We go out to hear live jazz at least once, twice per month, almost always in small jazz clubs listening to quartets or quintets. In those situations, I often try closing my eyes in order to appreciate what "imaging" is like in real life. Even in such venues, it is sometimes difficult to locate the instruments in space with eyes closed, except for drums typically. One reason for this is the use of auxiliary amplification for individual instruments. Anyway, I don't worry about it. What blows me away about live music is its inherent dynamics.
The Shure V15 V with a Jico SAS/B stylus VS The Soundsmith Hyperion MR and Lyra Atlas SL
On a sentimental lark I purchased two Shure V15 V bodies and one SAS/B stylus. I was always a realistic about the Shure's potential. Was comparing it to $10k+ cartridges fair? Absolutely. The Shure was considered to be one of the best cartridges of the day. Why not compare it to a few of the best we have today?
The Shure has always been considered to be unfailingly neutral. Famous recording engineers have said it sounded most like their master tapes. I do not have an original stylus for the Shure and I can not say that the Jico performs as well.
My initial evaluation was quite positive. It worked wonderfully well in the Shroder CB. With a light mounting plate and small counterbalance weight a resonance point of 8 hz was easily achieved. There was nothing blatantly wrong with the sound. There was no mistracking at 1.2 grams. You can see pictures of all these styluses here https://imgur.com/gallery/stylus-photomicrographs-51n5VF9
After listening to a bunch of favorite evaluation records my impression was that the Shure sounded on the thin side, lacking in the utmost dynamic impact with just a touch of harshness. I listened to the Shure only for four weeks as my MC phono stage had taken a trip back to the factory. I was using the MM phono stage in the DEQX Pre 8, designed by Dynavector. I have used it with a step up transformer and know it performs well. I got my MC stage back last week and cycled through my other cartridges then back to the Shure. The Soundsmith and Lyra are much more alike than different. I could easily not be able to tell which one was playing. The Lyra is the slightest touch darker. The Shure is a great value....for $480 in today's money, but it can not hold a candle to the other cartridges. They are more dynamic, smoother and quieter. They are more like my high resolution digital files. Whether or not they are $10,000 better is a personal issue. Did the DEQX's phono stage contribute to this lopsided result? Only to a small degree if any. I do have two Shure bodies and they both sound exactly the same. The Shure may have done better with a stock stylus. I do not think the age of the bodies contributes to this result at all.
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@lewm I think unamplified jazz and classical are the only genres which provide a live 'reference' against which recorded sound can be judged. My local concert hall is in the Sydney Opera House which has just undergone a 10-year A$300-million refurbishment. This included about A$100-million to fix the acoustics of the concert hall. I was at the first concert after it re-opened, and the change is quite remarkable. My partner lives in the suburb that hosted the Sydney Olympic Games so we sometimes go to outdoor concerts in the main stadium. Groups like Queen have awesome sound reinforcement systems, but many are very poor. Ironically the opera hall in the Opera House is undersized (it was switched during construction) so we sometimes go to amplified opera performed on a floating stage looking across the harbour. Crazy when you think about it! |
@lewm That is exactly why you need subwoofers. I have no problem replicating the dynamics of a live performance. I can actually overdue it. That is a problem with some small clubs, the PA can screw up location cues. The drums can be unamplified, easy to locate. I find if you can sit up close, inside or under the PA speakers, outside of their blast zone you get a much better image, King Size. If there are two shows every evening I will buy tickets for both shows. Between shows I always get moved up to the front. The best way to get a live example of imaging is an unamplified string quartet. Even large symphony orchestras will image in a good hall. @richardbrand you need to sit dead center, 10 row, Boston Symphony Hall and you will have a fine image. One of the coolest things about our systems is you can get amazing imaging with any genre. Being able to isolate each instrument highlights the musicianship of the individual musicians. |
@mijostyn Peter Walker of Quad used to do A / B demonstrations of his electrostatic loudspeakers, which were hidden behind a screen. Often B was a live string quartet. I am not talking about dynamics in what follows, but imaging! Not just imaging, but the pin-point imaging loved by reviewers but absent in my opinion from any un-amplified live music venue. The role reflections play is remarkable, both from the surfaces of the recording venue and of the listening space. I will always remember the utter strangeness of sound without echo. First time was in a big anechoic chamber (anechoic = no echo!). Totally disorientating. The second time was sitting on top of Iron Knob, an abandoned ore mountain looking over the Nullabor Plain (nullabor = no trees). The Nullabor Plain is possibly the world’s largest infinite baffle. The railway line goes straight for 297 miles. There’s nothing to reflect anything, except the ground. There were no birds, no rustling of the wind, just an occasional dust trail from a vehicle 50 miles away on its way to Perth. Absolute silence and equally disorientating. My conclusion is that a great deal of what we normally hear is reflection. I have not been to the Boston Symphony Hall, but agree that logically the ideal sweet spot has to be on the centre-line. But how far back, or even forward? One obvious singularity is where the conductor stands. Unfortunately, the conductor is almost always too close to the nearest instruments to hear the intended balance. Where else? Maybe where purist recording companies put their microphones (I am thinking Mercury)? Norwegian 2L recording engineer Morten Lindberg recognises that all recordings are an illusion. Why not put his multi-channel microphone tree where the conductor normally stands, but push the instruments back into a circle where they carry equal sonic weight from the conductor’s position? Works for me! My favourite 2L recording is probably Australian pianist Percy Grainger playing Grieg’s Piano Concerto, recorded way back in 1921. The piano was originally recorded as piano rolls and is replayed on a modern piano with a symphony orchestra recorded in immersive sound. In many other ways Percy Grainger was a century ahead of his time, but that is another story.
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