Does anyone have experience of these?
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Does anyone have experience of these?
After
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I'm presuming that you've seen this piece from TNT http://www.tnt-audio.com/accessories/mc_3xfr_e.html
I have no experience of these transformers but I do feel that there is probably a good reason why almost nobody makes such transformers using toroidal cores.
Yes, outstanding SUT, for me it bettered the highly acclaimed Hashimoto H7's.
Actually, they aren't the only ones making toroidal SUTs but it is much more difficult to put windings on a toroidal core than a simple bobbin as used in common EI laminated cores. The machines commonly used to wind toroidal mains transformers won't work with toroids as small as the ones usually used in MC step-up transformers. However, toroidal cores do have advantages. Just as toroidal mains transformers radiate less magnetic field than EI mains transformers, toroidal step-up transformers pick up less external magnetic fields.
No, I have no direct experience of the Tribute transformers but I have no reason to doubt their performance.
I have a set. Best I've tried by a country mile, and that includes Hashis, AN, Mayware, Klangfilm and Luxman.
Or for better still performance there are head amps such as the one's I make.... Check out review here http://theartofsound.net/forum/showt...156#post822156
I'm happy for arkless to chip in wth his opinion that head amps are better (and even his somewhat shameless plug. grin) as I'm intelligent enough to read up on as many opinions as possible - and of course I read the arkless review but without context (a shoot out) it's impossible to know how it would fair in my system against other contenders. The consensus is in favour of SUT but as all in things it's about system synergy.
Adey
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The Ortofon T-2000 is also a toroidal core SUT, wound with silver wire and originally released to go with the low output MC2000.
Here's a quote from the link in post #2
"In my experience, every active moving coil input stage degrades the sounds way too much. While it is possible to do active stages today, which have practically no detectable noise, it is the bass region and the bass quality where the problem lies. Active devices are drifting with temperature, operating point and under work, and if input signals are smaller than 1mV, the drift gets into the way of the music. Bass lines are muddy then and drum players seem to play like if they are drunk. So the music is lacking immediateness, and rather sounds hollow, uninvolving, uninteresting."
Convincing people like that that headamps are superior to SUTs is going to be a hard job. Of course, there's been a similar debate for years about valves and transistors, and things like distortion measurements don't seem to have any impact on the debate.
Anyway, to some people it will be true that SUTs are superior to active headamps. To others it won't be.
Personally, I think good examples of either technology can sound great. Bad examples of either technology don't.
I can assure you that the best head amps are easily as good as the best SUT's and in some cases better. As always in our hobby "Chinese whispers" are spread and "urban myths" abound, many of them completely untrue. There are very few head amps around for comparison to SUT's and many of those are not particularly high end. How many head amps have you tried before coming to the conclusion that SUT's are better? Or did you, as is usual in these cases, read it somewhere?
Absolute rubbish to the first highlighted bit.
The second I agree with. The thing that bothers on this is that, to follow on from my last post, "Chinese whispers" from people without the technical knowledge to hold an opinion one way or the other on which is theoretically better, are being propagated, without any comparison with top quality head amps (rare on the ground) and used to build a weight of incorrect opinion that SUT's are better, which is a falsehood.
I'm not claiming any huge superiority for head amps over SUT's, just that when done optimally they are at least as good.
Comparing 30 year old £60 head amps from ebay with £1000 SUT's is not exactly a fair comparison and yes one would expect the SUT to win here.
I have not done any sort of search as to what's available new today in the realms of head amps and the only "high end" head amps I personally know of (I'm sure others will enlighten me on this) are the one I make and an even more expensive one from Paul Haynes designs. I recall in a long phone call from Marco a fair while ago him saying that both mine and the Paul Haynes unit had convinced him that a good head amp can be a least as good as the best SUT's... and this was in comparison with the top of the range Ortofon ST80 at around £1400. Marco actually bought the Paul Haynes unit! (double the £750 which mine costs).
Alex, you are maybe in a relatively rare position of owning a high end head amp (an Arkless MkI) and having experience of top end SUT's. From memory, you said at the time that you bought the Arkless head amp that you compared it to the Hashimoto HM7's and had a big preference for the Arkless head amp...
