Denon DL-103 -- Was it a mistake?

Regarding loading the DL-103, my experience tells me it needs to be higher
than 100 ohms. The matching Denon SUTs load it at 470 ohms (at least my
AU-320 does). I now have an Aesthetix Rhea that permits on-the-fly loading
changes via the remote (yeah, the ultimate couch potato phonostage) and it
sounds best to me at 500 ohms. Too "scrawny" at 100 ohms, IME.

I agree... to a point... Dopogue

I tried several loadings with the DL-103 in my system - I still couldn't get it to sound "right" though, especially in the midrange. I did, however, find the best match at 500 ohms, as well.

My current Dynavector 20XL (microline edition) is so much more musical than the DL-103 was. I'd take the 10X5 or, as Jwglista did, the Ortofon 2m carts, over the DL-103 any day.

One thing that did impress the hell out of me was the Denon's ability to track inner grooves with it's conical stylus. It's the only conical I've ever heard that can do it convincingly and inner-groove-distortion is a pet-peave of mine. It tracked the inner groove almost as well as my 20XL, which is impressive.

03-10-09: Viridian
Second, the 640P was a bad match with the 103 in my system. The brightness at the top of the Denon's midrange not matching well with the upper midrange brightness of the 640P.

Boy, I'll second that. I had a persistent low level midrange glare in my rig that I'd learned to live with, figuring it was the combination of a Technics DD turntable, the AT150MLX, or both.

Then I decided to plug the turntable's interconnects directly into the phono stage in my Onkyo integrated amp and the glare disappeared. In its place was a new wealth of low level detail translating into lushness, warmth, the bloom and decay of notes, both within the instruments and in the venues in which they were recorded.

I don't think the 640P is up to the task. It may take a better phono stage plus a step-up device optimized for the DL-103 to bring out the Denon's best.

This Denon AU-300 LC MC may not be the last word in stepup devices, but it's a match for the DL-103, and it has Denon's economy of scale going for it. You still need a phono stage, but only an MM one.

If you are handy with a soldering iron, it's not difficult to add some resistance to a non-adjustable phono input when dealing with MC cartridges. The easiest way is to get a 2 RCA female -> 1 RCA male adapter, and plug that in at your phono input.

Then add resistance with an RCA male plug and resistors in parallel with your load (across + and - on the RCA plug). It's a fairly simple soldering operation. Ideally you would create a few "loading RCA's" so you can swap out resistance to define your needs and determine if, indeed, there is a problem that points to improper loading.

Plug the loading RCAs into one Female input, plug your arm leads into the other. db Systems used to sell a kit of a dozen or so RCAs set up like this with resistance (for MC) and capacitance (for MM).

It might be helpful to check out this url, although it's geared to the specific transformer, which affects the choice of resistor for a given desired loading when using a transformer.

http://www.kandkaudio.com/mccartsetup.html

Vinyl Addict, i had a 2M Black with a Rega RB700 and I currently have a Zu 103R/Wood body 103R on a Thomas Schick tonearm. i'll take the latter. the 2m cartridge is great but did not present the music with the realistic palpability and sonic density as the latter combos. PRaT was the same. Additionally, I tend to think the Dynavector cartridges were better in PRaT than these two Denons but that could be a fallacy encouraged by the Dynas lighter presentation. The sound density of the Dynas is lacking compared to the Ortofons and Denons.

What tonearm did you use? As stated by many others, I think this is a crucial issue.