playback and the specific pressings of the recordings we choose play, you and I both know that road leads to a dead end.

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Cartridges Part Two: “Why don’t you talk about other cartridges more often on your blog?”

Advice to Help You Make More Audio Progress

Part one of this discussion can be found here.

Ab_ba continues:

Tom, this got me thinking.

I think of a mountain range. From one peak, you see others, and wonder, “gee maybe the view is even more magnificent from that peak!” But, for most of the peaks, it’s about the same, certainly no better, and could be a lot worse. Maybe just behind that other hill that looks so enticing from here there’s a parking lot! And also, climbing each peak takes time and energy, and for most of the journey between the peaks, you are down in a valley. And, is the view really actually better over there? Just because it is higher, doesn’t mean it will be more rewarding. Just because it is dazzling at first, maybe you grow sick of it after a while.

You have created a system that sounds demonstrably fantastic. And, it is a system that is not too finicky – other people can copy it and get amazing sound, even without any tweaking and fine-tuning. Are there other great-sounding systems? For sure. But, who, or what, on earth could be my guide to finding those other peaks? Certainly not the magazines. Certainly not other audiophiles. Certainly not the guys at my local hi-fi store. Certainly not the price tag.

As I’ve spent more time with the [redacted] cartridge my friend loaned me, its sonic character is becoming more evident. It is quite lovely on jazz. I threw on a $5 copy of Art Pepper’s Straight Life (Galaxy label, fwiw) and it sounded just fantastic. Sparkly highs, and the lack of bass that cartridge has was not noticably absent. I wondered, “has it settled in a little? Are my ears getting used to it?” I put on a few different records and said, “nope. It’s just got a sound signature that’s favorable to Art Pepper.”

So there’s a perfect example of a mountain peak I would not want to build my house on. Does the Dyna have no character? Probably not, but different records sound different, and different genres all reproduce well on it, and no part of the spectrum calls attention to itself. If there is a signature to it, it’s one I can live with.

Last question – why is it that audiophiles are so uncomfortable with the idea that they might be wrong? I mean, you can’t improve if you think you are already right. I think most of them are loners with disposable income, and most people who make some money in life get it by being supremely confident, perhaps overconfident. You look at guys like [redacted] and me, scientists where humility and knowledge of our own ignorance is in the very fiber of practicing our professions well, and even if we don’t have the disposable income of some audiophiles and some of your customers, we value quality, we value expertise, and we are happy to spend our available funds on things of enduring value.

Ab_ba

Dear Ab_ba,

I was no different back when I started. For about my first ten years in high-end audio, roughly 1975-85, I bought the most expensive equipment that I could afford, as long as it was well-liked by those whose ears I trusted and sounded good to me.

Is the audiophile of today doing anything different?

What would you be doing if you hadn’t stumbled on a guy with some credibility — he sold you some records that sounded amazing, so he must know something — who turned you on to some audio stuff that sounds great and, better yet, didn’t cost that much?

And how did this guy — me — come to find out about all this stuff in the first place? Well, I’ll tell you.

He had a good audio friend who turned him on to Dynavector cartridges twenty years ago (but oddly enough not the really good one they sell. I had to make that leap for myself).

And this audio friend had learned through extensive trial and error that there were certain receivers one could pick up for cheap at thrift stores that offered excellent, audiophile-quality sound. (Trial and error were his forte. This is the same guy that clued me into the concept of Hot Stampers, a life-changing concept if ever there was one.)

As it turned out, even my friend did not know how good the sound of the receiver he sold me could be when fed by a top quality outboard phono stage, something he did not have access to. (The receiver’s phono stage is decent but hopelessly outclassed by the EAR 324p we use.)

I ended up buying four or five different models with mediocre-at-best sound before I realized the one I owned must be a fluke. Then I bought three more of the model I liked and they all sounded different too, although they ranged in sound at most from excellent to crazy good. So I put the best sounding one in my system and kept the other three for backup. Like I said, they were cheap.

When I met my friend George Louis in San Diego back in the 80s, he had a much better system than I did. He was using non-audiophile-approved equipment that drove custom speakers. He showed me that my audiophile electronics and my Fulton so-called state-of-the-art speakers were not nearly as good as I thought they were. What did I know back then? Not as much as I thought I did, that’s for damn sure.