I believe you have done further experimentation with head amps since... Maybe you could add your own experiences here as I am in an unfortunate position of course that, as a manufacturer, everyone will always take the "you would say that" view to anything I say!
I've had a play with some very nice kit in my system for someone relatively new to vinyl, transformers used were the Hashimoto H7's found in the Choir Audio SUT-H7 and the Tribute SUT. Active stages were the Denon HA-1000 and the Arkless Mk1.
I liked every single one of them and would've been happy to keep any of them. For me though the Arkless was the best for me in my system. It's an outstanding bit of kit and enables me to enjoy the music how I prefer it. It has bags of energy, drive and balls, the bass produced is phenomenal, deep, powerful and tuneful, it's also delicate with softer music and vocals sound so realistic.
For what its worth my research also led me to believe that an SUT was the way to go. When I first heard the H7's I was a very, very happy man. I had absolutely no belief that the Arkless head amp would sound better than what I was hearing with the Choir Audio in my system. I was wrong.
As far as I'm aware there aren't many new headamps around at all. There's the Graham Slee Elevator, the Lounge Audio Copla and of course the one I make, the Headspace. There's also an unbelievably cheap one from Little Bear. A google search for "headamp" turned up nothing but headphone amplifiers until my Headspace on page 4 of the search results.
Jez is absolutely correct that very few people have had the chance to compare directly headamps and SUTs (ie using SUTs and standalone headamps into the same MM phonostage) simply because there are so few headamps around, but many people have used mm/mc phonostages set to mc operation and also tried a SUT into the same phonostage set to mm. That does give some level of comparison but it's when a SUT and Phonostage A is compared to Phonostage B (set to mc) that comparisons start to become tenuous.
Just to add to the confusion some people will say that they have used their cartridge with a SUT and Phonostage A and compared it to Phonostage B and preferred one or the other - then point out that the cartridge load in one instance is (say) 400 ohms and in the other instance is 100 ohms, therefore the optimum load for that cartridge is 100 ohms. There are too many variables there to draw those types of conclusions imo.
:)
I just wish more people who make claims along the lines of "everyone knows SUT's are better than head amps" would have a think as to how they "know" this... (usually I'm sad to say this is "where they read it") and maybe seek out one of the (admittedly rare) high end head amps for comparison ;)
For the record, my own view is that:
1/ The very best head amps and SUT's are comparable... I'll admit a slight personal preference for the best head amps but we're talking Nth degree.
2/ When it comes to comparing mid priced or "less than the very best available" head amps and SUT's, the head amp will usually beat the SUT's.
3/ Head amps are vastly more flexible when it comes to cartridge matching etc. Just set the loading with the loading plugs (or small switches in some head amps) and that's it. New cart? Change the loading plugs or switch settings to suit. There's non of the fecking about with matching turns ratios etc....
4/ Head amps are also far less fussy in getting minimal mains hum than SUT's.
5/ SUT's win in terms of low noise. BUT... a good head amp will be quiet enough for it to be purely academic as the noise from the head amp will be much lower than the "vinyl roar" etc anyway. They do vary significantly in this parameter and in the case of some head amps which are less than optimal in this area, the noise can be a limitation in ultimate low level detail retrieval. With the best of head amps though this is just not an issue. I can make a head amp that is quiet enough and has enough gain for an Audio note Io for example, and due to the large turns ratio needed in a SUT for this job I would expect a clear win for the head amp here!
People are entitled to voice their opinion. Just as long as they dont force it on anyone.:)
Would agree both are equally good, just a little different. I've heard an earlier version of Jez's head amp, own Denon HA 500 & 1000 and also have a Firebottle built with Z foil resistors. I find head amps in general to have a slightly more up front sound, the best SUT's by comparison are a little more laid back by comparison.
well i'm certainly not that hopeless to argue with a manufacturer of head amps what is better: a SUT or a head amp.
:rolleyes:Quote:
4/ Head amps are also far less fussy in getting minimal mains hum than SUT's.
maybe you're right, if you stuck a SUT into mains...
