Are you a tone guy or a details-retrieval guy?

[Haselsh1]

Yeah I think the answer has to be both as I use a valve amp for tone but the sources are set up for detail retrieval especially the M-DAC on the digital side of things.

[Stratmangler]

I've modded my Touch sixteen ways to Sunday. Ended up having a number of profile scripts, which I can execute at will. Was aiming for the greasy, oily sound that I finally found in Denon DL-103. But Touch is an awesome little computer, and if you're a Linux engineer, and willing to roll up your sleeves and dick around with daemon jobs, buffer sizes, thread priorities etc., you can affect the sound in no insignificant amount.

Still, nothing comes even close to this monster DL-103 coupled with good SUT and a nice little Emotiva XPS-1!

I'll take that as you've been pissing about with software.
Have you done anything fundamental, such as changing the PSU?

[Marco]

Yes to a degree but isn't that also what the Denon cartridge is doing compared to, say, a good Audio Technica?

Nope, not at all...! How can you say that? You obviously haven't read and/or understood a word I've written here, or crucially, post #31, part of which you've just quoted

Please read it again, and you should understand that I'm NOT talking about adding coloration, but rather that there is something fundamentally missing (that should be there in the first place, namely natural warmth and richness), which cartridges such as modern Audio Technica's (their older ranges don't do it to anything like the same degree), strip from the sound, thus pushing forward midrange and upper-frequencies to give the impression of increased detail, simply to comply with what today is considered as 'accurate'.

If anything is coloured (in that respect), therefore, it's the Audio Technica, not the Denon... Since you mention the DL-S1, that's another good example. Compare it with, say, an OC-9, and what I'm describing, unless you are deaf, will also hit you right between the ears!

It isn't hard to buy a coloured cd player these days, they all seem to be coloured to pander to the 'I want digital to sound like vinyl' brigade. Of course they don't sound like vinyl, nor do they sound like the recording - worst of both worlds IMO but it is personal taste as always. That's one of the reasons that I like the old flagship players, designed to get the best out of it without trying to jazz it up.

You're right in some ways, and that happened for a while, but in reality new CD players these days no longer sound that way - quite the opposite in fact, and that's mostly since proper CD-only mechs were abandoned for cheap, plastic DVD-ROMs, and ditto with linear PSUs for cheap switch-mode varieties.

And btw, whilst you're right about the old flagship players, they also possessed the 'tone' we're discussing in spades. Trust me, it's one of the reasons why my Sony sounds the way it does!

What did you think of the Micromega players on the YouTube clips? Hard to tell with such vids, I know, but if you heard one in the flesh I think you'd love what they do.

Get as good a phono stage as you can is my advice to the o/p, worry about the cartridge later. I thought that the Denon DLS1 Marco had for a while was a great balance between detail and tone and a major step up on the 103 but keeping the same basic characteristics. But IME it is the phono stage that is make or break. I think a competent cart with a very good phono stage is better than a really good cart with a merely competent phono stage.

I agree, but *first and foremost*, with vinyl replay, it's the quality of the turnable itself (and all its constituent parts) that matters most. If that isn't up to scratch, then no phono stage in the world can make up for that!

Marco.

[Macca]

. What did you think of the Micromega players on the YouTube clips?

.

I have heard a Micromega player, wasn't that impressed but was in someone else's system so not possible to isolate it from the other components. Likewise with the you-tube clips, even worse, as there you are listening to an unknown system, transmitted with a lossy codec, through laptop speakers. Forget about it. Maybe it can give a slight idea, not enough for me to form any serious judgement though.

I understand your point about the cartridges, hence my preference for something like the DLS1 or Nagaokas, over a more 'modern' sounding cart like an OC9 or that SPU you used to have. I don't like vinyl to sound clinical, I don't see the point. Much easier, if you want that sound, to get it from digital sources instead. Cheaper, too.

[Joe]

On balance, more a tone than details guy. I tend to listen almost exclusively to CDs these days for reasons of a) laziness and b) knowing most of my vinyl collection off by heart. When I do compare formats, I don't think one is markedly superior to the other. What does surprise me is how good the relatively basic 'upstairs' vinyl system sounds: (AR turntable, Rega TB250 tonearm, Ortofon MC10 cartridge). It majors on 'presence' rather than detail, but is always great fun to listen to.

[take5]

Tone for me...every time.

Tone quality is to do with music

Other stuff... image,soundstage etc etc is to do with Hi Fi... all just IMHO, of course

The more I got into this Hi fi hobby, the more I found myself going towards the Hi Fi stuff.
Bad news............ which Im trying to deal with at the moment

[Marco]

I have heard a Micromega player, wasn't that impressed but was in someone else's system so not possible to isolate it from the other components. Likewise with the you-tube clips, even worse, as there you are listening to an unknown system, transmitted with a lossy codec, through laptop speakers. Forget about it. Maybe it can give a slight idea, not enough for me to form any serious judgement though.

Yes I agree, but I know exactly what the best Micromega players sound like, as I've owned a Duo, which was the one down from their flagship Trio, and so can more readily identify their sonic signature, even in a YouTube clip.

Limitations of that aside though, you should still be able to get an inkling of what I'm referring to, if you listen to the bass line I mentioned on the Queen track. Turn it up, and even through shitty computer speakers, there's a real weight and 'purposefulness' to it that simply isn't there in modern CD players - and it is *that* which helps provides the 'tone' that makes the best vintage players sound 'analogue-like'.

Aside from that though, top-loading CDPs look cool, especially ones with big, chunky acrylic lids! The whole process of loading a disc manually like that also makes it feel more like you're playing a record - and the fact that, all else being equal, manual operating top-loaders generally sound better, isn't an accident either.

I understand your point about the cartridges...

Good! It didn't appear that way from your last post, or perhaps I misread it? Easily done, as I was up to nearly 3am listening to music, and not long up, so not really 'focussed' yet!

...hence my preference for something like the DLS1 or Nagaokas, over a more 'modern' sounding cart like an OC9 or that SPU you used to have. I don't like vinyl to sound clinical, I don't see the point. Much easier, if you want that sound, to get it from digital sources instead. Cheaper, too.

Exactly. Your Naga is another good example of what we're discussing.

The main point I'm trying to make, however, is that it's commonly considered that the 103, DL-S1, SPU, Nagaoka, etc, are more coloured sounding (less 'accurate') than OC-9s, Lyras, etc, simply because the clinical nature of the latter is deemed as facilitating their greater 'accuracy', when I would contend that the opposite is true, for reasons previously explained.

Marco.

[Marco]

What does surprise me is how good the relatively basic 'upstairs' vinyl system sounds: (AR turntable, Rega TB250 tonearm, Ortofon MC10 cartridge). It majors on 'presence' rather than detail, but is always great fun to listen to.

Rest assured, Joe, that your ears aren't deceiving you.

The best vintage gear generally is more fun to listen to, simply because (for reasons I've already outlined), some of the 'fun factor' has been sucked out of the sound of today's kit, and traded instead for some false notion of 'accuracy' - and you can hear it in exactly the way you've described.

Marco.

[walpurgis]

Still, nothing comes even close to this monster DL-103 coupled with good SUT and a nice little Emotiva XPS-1!

What SUT might that be? Denon MC's definitely need a decent one.

[Yomanze]

Another observation is that you can never have enough tone and timbre, but you can easily have too much detail, there is a point when you have enough detail to be musically credible​. Note I said tone and not euphonic distortion, which is a totally different subject.