When I moved to Los Angeles in 1987, I met a fellow audiophile named Robert Pincus and we quickly became friends. Along with lots of other records, I was selling vintage classical records to audiophiles and he was supplying me with whatever he could dig up that sounded good.

He showed me that no two records sound the same, and even that no two sides of the same record sound the same. Once I had a chance to listen to some of the Hot Stamper pressings he brought me, I was sold.

Operating as the equivalent of a one-man band* in the 90s, I was only able to offer a small number of Hot Stamper pressings on an ad-hoc basis to customers who trusted me enough to believe in the concept. In 2004,  a mere 17 years later, we had worked out the bugs in the process and began selling them officially on our site, starting with Teaser and the Firecat. During those 17 years I was doing audio and records for 60-80 hours a week. Needless to say, I learned a lot in that time.

Anybody else want to put in 60-80 hours a week for 17 years to find out just how much they don’t know?

Isn’t it easier to go to a forum or site and have somebody tell you what you want to hear? It would save you a lot of work, but what would you learn? It’s our hope that every person buying a record from us has a Heavy Vinyl or audiophile-approved pressing to play against the one we sell them. Comparing the two, on their own time, on their own system, allows them to hear the kind of sound they’ve been missing and were told could not possibly exist.

But it does! And we have the records to prove it does.

Easy-to-carry-out comparisons of this kind have taught a select group of audiophiles and music lovers — customers like ab_ba, along with hundreds of others — not to put their trust in those who claim to know what they are talking about when they opine on what are the best sounding pressings. We have opinions, sure, but we also have the records that back up our opinions.

We’ve spent a lifetime discovering these very special vinyl pressings, and we make them available to discriminating audiophiles who prize superior sound as well as “enduring value.” All it takes is one click.

Best, TP

*More on the subject of being a one man band.

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Helplessly Hoping to Get the VTA Right

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Crosby, Stills, Nash and (Sometimes) Young

This listing from 2005 (!) contains commentary about VTA adjustment using the track Helplessly Hoping from a Hot Stamper pressing of CSN’s So Far. It would not be long before we went with the much more accurate and revealing 17D, which took us to another level, documented here.

Helplessly Hoping is a wonderful song that has a lot of energy in the midrange and upper midrange which is difficult to get right. Just today (4/25/05) I was playing around with VTA, having recently installed a new Dynavector DV-20x on my playgrading table (a real sweetheart, by the way), and this song showed me EXACTLY how to get the VTA right.

VTA is all about balance. The reason this song is so good for adjusting VTA is that the guitar at the opening is a little smooth and the harmony vocals that come in after the intro can be a little bright. Finding the balance between these two elements is key to getting the VTA adjusted properly.

When the arm is too far down in the back, the guitar at the opening will lose its transparency and become dull and thick. Too high in the back and the vocals sound thin and shrill, especially when the boys all really push their harmony. The slightest change in VTA will noticeably affect that balance and allow you to tune it in just right.

To be successful, however, there are also other conditions that need to be met. The system has to be sounding right, which in my world means good electricity, so make sure you do this in the evening or on a weekend when the electricity is better.

That’s the easy part. The hard part is that you need a good pressing that includes this song, and those don’t grow on trees.

The vast majority of CSN’s first album and the vast majority of So Far’s are junk.

Trying to get junk pressings to sound right is impossible, because they weren’t mastered right in the first place.

But if you’re one of the lucky few who has a good pressing of Helplessly Hoping, try tweaking your VTA adjustment and see if you aren’t able to dial it in even better than before.

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Letter of the Week – “Why don’t you talk about other cartridges on your blog?”

More Letters from Customers and Critics Alike

Hi Tom:

With my 17dx out of commission, [a friend] loaned me his [redacted], a cartridge that retails for a little more than the Dynavector. It only served to show me how truly special the 17dx is. The [redacted] is giving me some very nice sound, but there’s a sense of exaggerated detail, a lack of bass drive, a flatter soundfield, and for whatever reason, overall the music is simply less engaging. This mimics [my friend’s] experience with the [redacted] vs Dynavector comparison. He’d use different words, but we both agree that the Dyna is the considerably more satisfying cartridge.

