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Lyra Atlas experiences

A few years ago, I invested in a Lyra Atlas cartridge / pickup. I have moved up, from Lyra Clavis in the early 2000s and Lyra Titan i later. The Atlas was expensive, but I have not looked back. Yet I wonder, can something more be done, to optimize the Atlas, in my system, and others. How can this remarkable pickup run its best. What are the best phono preamp and system matches. Should the system be rearranged. Have anyone done mods or DIYs to their systems to get the "reception" right? What happened? Comments welcome. You dont need to own a Lyra Atlas but you should have heard it, to join this discussion. Comments from the folks at Lyra are extra welcome - what is your experience.
Oystein
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nandric's avatar
nandric
4,086 posts
 

As a person with ''high level of ignorance'' according to our

Mexican oracle I was confused by technical specs of my EMT

SFL 15. According to their own manual the output of this cart

was/is 0,21 mV. But according to some other ''measuring

method'' this value should be 1mV. I then discovered that

different manufacturers specify output voltage at specific

frequency (i.e. 1 Khz) and even at specific speed (say 5cm/s).

For those specs manufcturers use TEST RECORDS either

from Shure or ( by preference) from the famous ''CBS Laboratoris

STR 100''. As we can learn from the Mexican all test records

are for the nitwits. The real knowledgeable people who are nearly

 at his level of knowledge,  not to mention his inaccessible learnig

curve ( more in particular for his English ) depend only on their

own ears.  

andrew9405
225 posts
 
Modulation levels found on test records do not exist anywhere else on vinyl music.
Therefore, their use for anti-skate adjustment is irrelevant. 
nandric's avatar
nandric
4,086 posts
 

andrew9405, You are , so to speak, trying to kill an already

death person. In our endless discussion about the anti-skate

nobody ever stated that test records are the right method.

The problem has nothing to do with test records but with tonearm

geometry and different groove velocity by different record radius.

The only tonearm which addressed this (radius) problem was

Sony PUA 237 and 12'' version. All other tonearms use either

(constant) magnetic- or a weight force on a wire. This issue is

also discussed very recently.

drastic's avatar
drastic
18 posts
 
If I may jump into this erudite group with a related question ...
My Lyra Atlas lives on a Basis Superarm 9 on a Basis Inspiration table, set up by the dealer, and it sounds superb.  But on rare occasions and only with a "hot" recording of piano, I'll hear breakup in the left channel.  Cartridge weight was set to Lyra's recommendation.  What's the most likely fix, do you think?  I don't want to start messing with the wrong parameters.  
stringreen's avatar
stringreen
6,474 posts
 
Drastic....   After inspecting the stylus and declared it not bent......I would make positive that the turntable itself is level, I would make positive (using an electronic scale) that the vtf is exactly what the cartridge manufacturer recommends as optimum (not a range)... then I would absolutely make sure that azimuth is set correctly using the Fozgometer and its recommended lp using a brand new battery. If that doesn’t work, get back and we’ll go further.
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