Tranfiguration Orpheus description

Well, it is not a “Fray”.
.
What we have here is a failure to communicate.
.
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”.
.
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.
.
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.
.
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.
.
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 ?
.
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.
.
If Andrew and Doug do another comparison sometime, I hope they will still think it is worth sharing their experience with us again.
.
Thanks, Doug / Thanks, Andrew
.
Rgds,
Larry
.

Well said, Larry. Well said.

I picked up on the undercurrent several days ago and it became somewhat obvious why Doug was hesitating to post. I've been struggling with how to respond but I'm glad I didn't because I could not have said it better than what Andrew and Larry have.

The day I feel that I'm not getting Doug and Paul's honest opinions will be the last day I ever ask them for their input. And that goes for anyone else in this crazy hobby.

Best to all,

Dan

Dear Andrew/Doug: Interesting cartridges test but a little useless.

It is obvious that Andrew and Doug have a different music perception top to bottom frequency range and especially in the mid and low bass. I'm not sure who is nearest to the music but maybe could be because one of them hear more often live music or maybe because Andrew system goes really deep in the bass and he can perceive things that Doug can't in its system ( the Andrew brain is already equalized to his system and in a way its brain treat to synthesize about ).

Both systems can't be more different: a wood TT against all metal one, speakers/room, phonolinepreamp, amplifier and cables, add to all these that Andrew don't bring with him the LP's that he knows better.

The other subject is that the set up of the U was executed exactly to the Doug music sound priorities ( and that Doug's brain is perfectly equalized with the U characteristics ) at a very high level of critic ( that VTA madness in each LP !!! ). I can't be sure which one will be the results if the O " suffer " the same high level on the set up.

Other subject is that the U is very happy with the Triplanar and we don't know if this tonearm is the best O match.

Now, how many hours they take on the tests? and how they make those tests?. For any cartridges comparison we need a procedure to follow for that comparison could be useful.

There are, at least, two things that disturb me: first is that the O can't track the Trio LP and the second is that the sound at 47K was a very lesser one.
The former could be that the O suspension it is not settle down or that that O is out of specs ( we can't know it at this time because we don't have any info about how many hours needs the O. Andrew please ask to the manufacturer. Maybe the O needs 300 hours, who knows. Btw, my Colibri needs 300 hours and after that Dr. Van denHul makes the last adjustment. ), the 47K could be a problem with the Doug phonolinepreamp because in the Andrew one everything is right ( at least at 447K ).

I think that with all these variables ( and others ) we can't have a fair opinion about the O. Some people in the thread, especially Mark give us some opinions about the O that from my point of view were irresponsible taking in count who is Mark.

I had the opportunity to heard the V/W and none has the characteristics that Doug mentioned and I don't think that the O design/build put up for sale its new flag-ship model that is inferior in its quality sound reproduction than the lower models, I assume that they make a extended voicing about.

I think that before we make a false assumption ( like Mark ) about the O we have to wait a little more time where we could have more O owners experiences, of course that always exist the possibility that the O designer/builder made a mistake with the O.

Regards and enjoy the music.
Raul.

Wow what an argument!
I don't have the "U" to compare in my system either. Reason is simple -- it is the US distributor that had given "fund" to the producer to produce this particular cartridge. So it is in that sense.."exclusive". Without this "U" in my system posed me a lot of questions then, is kind of this cartridge better than those cartridges which I owned before? How much better, if it is, comparing to those like Dynavector XV-1S, Koetsu Coral, RSP, Lyra Titani,Ikeda, Miyabi, Maicro Magic, Presence Audio Reference, Aventurion6,Van den Hul Colibri etc...?
Within this small little casing, the improvement on the material used, placement, design etc. and coming to this age, how much more improvement can we have? Are we talking about vest differences?
From the way "O" was described, it could not even stand up to the level of its own sibling..the TemperV, I sigh....
If the phonostage which is currently owned by Doug is that good to discern the level of performance of these top cartridges to that slight differentiation, than I urge it to be exlusively produced and made available to that small little crazy group of people like us.
I read the post from SirSpeedy sharing his enjoyment and enthusiasm like those that I could usually derive from normal friends of mine without any business agenda. No apology please from SirSpeedy.

I've exchanged emails with Doug but never met him. Based on the emails and the consistency of his posts, I believe there are no reasons to question his veracity and/or integrity. In some cases I do not agree with his points of view however there is no doubt they are honest and heartfelt.

That being said, the "dice were loaded before the shootout" assertion was both a cheap shot and disingenuous. In any head to head match up of components will there rarely exist a 50/50 split preference. In most, but not all, one component is generally preferred. Again and no offense to the Tranny owners, the UNIverse simply may be a better product. I import a cartridge line from England but I've yet to hear anything better than the UNIverse. I wish my product was as good.