Why is this? Why’s it so hard to make a great-sounding cartridge? And, how does price not serve as a reliable guide to sound performance? I’ve now had a chance to hear several high-priced and well-regarded cartridges: Clearaudio, Sound-Smith, Ortofon, etc. Since I’ve made further improvements to my system since I had any of those other cartridges installed, it was easy for me to believe that I had gotten things to where the cartridge would be less important in the overall sound I was getting. Instead, I think all I’ve done is to create a system that lets me hear very directly what the cartridge is saying.

My question for you is this: Why don’t you talk about other cartridges more often on your blog? Yes, you talk about the 17dx a lot, but I see only a passing mention to other carts. Over the years, what other cartridges have you tried? What impressions did you have of them? I mean, if you want to keep readers on the straight and narrow, then warning them against certain popular cartridges seems like it’d be an even more valuable service than warning them away from bad heavy vinyl pressings. Without the right cart, other changes to your system, and other choices of records to play, almost don’t matter. I guess there’s two ways to put this message to your readers: DO buy a 17dx. (You’ve said that plenty of times.) But also: DON’T bother with those other cartridges. (I think you should say that too!)

ab_ba

ab_ba,

The simplest answer to these questions is that I have very little experience with other cartridges.

Until maybe twenty years ago, I was not in a position to borrow expensive carts and try them out. I had a more forgiving Dynavector, then went to the 17d3 and that was that. It had the sound I was looking for.

Most equipment of any kind is nothing special. It’s mediocre by definition, since it is most likely average. Why would it not be average? Because the owners of said equipment spent so many years trying to find the best? As far as I know, that never happens.

As you say, money buys very little in audio, with the exception of big speakers, but then big speakers are mostly not very good because they often require lots of power, and high power amps never sound good to me.

If you want good sound, you will have to do a lot of work and spend a lot of money to find it.

Or you can buy what I own and save yourself all that time and trouble! As long as you are willing to live with some compromises, it’s hard to imagine you could find something better unless you devoted a huge amount of time and money to the search, and had the listening skills to choose wisely.

These are skills that audiophiles rarely have. They are much harder to come by than good equipment. I talk at length about how wrong I was about so many things for so long during my formative years for the simple reason that recognizing errors is how you learn to make fewer of them.

Who can say they know what they are talking about in audio and get anyone to believe them?

It is a hard road and few want to travel it.

Best, TP

Tom, this got me thinking.

I think of a mountain range. From one peak, you see others, and wonder, “gee maybe the view is even more magnificent from that peak!” But, for most of the peaks, it’s about the same, certainly no better, and could be a lot worse. Maybe just behind that other hill that looks so enticing from here there’s a parking lot! And also, climbing each peak takes time and energy, and for most of the journey between the peaks, you are down in a valley. And, is the view really actually better over there? Just because it is higher, doesn’t mean it will be more rewarding. Just because it is dazzling at first, maybe you grow sick of it after a while.

You have created a system that sounds demonstrably fantastic. And, it is a system that is not too finicky – other people can copy it and get amazing sound, even without any tweaking and fine-tuning. Are there other great-sounding systems? For sure. But, who, or what, on earth could be my guide to finding those other peaks? Certainly not the magazines. Certainly not other audiophiles. Certainly not the guys at my local hi-fi store. Certainly not the price tag.

As I’ve spent more time with the [cartridge] my friend loaned me, its sonic character is becoming more evident. It is quite lovely on jazz. I threw on a $5 copy of Art Pepper’s Straight Life (Galaxy label, fwiw) and it sounded just fantastic. Sparkly highs, and the lack of bass that cartridge has was not noticably absent. I wondered, “has it settled in a little? Are my ears getting used to it?” I put on a few different records and said, “nope. It’s just got a sound signature that’s favorable to Art Pepper.” So there’s a perfect example of a mountain peak I would not want to build my house on. Does the Dyna have no character? Probably not, but different records sound different, and different genres all reproduce well on it, and no part of the spectrum calls attention to itself. If there is a signature to it, it’s one I can live with.

Last question – why is it that audiophiles are so uncomfortable with the idea that they might be wrong? I mean, you can’t improve if you think you are already right. I think most of them are loners with disposable income, and most people who make some money in life get it by being supremely confident, perhaps overconfident. You look at guys like [redacted] and me, scientists where humility and knowledge of our own ignorance is in the very fiber of practicing our professions well, and even if we don’t have the disposable income of some audiophiles and some of your customers, we value quality, we value expertise, and we are happy to spend our available funds on things of enduring value.

