Tranfiguration Orpheus description

Before entering THIS fray, I'll get out my Trio and Sonic Fireworks Albums and listen to them with my lowly Temper W for the qualities Doug describes. In the meantime, and apropos of Doug's stratospheric hearing specs, I ran across this site from the University of New South Wales. All you need is a decent pair of headphones and sound card to test your own amazing hearing ;--):

http://www.phys.unsw.edu.au/~jw/hearing.html

Anyway, I'll listen to both albums as I stare hypnotically at a printout of Doug's comments, and compare my findings with his. Gosh, what if my W turns out to be better than Andrew's O!

This all puts me in mind of the composer Max Reger's reaction to a negative review­­: "I am sitting in the smallest room in my house. I have your review in front of me. Soon it will be behind me."

Hey,in defense of Doug(really),I believe he and the others heard what was stated.My only bone of contention was there was no assumption of possibly getting better performance with a different set of parameters(forget breakin,eighty hrs is fine).It seemed the "wholey incomplete" results stemmed from the desire to "want" a given result.Do you actually believe anyone would not lend creedence to the possibility of varying set-up(s),vying for ownership of a five thousand dollar product.
When I was so over the top last week,about the "O",I specifically stated there had to be equal to,or better designs.Too much competition.
Are we alone in the universe,just because we have no proof,of other life?Are we the smartest life force,in existence?I assume not!
I actually "deeply" respect Doug/Paul,and actually like these enthusiastic guys,alot!If only you could not have been so wooden,and assumed "more could probably be had"(here,assuming is not a real stretch),with this sort of financial investment.
It's great to love one's stuff,but,sorry,the dice seemed loaded before the shootout!And the results seemed,almost,celebrated.Do you have any real criticism of any components you own,is something all of us should ask ourselves!Alot of guys have really good systems.
Best,and I mean only to instigate good debate.
Mark

All,

Just got back from a business trip an caught up on these posts. I beleive Doug's comments echo my own to a large degree. As I said in my post, the Uni defintely sounded better than the O. I think Doug captured the differences well. The most remarkable difference to me was the Uni was very open, clear and dynamic. The O sounded somewhat opaque and flat. As far as the bass goes, I heard a difference but honestly don't have the experience with these tracks that Doug and Paul have; nor did we have time to really go back and forth.

Hopefully the O improves radically with break-in!

Andrew

Andrew,

Thank you for being an upstanding guy. I never doubted what we all heard, though I'm beginning to wonder why we bothered sharing it. You get my vote for honest audiophile of the year.

Like you, I hope the O will open up a lot more. IMO this is likely precisely because it couldn't yet track that warp on 'Trio'. A 9g/13cu cartridge on a TriPlanar should track that, so odds are it will improve a lot. Our Shelter 901 and Airy 3 each needed 200+ hours, so keep spinning.

A repeat visit (in either direction) after a few more months would be good fun.

A wee nip o' the Lagavulin to you,
Doug

Well, it is not a “Fray”.
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What we have here is a failure to communicate.
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Doug was foolish enough to listen to me when we talked before he posted his notes here when I said, “you should go ahead and write what you heard and observed. It is the right thing to do. People will benefit from your (and Paul’s) honest and astute observations. “ Don’t worry about those who will think you are prejudiced towards the UNIverse”.
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Reality is: Doug was not going to write his observations because he assumed that he would get flamed for judging the “O” unfairly because of the perception that he is blinded by his passion for the UNIverse. Doug does prefer the Universe to any other cartridge he has heard to date (except the Lyra Olympus), can hear, has an extremely resolving system, is honest, can defend himself without any of my help, is always trying to help others along the way towards Audio Nirvana, and does not deserve to have the insinuations that he is anything but honest and non biased.
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We all know that this was not a perfect comparison of the “O” and the Universe and Doug stated as much. The “O” was not nearly broken in and there was limited time to do set ups and comparisons. I am sure that Doug would want the UNIverse to be better than the “O” since he has invested in the UNIverse and just as likely, for the same reasons Andrew would have loved for the “O” to outshine the Universe. But, here you have Doug and Andrew trying to share their experiences for the benefit of all and we have the cynics out in force casting stones.
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Given the circumstances, we all received some honest and insightful observations from Doug and Andrew that have some value. Could there be more clarity if repeated with a fully broken in “O” again with some tinkering with set ups and loading ? Sure, and it may happen someday if Andrew is has another business trip sometime in the future and has the time and inclination.
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Sirspeedy, I think you owe Doug an apology for:

“It's great to love one's stuff, but, sorry, the dice seemed loaded before the shootout! “ and “If only you could not have been so wooden, and assumed "more could probably be had".
. Doug put a lot of effort into hosting and then sharing his honest opinions and deserves better than your snide comments. Once again…..think before you write/post. You might, as I have suggested twice before to you to compose off line, read it again and ask yourself; Do I really want to post this ?
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There was a lot of time invested in doing the comparisons and writing up their observations. How willing do you think Doug, Andrew or others will be in the future to share this type of experience with all of us if they can always count on getting flamed for posting what they observed? If you have not compared both an “O” and a UNIverse in your system and don’t have the opportunity to do so, how about being grateful to a couple of guys who went out of their way to share with us.
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If Andrew and Doug do another comparison sometime, I hope they will still think it is worth sharing their experience with us again.
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Thanks, Doug / Thanks, Andrew
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Rgds,
Larry
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