Tranfiguration Orpheus description

Ultra tight magnet-coil coupling. The coils are not just close but literally right inside, with coil-magnet proximity of only a few thousandths of an inch.

It may be 'marketing speak' but it certainly is sexy, and I, for one, am intriqued. ;-)

My question is this: with such fine tolerances, what does that mean for the suspension and its lifespan?

Cheers,
Tim

Whew,Nsgarsh!Now you are looking much more credible,in your way of approaching whether you,yourself,would spend this kind of dough.Me too!!And I can easily see doing it,in lieu of the admitted fact that I have been down for six months,and want to make some major,"meaningful" moves.Soon.Yet and yet?
Jcarr,has some very valid input,that has to be given consideration,as well!
I mean,if we simply took the technical approach,we would all have sold our analog rigs around 1982,and gone the "Digi" route.No?
Actually in '82,the Princeton Record Exchange had SO vast an analog "stock",of everything viable,that with some inner voice speaking to me,and with the marketing speak,for CD in full gear,I went NUTZZZ collecting the "Primo" lp's we all lust for today!I simply was not "automatically" jumping on the digital bandwagon,at that time,though five years ago I got a fine player,simply because I like alot of the new avante garde stuff,like John Zorn/Pendrecki/Rousse/Terry Riley yada yada.
But...the stuff found on some old lp's will never be recorded again.There is some amazing stuff to still be found.
I love to still look for offbeat stuff,and my friend Sid is "stacked" with Lp's to "really" die for.
BTW,you simply know the "O" is going to garnish raves,from the press!Doesn't everything?
I mean,when I look at some of the reviewers in Hi Fi News and Record Review,many are,already,showing the "O" in their own systems.But I'll bet they did not dig too deep for them.I can just see their own input,when it comes to print.No surprises,I'll bet.So I will still be just a little suspicious.Just a little.But....YES SIR....you bet that it is totally possible that this "tweener" design could have very likely come about to specifically fit a product line category.Business works that way,alot!Do you think Koetsu accidentally discovered some zillion year old coral,while an employee was scuba diving,and inadvertantly put it on a cartridge out of curiosity.Then decided to ask fifteen thousand dollars for one?"IT LOOKS DAMN GREAT",and the "marketing machine" knew it would sell,to the Rolex/Breitling crowd.Afterall there are not alot of bad sounding Koetsus out there.I should know.I had four models over ten years.
Sorry for my lengthly rant,BTW.I won't argue my case anymore either,and will just wait for my friend to come up with it,which is inevitable.Very soon!I HOPE you can say "I told you so",after I audition it,but you had better be prepared to loan me some cash,or maybe feed my family for awhile -:)

Best!

Speedy, I could go along with the O being a tweener marketing ploy if they were asking like DOUBLE the price of a V or W (remember the huge jump in price from an Airy 3 to a UNIverse?) but at a mere 20% more, no I think it's simply going to turn out to be 20% better -- which IMO (based on the already amazing performance of my W) will automatically put it out in front of the competition.

The only cartridge I'd currently cross a state line to hear is the Magic Diamond Blue, and the only person I know that uses one is Rushton. I don't know where he lives and his wife won't let him say ;--)

The diameter of the wire is also a component in deciding the sound, so rather than using the thinnest possible wire, a cartridge maker is likely to use whatever wire diameter that he (or she) thinks will give the right sound. In production you can go down to 15 micrometers (or even 12 if you don't mind somewhat higher than normal wire breakage), but based on my personal experience, I'd estimate that the Eminent, SPU Synergy and Orpheus all use considerably thicker wire - probably something on the order of 40 micrometers or even 45.

I quite agree with you that yokeless designs have certain advantages over traditional designs with polepieces (yokes). I simply don't agree that higher output efficiency is one of those advantages. Actually, if it is only output efficiency that you are pursuing, a traditional polepiece architecture is the easier one to do, first because the size of the magnet in a polepiece-based design can be far larger than what is practical in a yokeless design, and on top of that, the polepieces offer a greater degree of flux focusing than a magnet by itself can.

Incidentally, yokeless cartridges have been out on the market from the late 1970s, while as a subset of yokeless, designs involving ring magnets that fully surround the coils have been out since at least 1981, possibly earlier. So already a bit of time has elapsed since their introduction, certainly enough to refine the general concept :-). I do reckon that it is possible to refine the yokeless concept further, but then the same thing can likewise be said about polepiece-based designs. IME, neither one is maxxed-out yet, and each has a distinct set of trade-offs (advantages and disadvantages). A cartridge designer may validly prefer either, depending on his design goals, insights and resourcefulness.

There is no scarcity problem in the US. The distributor has cartridges in stock. If a dealer is telling your friend this is the case, he is misrepresenting for some reason. Could be that grey-market sources are scarce ($2750 for an Orpheus...), but one should also bear in mind that they will not be able to provide any warranty coverage (which those of you who have had any long term experience with delicate mc carts will know is very important--having a real dealer and a distributor who will take care of things if/when problems arise).

To quickly address some of the other issues mentioned above:

The V and W are not "just introduced". the V has been around since about 2000 and the W was introduced 3 years ago. The Orpheus design has been in progress for almost 2 years, with numerous delays.

While the two look fairly similar on paper, in cartridges, where they are mechanically transducing incredibly large amounts of information at radically high speeds, the slightest differences can be huge sonically.

I would agree that the Tempers are among the best in the world and did not expect much difference...some slight improvements here and there. To some extent, this is true, except that the improvements are substantial and in almost every performance category. More macro-dynamics, slightly improved micro-dynamics (always the Temper's strong point), considerably more resolution, though with a somewhat more relaxed and natural-sounding presentation (yes, a seeming contradiction). More transparency. Quieter. Deeper and better bass articulation. So far, I have not found a record that will saturate the high-frequencies, including piccolo blasts. Tone and timbre are dead-on neutral. At first, I thought the balance might be slightly warmer than the W, but, upon extended listening, realized that the balance is the same, there is just a bit less smearing on top (which tends to whiten up the sound) and there is more resolution in the mids/lower-mids, which allows you to hear more harmonic texture in that range, which comes across as warmer. The main noticable difference is a musical one, however. I find myself following rhythmic and emotional lines in the music that I had never noticed before.

The Orpheus is a significant improvement over the Temper series. However, if you have a Temper V/W that is still performing well, you might want to put that money somewhere else in the chain, for example, a better tonearm or table, or phono stage, as these things can effect very large changes in the character and quality of a system.