Ab_ba

Ab_ba,

I was no different back when I started. For about my first ten years in high-end audio, roughly 1975-85, I bought the most expensive equipment that I could afford, as long as it was well-liked by those whose ears I trusted and sounded good to me.

Is the audiophile of today doing something different?

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Does Anybody Ever Talk About the Dry String Tone on London LPs?

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Tchaikovsky Available Now

Not that we know of.

If audiophiles and the reviewers who write for them are listening carefully to these famous recordings on the supposedly high quality (and often very high-dollar) equipment they use, why do they never talk about this problem?

Here is what we noticed when we played a big batch of Nutcracker recordings on London and Decca:

On some copies of this album the strings are dry, lacking in that wonderful quality we like to call Tubey Magic. Dry is decidedly not our sound, although it can often be heard on the hundreds of London pressings we’ve played over the years.

And we imagined that this might be the culprit:

If you have a rich sounding cartridge, perhaps with that little dip in the upper midrange, the one that so many moving coils have these days, you may not notice this tonality issue nearly as often as we do.

Our Dynavector 17Dx Karat is ruler flat and quite tonally unforgiving in this regard. It makes our shootouts much easier, but brings out the flaws in all but the best pressings, exactly the job we require it to do.

We discussed the issue in a commentary entitled Hi-fi beats my-fi if you are at all serious about audio.

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Cartridge Break-In and Setting Azimuth

Robert Brook runs a blog called The Broken Record, with a subtitle explaining that the aim of his blog is to serve as:

A GUIDE FOR THE DEDICATED ANALOG AUDIOPHILE

We know of none better, outside of our own humble attempt to enlighten that portion of the audiophile community who love records and are looking to understand them better.

Here is one of Robert’s most recent postings.

Cartridge BREAK-IN and Setting AZIMUTH

More of Robert’s advice on equipment and setup:

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Go Nude for Even Better Sound

Robert Brook runs a blog called The Broken Record, with a subtitle explaining what the aim of this blog is:

A GUIDE FOR THE DEDICATED ANALOG AUDIOPHILE

We know of none better, outside of our own humble attempt to enlighten that portion of the audiophile community who love hearing music reproduced with higher fidelity and are willing to go the extra mile to make that happen.

Nothing will bring you as much joy as when you manage, by whatever means, probably against all odds, to make significant audio progress.

The more progress you make, the more you will enjoy your favorite music. At least that’s what happened to me over the course of the last fifty years as I set about working on my system, room and a great deal more.

Here is Robert’s latest posting.

“NUDE” Your Dynavector KARAT 17DX Cartridge for EVEN BETTER Sound

More on Robert’s system here. You may notice that it has a lot in common with the one we use. This is not an accident.

And it is also no accident that these two systems just happen to be very good at showing their owners the manifold shortcomings of the modern remastered LP, as well as the benefits to be gained by doing shootouts in order to find dramatically better sounding pressings to play.

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Cartridge Tweaking and Turntable Setup Advice

More Turntable Setup Advice

Playing so many records every day means that we wear out our Dynavector 17DX cartridges much more often than most consumers would. They typically last us about three or four months.

This requires us to regularly mount a new cartridge in our Triplanar arm.

Once a new cartridge is broken in (50 hours minimum), we then proceed to carry out the fine setup work required to get it sounding its best. We do that by adjusting the VTA, azimuth and tracking weight for maximum fidelity using recordings we have been playing for decades and know well.

For the longest time our favorite test discs for this purpose have been these three:

  1. Bob and Ray Throw a Stereo Spectacular,
  2. Tea for the Tillerman, and
  3. Led Zeppelin II.

To be honest, I was the only guy on the listening panel using Bob and Ray. I have played that record at least 500 times, perhaps 1000, and would be lost without it.

Our listening guys — much younger and not nearly as interested in correctly reproducing The Song of the Volga Boatmen as I was — preferred numbers two and three, and of course those work fine too. In fact, when setting up our new studio, I came to realize Bob and Ray were not enough to get the room right, a subject I wrote about here.

We are in the process of making some lists (more lists! You can never have too many!) for records we’ve found to be good for testing, tweaking and tuning your system, your room and your front end setup, among other things. You may want to check them out.

These are the records that challenged me and helped me to achieve more progress in audio. If you are serious about improving your playback, these are some of the best records we know of to help get you to the next level.

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