My experience is with the Hagermann Piccolo head amp and S&B TX103 SUT feeding a valve phono stage. It's hard to pick a winner, it's more down to personal preference. The Piccolo to some will be a tad clinical and the SUT will be a fraction soft or alternatively some will find the Piccolo wonderfully open and transparent whereas others will find the SUTs flowing and musical. Aspects such as sound stage, bass, treble etc were really very similar. The Piccolo has the advantage of being easily configurable for gain and loading, it is however a little hissy at the highest gain setting.
I don't get why there has to be one approach which has to be seen as superior. As ever it's down to the design objectives and quality of implementation, in my opinion.
Come on lads... keep it friendly. :)
By and large yes. Which is why I've gone on a bit of a quest to quash the false assertion, sometimes propagated by those who don't know a resistor from an op amp, never mind their arse from their elbow, that "SUT's are definitely better than head amps and if you have a good MC cart and want the best from it only a SUT will do". This is simply wrong.
As an electronic engineer, a manufacturer and an audiophile, and not in any order, it really boils my piss to see certain things in this hobby of ours (not just this) become "accepted wisdom", when in fact completely WRONG and just because enough people, who sometimes don't even know what they are talking about, repeat the same falsehood, from often a flawed review in which a journalist has got it wrong.. sometimes other sources too...maybe even at a bake off a best in class type of product A was compared with 3 average examples of product type B and all declared on a forum that "products of the type A are always better than products of type B"..... This process of "Chinese whispers" grows what is sometimes a load of balderdash into being "the facts of the matter".... Usually if you try to get to the source of why something is apparently "a fact" it'll come down to "well I read it in Hi Fi Weekly... "... "several people on the xyz forum said so..." (probably cos one of them recalls reading it in that "hi fi weekly" article 3 years ago and written by a journalist who studied History at uni... or media studies:D)
This can unfortunately reach a point where the magnification effect of the Chinese whispers results in nobody believing it when they hear the real facts!! It gets to the point of "why should I believe you when I've read/heard the opposite in 30 other places".... Ask yourselves whether the 30 other people you've heard it from actually know what they are talking about or are they all in turn repeating what they've heard/read from an inaccurate source in the first place ;)
Edit: Here's some more guff for you lot :D Manufacturers and dealers can themselves be the source of techno-bollocks... for marketing reasons etc
"Lay people" in hi fi often believe that a 2 box solution is always better and a separate, bigger PSU is always better.. Now I went into a pretty full explanation of this a month or so ago so won't bother repeating it here but will instead give a true example of how things can go...
In a land far away some know as That London there was a hi fi company that we shall call Musical Fidelity who made an FM tuner to match their B1 integrated amplifier. Now after some time a MkII version came out at a higher price having apparently been "redesigned and improved" and part of this process and what one was paying for was a separate power supply.... The truth? The tuner board was bought in from a far east manufacturer and put in a MF box, you could buy the identical tuner under the Marantz brand name for half the price incidentally. In the Marantz application they had been wise enough to place supports under the mains transformer which was soldered directly to the PCB. MF hadn't done this and maybe half of the tuners they sent out were faulty on delivery due to the transformers weight fracturing the PCB in transit! The solution? De-solder the mains transformers and put them in a small plastic box with an umbilical cord to connect it to the main tuner! Yeah! Now MF weren't happy with this as it cost them a wee bit more to make and someone had to de-solder the transformers from the raw boards received from S. Korea... so they announced it was a redesigned and improved MkII with. amongst other things, a separate PSU for sound quality reasons.... The price was increased from about £270 to £380 (or £150 for the same tuner from Marantz :D) and the dealers and magazines duly reported how much better the MkII was.... Total bullshit! It was of course identical to the MkI and the transformer had been put in a separate box just to make sure they actually worked upon delivery!
This sort of thing goes on all the time folks... and if this model of tuner had risen to be one of the audiophile forums favourites, where "everybody knows" how good they are and that the MkII thrashes the MkI, how many would have believed me if I came along saying "it's bollocks. The Mk1 sounds the same but is less reliable blah blah etc etc"?.... If I hadn't been there and witnessed this whole process?
I have the Mk 1 tuner. Are you able to carry out the modifications to turn it into the improved Mk 2 tuner for me please Jez?
