Lyra Dorian or Lyra Delos cartridge?

"The person who said this to me has no finacial intrest in me personally."

Which you answered by saying:

"He is a audio dealer" And therefore needs to sell his stock of discontinued Dorians.

"The new Delos is more expensive then the Dorian so I don't understand why the Dorian isn't produced any more."

Mr. Carr explained that. They have enough trouble building enough of the new/current models to continue an old model. Even if they did not build it(is that documented?) in house, they still have the overhead of maintaining it as a product. Sometimes, as he said differently, you have to cost justify things. He also explained why they do not make a less expensive model.

Y'all be cool,
Robert

Robob.

I alrady own a Dorian and I didn't by that from the dealer I talked to.

"In order to give their new entry-level model qualities of their upper tier cartridges at a base price Jonathan Carr had to come up with two firsts for Lyra: contrary to all other pickups the Dorian is not fully built and tuned by Mishima, rather, part of the work is done by one specialised subcontractor. Likewise, the stylus is not the usual Ogura, but an off-the-shelf Namiki fine line, a standard component often used my other cartridge manufacturers under the names 'microline' or 'microridge'."

Dear Mordante:

While the assembly of the Dorian was initially planned to be outsourced, this plan was cancelled while the cartridge was still in the prototype stage. Every production Dorian has shipped with Mishima's hands-on TLC.

The Dorian was originally planned to be a lower-cost cartridge, it was planned to be made in higher volumes, and it was planned to be not made by Mishima. To increase component volume and get individual component costs down, the mechanical components of the Dorian shared the same design as the Argo, and were made on the same machines. Anodizing was changed to a less sensitive color than the Argo (nothing is as aggravating as having a perfectly machined body get rendered unusable because of duff anodizing), and we specified a stylus that was as close in dimension and shape to the Argo, but off-the-shelf rather than a custom design (custom designs will always be more expensive).

However, the Dorian project suffered a setback in the assembly phase. I've written previously about what happened here

http://learn.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/fr.pl?eanlg&1268751339&openflup&62&4

I kept all of the design aspects of the Dorian, but brought in Akiko Ishiyama as Mishima's apprentice-in-training. As she learned the craft of building MCs over the past 8 years, Akiko has gradually taken on more and more of the early assembly stages of the Dorian. Nonetheless, Mishima does all of the final assembly and voicing work which is critical to the performance and sound. This is true for each and every Dorian that has ever shipped.

The situation is the same with all of the Delos' - the basic assembly is done by Akiko, and the finishing, voicing and measuring is by Mishima. Actually, Akiko is now involved in some of the basic assembly work for the Kleos as well as the Delos, and she continues to do good work.

Since the Dorian was never outsourced, keeping it in our lineup would have indeed been an extra burden on Mishima (and Akiko).

Although the Dorian would still have been cheaper than the Delos if we had kept it in our lineup, rising material, energy, processing etc costs meant that it wouldn't have been much cheaper. I estimate that retail of the Dorian as it was would now need to be US$1300 or thereabouts, and that meant that it would clearly offered much less performance and sound quality for the money than when it was priced at under US$1000.

I didn't feel good about seeing the retail price rise without any accompanying increase in performance, so I pondered various ways to boost performance. OTOH it wouldn't have made sense to increase performance by throwing advanced materials or complex machining at the problem, as this would have bumped the resulting cartridge right out of its intended retail price target. Luckily I had the "New Angle" inspiration, and this made it possible to introduce a Dorian (and Argo) replacement with much-improved performance, for not much more than the Dorian would have ended up costing anyway.

As to how well the Delos performs in comparison to the Dorian, that is going to change depending on what kind of audio system you have and your setup skills. Also when it comes to subjective opinions, there is no wrong or right. Although I've heard (a very few) systems where there wasn't much to choose between the Dorian and Delos, by far and large, I find the Delos to perform at the Helikon class and above.

hth, jonathan carr

Jonathan,
thank you for your detailed and precise explanations. I am a current Delos owner and have been bitten by the Lyra sound. I have previously owned cartidges from rega (Exact) and Dynavector (DV20XH). The Delos is my first LOMC and am enjoying it eminsely. Congratulations on an excellent design. What would be the next logical upgrade in the Lyra line and what Might I expect as trade-in value on my 3 month old cartridge?

03-05-11: Mofimadness
Jonathan Carr is one of the good guys in the industry. He's a straight shooter and tells it like it is. I, for one, appreciate his honesty.

i have to agree with this sentiment. i can't say that i fully understand everything that jonathan carr writes but i think that i understand most of what he writes. to my knowledge, the stuff that he writes tends to add up. in an industry that seems to operate so much on smoke and mirrors, i really appreciate someone who is willing to give you the straight scoop on the tradeoffs that drive his design decisions.

as to the skepticism expressed by elizabeth, my advice is that you should try to understand as much about this stuff as you possibly can - then you can approach this stuff as a more informed consumer. that is a more reliable position than to merely bemoan the presumed questions about the integrity of some dealers.

for my own part, i came across my delos cartridge from sorasound. at the time sorasound had an inventory of zyx cartridges that he was trying to unload but the dealer expressed a high regard for jonathan carr's work. sorasound may still have the inventory of zyx cartridges, so if you're looking for a zyx cartridge at a discount, that would be a good dealer to contact...