Why will no other turntable beat the EMT 927?

Dear Kmccarty,
yes,I did it exactely this way, soldered the resistors and tested, took them out and changed resistors. Following more or less the formula I ended up for instance for the Goldfinger v2 in the Cobra arm (coupled by XLR) with a 850 ohm Vishay resistor. This seems to be a perfect match for the Boulder.
If you have many personality cards you can easily start a try out approach, going around the formula prescriptions.
in this case soldering is really the way to go. Which carts are you running? Maybe I am able to give some hints from my tests. Good luck!

Dkarmeli,
i respect very much your position on analogue vs. digital - and yes here we may have different experiences, especially when it comes to a dCS chain with a perfect clocking system and the DAC set to master function. Regarding the system's capabilities you're writing that every component has an impact on each other. Very true! In a complex system like mine it is a challenge you have to deal with.
I assume you know very well that the power supply for a dedicated listening room needs to be tackled very carefully. I therefore not only built up a complete separate current system for my listening room (with a remote fuse block) but also divided my system's power supplies by three diffferent big lines. The digital system runs to one, the amplification to another one and all other front end units like anlogue to the third one. These lines run in encapsulated pipe tunnels inside of the concrete ceiling from the fuse block in another room to the specific three outlet positions for the system. all distributions within one line will never interact with those of the other lines.

Regarding room tuning I avoided using any fixed installations other than a high record board on the one long side and a high CD board on the other long side. the rear wall is covered by a high book shelf. This way reflections are managed and deleted in a very natural way. You see no glass surfaces in this room other than a skylight area at the rear side, and a small window at the right long side's front which can be covered by an automatic curtain.

Controlling the first reflections in front of the system a special suspended wooden ceiling with a complex internal structure not allowing building up running waves is mounted. Also frequency related dispensers are used at the front ceiling. These are used on the bases of measurements taken and carefully placed. That's all. I think not so different to your overall philosophy.

Regarding the clocking system of the dCS chain comprising the dCS clock as well as the Rubidium clock this is not tweaking how you call it. I look at it as the technicians at dCS do as well as an optimizing approach to a nearly jitter free transportation of the digital signal. Of course I agree it may sound from my description like I am doing a big experiment on certain units of this chain which obviously is the case somehow. btw. i do this in analogue chains with its many variables as well. i am just curious finding out the interaction of parts of a system trying isolating the weak points/parts.

From your understanding of the digital medium I get the impression you will not enter this arena at all which is in line with your philosophy. Nothing wrong about this. From my point of view it is worth engaging with CDs and SACDs.

Thuchan,

Thanks for the detailed description of the room, very impressive! Power is a bitch in the cities. Many fine systems become unlistenable during the summer and now days since the last major brown out a few years ago in NY, the sound has never quite returned to what it used to be. Even a dedicated power system similar to yours doesn't improve things much in Manhattan, and to make matters worse we're 120v here. We moved to Utah about 1.5 years ago and fortunately we do have good power here. I haven't built the room yet but installed a separate mains transformer for the system and each component is on a separate line with its own dedicated breaker. Just started putting the systems back together so a long way to go.

I'm not at all anti-digital it's the medium of our times and I spend a good amount of time listing to it. Even if its not something that I love I have spent a lot of time and money figuring things out, there;s no turning back from it. I'm not a dCS or Burmeister fan. I don't mind dCS's top DACs but I find their up-sampling games and external clock gimmicky and degrading. The 2nd tier DACs aren't anything to get excited about imo. Further I find their transport is sheiße,

Back to the thread and your justified comment; “Regarding the Fidelity Research 66s I think we have two groups of Audiophiles. Those who know this arm pretty well, who are owning the matching table and wo did build it up perfectly and some others – they might outnumber the first group”

Just so that we're clear;

http://www.pbase.com/ddk/image/152083798

Not set up yet but I have spent many ours listening to the combination.

This is probably my last post here, but I would love to hear more on your speakers and exchange experiences.

rgds, david karmeli

Dear Thuchan, I am using both the Benz LPS and Benz LP into the Boulder 2008. I have settled at 500 ohms, but I haven't experimented much around this value.

Dkarmeli,
I am sure you are succesfully building up your room. This is a wonderful stage in the life of an audio guy. Maybe it will never end - with the right instruments you already have, so many similarities that I really cannot understand what happened to you on the digital side. But that's another story. The Scarlatti Transport is not really Scheisse, maybe you are pointing to the former Verdi Philipps drives. I see you know already the most important words in this language. When my wife learned German some 30 years ago she started with all these expressions as she got told its a kind of survival kit.

I agree the dCS stack is not easy boosting up to its optimum. I think many users out there don't know all about the capabilities of these machines. its quite a versatile system and it needs to be configured carefully, especially when you are using a masterclock (which you should!), also adding dither and on top maybe a rubidium clock in combination. The result then has nothing to do with a one box digital machine also not with the Meitners.
You feel very much having fallen onto the analog planet. btw nothing else could satisfy me as an analog afficionado.

I see you are preparing your FR-66s developing its virtues and blossoming to full scale. This is the job to do on the blue micro which also can be tuned ! I think I will write something about the speakers in the next time and let you know. Currently I am dealing with Neumann devices.

I hope its not your last post here as you have shown profound knowledge in the thread's topic and I enjoyed it very much exchanging ideas and critical remarks with you and others.