ZYX Airy2-X-SB on Graham 2.2

Sbrown,the older fluid is inferior.Adding fluid beyond a certain point,whether blue(SUPERIOR)or clear justs dumbs down,overdamps,the sound.Try VERY small changes in your current fluid level.Pinheads at a time!It took me almost a year to realize that really small amounts affect sound greatly.You must ,slightly, change vta and down force for each change in fluid!

Dear Doug: A few minutes ago I read your ZYX review. Very well made and very informative. I would like if you can give us all the LPs that you use on that review.

BTW, I can see clearly why we have some differents points of view on the performance or gradation of these cartridges.

The " name " is: very different RESOLUTION on our audio systems ( yes, I know that there are other issues on the subject. ). Maybe I post something about on the review site.

Regards and enjoy the music.
Raul.

Hi Raul,

Thank you for the kind words. We did our best to describe everything we learned or heard, as you can tell from the ridiculous length of that review! ;-)

I couldn't easily name all the LPs we listened to from September until Xmas, at least not from memory. Obviously there were hundreds, but I'm afraid I didn't keep a playlist. I should have included more musical examples. That would have made the review less technical.

I guess I could flip through the whole pile of LP's (about 2,000). Anything played with either of the Airys (or now the UNIverse) has a yellow sticky note on the jacket with VTA setting(s). If I'm audited I can always show which cartridges have played any particular record since we got the TriPlanar!

Our collection is 95% classical. I have a very few decent jazz LP's and a handful of rock, pop, folk, etc. If you visit my house and want real party music, you should probably bring some of your own! Mine would be exhausted in an hour or two.

On the classical side, we played nearly every sub-genre I know of: ancient vocal and instrumental music, solo instruments, vocalists with accompaniment, chamber works, small and large orchestras both modern and "authentic", organ, opera, choral, avante garde 20th C. You name it.

If there's any particular recording or genre you want to know about please ask. If I have the record I'd be happy to describe what we hear, or don't hear. This might be one way to compare our systems at a distance, more or less.

Obviously our analog front end is "better than" our electronics. We know that. We're actually about to upgrade the electronics, though we won't be done for many months. You might not enjoy our choice of equalizers, but we demoed them in our system and we do! :-)

We'd love for you to post reviews or start a thread describing any parts of your system. I have a hunch we'd all learn or learn about a great deal.

Regards,
Doug

Now this is what I consider constructive dialogue. Glad to see you guys getting along.

Sirspeedy,

I did a little research and found that the damping force is linearly proportional to the viscosity of the fluid and to the square of the area of the damper. That certainly supports your observations. All I was pondering was a way to adjust damping that was less sensitive than what we’re living with now.

Regards,

Scott