No. 26 - MM or MC board?

Dear John: Glad to read that you usually hear live music. Many people on this forum don't.
I own the 103, 103D and 103 R. No one is for my musical tastes, there are not very accurate cartridges.
BTW, I really like the MM too, they are , like you say, musical: I own 7 to 8 MM cartridges and 15 to 16 MC cartridges. No one of my MC cartridges are: bright, thin or analytical.
I like the " natural " sound of the MM. The people does not like it because after hear a decent MC cartridge you can think that the MM cartridge is a litle on the dark side, but this is not true if you knows about real music.

I'm not in favor of either cartridge type, in the right company both types sounds great.

*** " I attend concerts, both classical and others - I don't do so in order to "readjust my hearing" and keep a "standard", I only go to concerts I am actually interested in listening to. " *****

Here is a difference between you an me, because: I go to concerts, all the concerts I can. It does not matters if those concerts are interesting or not.

Regards and enjoy the music.
Raul.

Fernando: My post was for you can have help for anyone in this forum.
BTW, you don't answer something very important and critical: what are your graded musical priorities ?

Regards and enjoy the music.
Raul.

Hi Fernando. If you click on "Kontact", and click on "So finden Sie uns" in the menu whcih shows up, a page will come up with this address: voice@hifi-im-hinterhof.de. Click on this and the usual email page pops up. Write your request for information on the transformer they sell for the Denon DL103 (and explain you have an "R" version), since they (or some) definitely do speak English, very friendly and philosophical fellows. If this fails, then I'll contact my girlfriend so she can help us out.

Hi again Raul, glad to know you like MMs as well, have to continue to disagree with you on the subject of the Denon however, since accuracy should take a back-seat to musicality anyway. But to my ear, these are very tonally and rhythmically accurate MC cartridges (admittedly the imaging is not laser-etched), and their beguiling sound can only be described as poetic. My favourite MC to date. I will soon be sending a Kiseki Purpleheart Sapphire cartridge I have for a rebuild (I love vintage stuff), a beautiful cartridge, but not as compelling as the Denon. Serious money I save for trips to perfumed gardens in Asia Minor to hear Mesopotamian beauties with incredible voices sing under the stars accompanied by zithers, not for megabuck equipment. We all have our priorities.

Regards, and continue to enjoy the music!

Interesting findings !

I listend for about an hour the "new" setup (withthe step-up in the chain and settings above mentioned). It delivered a quite different presentation compared with my previous Michael Yee Phono Stage (that handled MC with no problems).

Here I listen the same sonic presentation of the Denon (tonal palette, liquidity, etc..), but also a bit less of resolution and impact that I think belongs to either the cartridge itself or that there is an extra fine-tuning that should be performed (twl-HELP).

John: I will re-visit the page with your instructions, will let you know.

Raul: I like music to wash-me-out, I like to listen to musicaqnd forget of the gear at all, to talk about the artisits and composers while listening to music instead of bashing the sound, and yes.. I hear almost al kind of music.

Thanks all for sharing your knowledge, I am moving faster.

Fernando

BTW: DO you like the Krell MC cartridge?, I have an interesting offer to buy a just-retipped unit.

Fernando: Don't do more mistakes. Stay away from step up transforme, this stage is a heavy degradation for the fragil signal that comes from the cartridge. It does not matters if is a " dedicated " one.

Think on this: when you use a step up transformer you need additional conectors and cables that do a degradation to the signal but not only this, when the signal goes inside the SUT has to pass for several wire metres on the transformers that do an additional degradation to the signal and other kind of degradations due to inherents problems in any SUT.

I already told you: what do you want? what are your graded musical priorities for analog sound reproduction ?

Till you answer these questions you will be inside of that " dark search " and you can't be satisfied ever. I think, that you have to build ( like anyone else ) you audio system with a foundation in those questions. If not, it is probable that you will waist to many time and a lot of money for nothing.

Regards and enjoy the music.
Raul.