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.
"I bought the Shure V15-4 body and a new Jico SAS with the boron cantilever. I love it! ... It is also better than my Audio Technica VM540 MM cartridge." I missed your post in the off-topic noise (I plead guilty). I have a Shure V15 type III and am just getting back into vinyl. Was about to buy the Jico SAS / boron stylus, but could get the AT cartridge complete at the same price. My Shure has the hyper-elliptic stylus. Can you please describe the differences you are hearing? |
"Like I said, in my opinion Quad 57s are best if you remove the complex electronics that Walker implements in order to make the panel act like a point source. Then a stacked pair (or triplet) can act like a line source. Hearing is believing." The ESL-57 was never designed to emulate a point source. That innovation first came with the ESL-63 released about 25 years later. I know of no other speaker family that uses annular electrode elements and time delays. Time delays are implemented with about 12 miles of wire between elements. It would be much easier to do today with digital signal processing but you would need an amplifier channel for every ring, that is eight per speaker! The original ESL most closely resembles a line source, albeit lined sideways not vertically. The slight vertical curve suggests vertical stacking as in a modern stadium PA system |
"Dipole subs do not work well, I have built and tested them. No matter how heavy you make them they shake and the cancellation effects along with room modes create wild frequency response aberrations." Plenty of speakers use dynamic drivers mounted back to back, usually with their cages rigidly fixed together. Newton's Law of action and reaction ensure that dynamic forces exactly cancel. One example is the sideways facing woofers in KEF's Blade, which is designed to act as a point source, but unfortunately is out of my price range! |
There is dipolar and there is bipolar. The difference is important. In one case, where we are talking about two subwoofers mounted into opposite sides of a cabinet, the rear or opposite side firing woofer will cancel cabinet movement that might have been induced by a single subwoofer. In the other case, the cabinet will wobble because the two subwoofers are taking turns rocking it back and forth, because they are 180 degrees out of phase. I always forget the semantic distinction, but I'll stick my neck out. In a dipolar subwoofer, the two woofers are out of phase with each other, which is undesirable also because it results in phase cancellation. In a bipolar subwoofer, the two woofers are in phase. In that case, the motion of the two drivers on opposite sides of the cabinet cancel each other out, and there is also no phase cancellation. So bipolar subwoofer good. Dipolar subwoofer not so good. |
@bdp24 Roger was a smart guy. 100 Hz is right. The only problem was he only had analog filters to use and 24 dB/oct or 4th order was the steepest he could go without penalty but it is too slow and you will get subwoofer coming through in the midrange. At 100 Hz the slowest filter you can use is 8th order or 48 dB/oct and you can only do that cleanly in the digital realm. I have been using dipole speakers of one sort or another exclusively since 1978. I have been using subwoofers since 1978 and not able to find a satisfactory commercial subwoofer I started building my own somewhere around 1990. You might want to look at the link below. Just so we get this straight. Dipole subwoofers will make bass, real crappy bass. The problem for most people is that bass is difficult to evaluate especially by ear because a lot of it you do not hear, you feel it. After decades of measuring subwoofers I know what low bass should sound and feel like. You would too if you had been studying the problem for 30 some odd years. @richardbrand First of all what you are talking about is not a dipole, but a bipole and in that regard you are speaking to the choir. You might take a look here https://imgur.com/gallery/building-resonance-free-subwoofers-dOTF3cS I happen to think the KEF Blade is a fine sounding loudspeaker, just odd looking. @lewm The problem with stacking 57s is an 8 foot Sound Labs. You get a full range line source that is indestructible with a much better dispersion pattern. If I were operating on a shoe string I would look for a pair of used Acoustat 2+2s or even better 3+3s. @rauliruegas I was wondering when you were going to turn up. I think inferior is a little too strong, but of all the cartridges that were available I'm sure there were better. Before MC my last high output cartridges were B+Os before that were Stantons and Pickerings. I'd have to go way back to trip over a V15. Call it nostalgia or just the desire to fart around. Back then my system was not remotely near what it is today. So, it is fun to hear what we were listening to back then. Now, What cartridge is mounted in your turntable at this moment?? |
