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.
@mijostyn The HD - 3P is not a Super Tweeter in the usual description. To me from my experiences had of a large range of Cabinet Speakers that can be models that extend toward the £20K+ purchase area and a handful of £40Kish Speakers. The HD-3P used in the way I am quite familiar with is a Tweeter that produces Mid - Upper Frequency that is extremely attractive and wanted to be readily available to experience. That is more than enough for my needs. |
Here they give the specs for the DH-3P, showing a frequency response pretty flat between 4500 and down -6db at 37kHz. Drops off pretty fast below 4500Hz. For me, the term "midrange" makes me think 500 to 2000Hz. But the definition is plastic. |
@richardbrand Sorry if you got that impression, but this is pretty basic stuff. The book is really good and would make a good read for any one who wants to discuss speaker design. You bring up useful issues, but they all have boundaries. You can use multiple drivers without comb filtering as long as they are not too far apart. As an example all really great dynamic speakers rely on one tweeter and that is usually the limit on output capability. The reason is that you can not get any good high power tweeter close enough to a neighbor to function as one driver. The motor is too big. This is not the case for midrange drivers and woofers resulting in designs like and extensions of the D'Appolito Array. Even though the midrange drivers are separated by the tweeter they are still close enough to each other to function as one driver acoustically as long as you do not set the crossover too high. My 4 subwoofers have four feet between them. The cross at 100 Hz the wavelength being about 10 feet. Since they are closer than 1/2 the wavelength they function acoustically as one driver and there is no interference between them, also because the line of subwoofers ends at fixed barriers, the side walls, they are functioning as a line source dove to 1 Hz which has further advantages in terms of room interaction. Not to mention it is a gas to hear eight 12" drivers powered by a total of 10,000 watts put out those low synthesizer notes you hear in modern electronic music. It's like twisting the throttle of your Thruxton wide open and shooting off towards the horizon, front wheel in the air. Some people never grow up. |
@richardbrand What is a pseudo line source? Do you have stadium concerts down under? If you go to one you can hear midrange/bass line sources. The sound is usually awful. I do not bother any more. The problem with most "line source" speakers is that the line source behavior is limited to certain frequencies depending on the design of the speaker. Very few people have a line source system capable of maintaining that behavior below 200 Hz. This is the big reason these speakers tend to lack really punching bass. Point source speakers lose acoustic power by the cube of the distance away from the speaker, but line sources only at the square of the distance. As you move away from the speaker bass frequencies fall off much faster leaving an anemic sound. Full range line source systems have advantages. The sound stage you get is right up from within the first 10 rows. Point source systems are back in the 25th row. Bass and percussion are much more life like in terms of power and dynamics. The problem for most people is the size of the system, it owns the room. You do not need a distributor. Sound Labs will ship anywhere in the world that allows it. God knows what the duties are like down there. The Aussies make some great equipment. My DEQX preamp is Australian. There are many speaker manufacturers. Nobody makes ESLs? I have zapped myself on numerous occasions usually from forgetting to ground out the diaphragm before working on the speaker. That is a bigger zap than what you get from the bias supply directly. It is not capable of much current. The stators are referenced to ground, they discharge immediately when the music stops. |
