@maxson Don't worry about it. It's my thread and it can go anywhere it wants.
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 To be fair to Dr West, he had to conjure up a way to make the speaker work with a variety of amps and rooms. I think for most people his solution is a reasonable compromise. Most people are not like you and me. They think we are crazy ripping apart $40K loudspeakers as if we know better than the designer:-) |
$40K!!!! Is that what my speakers cost now? I agree with you, almost. I think Dr West had to conjure up a way to make his big panels with relatively wide spacing between stators and diaphragm (thus permitting better reproduction of low bass but also decreasing efficiency) work. So he had to use the bass transformer with its very high turns ratio (by hearsay only it is 1:250) and high bias voltages (before you bought yours, I think, they were having problems with leakage of the stator insulation due to the high bias voltages; my M1s died from that malady and SL gave me a good deal therefore on the 845PXs) in order to move the diaphragm at low frequencies, but that wasn’t a good idea for mids and treble, so he added the separate treble transformer. And that necessitated a passive crossover (for those who would not bi-amplify), and that produced the problematic impedance curve for tube amplifiers. It isn’t inappropriate to drive the stock speaker with a solid state amplifier, IMO. The only thing I never understood is why they chose such a low value for R (depending upon the date of manufacture, anywhere from 5 to 8 ohms based on informally acquired data) in the RC network that comprises the high pass filter. If they used a higher value resistor (e.g., 10 or even 20 ohms) that more nearly at least matched the inherent Z of the panel at mid-frequencies, much of the problem with tube amplification could have been ameliorated. |
@mijostyn "Now, what you are talking about is a co-axial point source which has absolutely no advantage over non co-axial point source speakers that are spaced closely together until you are a foot from the loudspeaker." I beg to differ. Where did the foot come from? Whenever two separated sources play the same frequency (eg in cross-over regions) there is reinforcement and cancellation interference, as explained and animated here Discover the Surprising Flaw in Center Channel Speakers (youtube.com). "In doing the variable diameter point source Quad was trying to improve dispersion characteristics at high frequencies" The diameter does not vary - it is fixed by the speed of sound as it radiates from a virtual point. Mind you, the stators are only static in the mechanical sense. Electrically they carry the varying signal. The moving membrane confusingly carries a static electrical charge. I think one of the problems Quad tried to address was the cancellation and reinforcement interference experienced from different parts of a large panel. They deliberately reduced the high frequency dispersion pattern, in ways I do not understand but probably in the delay circuitry. "My assessment of modern Quads is there are dynamic speakers that outperform them in many ways resulting in a better listening experience particularly at levels above 85 dB" Agreed. I prefer my KEF Reference 1 at high levels. These look like a two way speaker, but have two concentric drivers handling mid and upper frequencies. Modern recordings seem to have more high-level transients, which trip the Quad protection circuits! |
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