As someone with the rare experience of having tried high end head amps as well as high end SUT's I'm surprised The Great Leader hasn't opined his ha'porth as yet on the subject....
I like the example of musical fidelity and the tuner, but would argue that although their published reasons for doing it were dubious to say the least, there might have been a slight difference in performance by taking out the PSU, and hence positive reviews.
Without turning this (my original thread) into a sales pitch for arkless id like to ask what the quality of the components inside the box is, as I believe that there are sonic. differences between caps, resistors etc, id expect some 'boutique' components in there (nowt truly exotic, Elna cerafine for example) - if not would a unit with higher quality parts be available?
Adey
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Oops... sorry for hijacking your thread :) There's a thread documenting, with photos, the build of the last head amp I made here http://theartofsound.net/forum/showt...for-a-customer actually there a couple of Elna Cerafines in it! Good guess!
Very few of the components are ones directly in the signal path so it would be comparatively cheap to use Vishay bulk foils (about £12 each V 3P each for normal ones :eek:) and the only capacitor in the signal path is the output cap (Panasonic polypropylene used in this build) so not too expensive if one really wanted to fit boutique caps here. Most of the complexity etc is in the voltage regulation and power supply circuitry.
Don't worry you didn't hijack it.
Adey
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Weighing up options, researching, cogitating...
Adey
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Alex I'm quite curious as to the rest of your system when you made that comparison.
I've done it time and and time again, something repeated at intervals over many years, SUTS against both headamps and MC stages, compared using a whole raft of high-end cartridges from an Io2 to Koetsus to Miyajima to top end SPUs - and always the high-end SUTS always come out on top ... I've owned a few nice SUTs, not just the HM7s but Kondo-era AN-S6c, the internals in my current EAR 912, S&B TX103, Jorgen Schou for Ortofon SPU, quite a few others ... beating MC inputs and head amps alike essentially every time.
Plus points for the best SUTs - quietness (once you get them positioned), immediacy, dynamics, musicality. Down side is principally matching, both impedance and gain - easy to get it not so much wrong, but 'not quite right' with sub-optimal results.
Plus points for head amps - a lot less faff when it comes to hum, much more flexibility in matching with a variety of cartridges, and unquestionably more sound per pound. Down sides - hiss, and the ineffable ... I don't know, hifi wise they can be very good indeed, but musically even really good ones like the Slee Elevator (which I realy rate, don't get me wrong) just fall short of the very best SUTs for me. In my experience of course. But you pays your money ...
I wouldn't put the ST80 anywhere near the top rank of SUTs, it's overpriced by a mile by the sound of the one I heard (with an SPU incidentally).
I have heard great things about the Paul Hynes BTW I would love to hear one.
oh, ST-80 is now the benchmark SUT?
then you really don't need a 750 UKP product to put it against (let alone paul heynes' designs which are FWIW a top notch), you can save 90% and knock yourself for an afternoon a headamp with a handful of parts - 2 x 2SK170, a few resistors and caps plus a 24V battery supply, just as jean hiraga did it some 35 yrs ago. i doubt you would spend more than a 50 quid, a chasis included.
or buy yourself a kit for $49:
http://diyaudioprojects.com/Solid/JF...re-Preamp-Kit/
I respect what you say Tom but I would say that for reasons long lost in the annals of hi fi but related to makers of MC's being used to using fine wire and winding stuff... SUT's were always more common. There is a dearth of really good high end head amps out there. Marco reckoned that the Paul Heynes pipped mine yes... it is around £1500 I believe and there are further upgrades I would be doing on mine if able to sell them at this price. he also reckoned it was not that much better than my MkI, which was itself upgraded after that before Alcarmicheal bought it. Since then there is my MkII as favourably reviewed recently on AOS.
I don't doubt for one second your findings and sincerity on this but I would say that there are not many truly high end head amps out there to compare top SUT's against, and that the likes of offerings from myself and Paul Haynes my change your mind... or at least persuade you that the two methods are equal when equal effort and resources have been put into them :)
Just noticed that Alex has very kindly offered to lend Tom his MkI Arkless head amp! Go for it Tom and Alex:) You have nothing to lose in allowing a top quality head amp it's voice amongst amongst the many very high end SUT's you've tried.. not that top quality head amps are common.. bit of a niche product! Hence you can not have tried many....
I'm sure you will have the wherewithal to make up various loading plugs to experiment with your various cartridges Tom?......
This should be interesting! Yes there is a further improved MkII... and if I was to be selling one for the £1500 of the Paul Haynes model there would be things I'd be doing above even the MkII... Head amps are such a niche product that I don't expect to sell more than the odd one here and there, it's not my "bread and butter".. my only stake in this is as an engineer, to try and show that when done properly etc the head amp option is at least as good as the SUT option... and of course much more flexible in cart matching etc;) I've no idea how this will turn out! :scratch: :eek: :)
it depends how you define quiet, if you mean any audible noise associated with the PSU and mains, it runs on batteries hence more quiet than anything you need to plug into a socket. it has other issues that batteries introduce but this circuit has been chewed over and over on diyaudio.com and there are much better variations within a price range - certainly under a $100 to get it go
of course, what paul hynes is doing is a completely different bag, he's a master of regulated supplies and ultimate PSs; not everyone is keen to recharge or exchange batteries every week or so.
if anyone really wants to be reassured what top SUTs do with top headamps, i can borrow some from my or my freinds' stash, such as tango MCT-999, tango NN600-50k, ortofon T-3000, cotter mkII. they have fiercely defeated a plenty of $$$$ headamps or active MC stages, inc pass XONO, pathos inthegroove, various SOTA DIY work etc. i personally don't waste my time on these tests anymore but everyone is welcome to do so. and btw any of these costs less than any of the reverend headamps out there. you can start with ortofon T-3000 which i think SJS sells for 600 pounds.
This may be true - or not, I don't know. But can't we have more moderate rhetoric, for heaven's sake? There seems to be something about online forums that brings out the suburban warrior in a lot of folks. It's not uncommon to read posts talking about how "my amp kills amp XZ", or "I heard a [insert name] system at a friend's house, and my system stamped all over it". It's a hobby for Pete's sake! Making comparisons is fine, and in fact it's a large part of what we like about forums. But we don't need playground warfare.
IB
I agree absolutely. I use hi-fi as a device for listening to music, not as a weapon to "stamp all over" somebody else's hi-fi. Of course the "shoot out" has been with us in many guises since caveman days but I would prefer to keep that attitude out of hi-fi.
Hi-Fi for swinging pacifists! Count me in! We should rename the "shoot-out" as the "side by side comparison". By the way, does anybody share my suspicion that instant back-to-back comparisons are not a helpful way of choosing hi-fi components? I remember back in the 70s going into Lasky's in Tottenham Court Road and you could have any speaker you wanted demonstrated to you. There was a whole wall chock-full of of different loudspeakers from different manufacturers, all being fed from the same source via a multi-way switch. So you could ask to hear Santana and get the salesman to switch to a different set of speakers at the end of every line. Absolutely bewildering! You learn nothing. You get an immediate ear-pop or sugar-rush from the impact of a new sound each time one cuts in, but the very experience of being bombarded with sharp contrasts in a short time space really makes meaningful appraisal impossible. You really need to have the piece of kit, whether loudspeaker or amp or whatever, available for continuing listening sessions over a decent period to be able to decide if you like it (much less love it!). Of course, that is difficult. Especially via a shop. We are lucky in that the manufacturers associated with forums mostly tend to offer extended loans of equipment for trialling at home. Far more helpful!
Sorry ... thread hi-jack. Just my two-penn'oth. Back to SUTs and head amps... !
IB
I do have an Ortofon T-3000 SUT (another toroidal core btw), along with a Kondo era AN JP SUT, AI S800, Jensen JT-34K-DX and Hashimoto HM-7. As I have Ortofon MC70 Anniversary and Audio Note IO carts, both of which are low impedance low output, it is hardly surprisingly that Ortofon and AN JP SUTs are the best matches for my carts. If you have a similar low impedance low output cart the T-3000 will be excellent, if your MC cart has higher impedance and output you may find the HM-7 preferable.
If we go back to the question asked by the OP, I would say that if you can get Tribute SUTs designed for your MC cart, then get them and you will not be disappointed.