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Thread: My Denon DL-103 journey (long boring rant, had to get it off my chest)

  1. #11
    Join Date: Oct 2015

    Location: KL, Malaysia

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    I'm shahrin.

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    Good read Alex, but damn damn damn
    That means i will have to have another go at my 103R...
    (btw are u using the 103 or 103R?)
    I ve done allsorts of 'upgrades' on my 3102II ( new bearings, new wires, increased its mass, brass weights, 10g AT headshell ) and i still couldnt get my 103R to sing.
    I am now much happier using an ancient SL15Q in the 3012 altho it might not seem an ideal match.
    I await the chaps at Cala/AnaMighty rebuild the SL15 that lurks in even more ancient Ortofon S15T but that is taking literally forever...
    Maybe i need a Jelco, huh?
    Thorens td124 mk2 / Bokrand AB309/ 103r
    SLAT L75 / Jelco 850S / AT VM740ML
    Marantz CD63 / Bluesound / Musical Paradise 701 II/ ESP 500Hz eXO / PL Prologue 4 and Nord 1UP amps / JK Wynn semiactive NS1000 upgrade
    /ESP 700 Hz eXO / JBL 4333 components

  2. #12
    Join Date: May 2010

    Location: Vancouver, Canada

    Posts: 2,166
    I'm Alex.

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    Quote Originally Posted by topoxforddoc View Post
    I think that this highlights the issue about cartridges. On shouldn't look at cartridges alone. The most important items in the audio chain are the two sets of transducers - the front end (cartridge) and the back end (speakers).

    Getting the transducers to work at their optimum depends on other factors. For cartridges, the crucial issue is the interaction with the arm - vibration transmission (and the effect of damping), bearing chatter, as well as resonant frequency of tonearm/cartridge (cartridge compliance, total effective mass etc). Every cartridge has a sweet spot, and the 103 is no different. You just have to find it in your own system.
    Absolutely, 100% agree on that. One other thing I didn't mention in my rant (wanted to keep it as short as possible) is the impedance matching with the MC input on my phono. I already posted about that on this forum, and got a few very interesting tips. But at the end of the day, it really is whatever works in your particular configuration. I got a really lousy sound out of my configuration with DL-103 feeding into iFi phono at 100ohms. Cranking it up to 1000ohms sounded very different, but on most records too shrill. Finally, after figuring out how to set the MC stage to 250ohms, I hit the amazing sweet spot.

    So wrong loads can really ruin the otherwise sweet and magic sound.
    Don't you just hate it when you cannot detect where the post ends and a signature line begins?

    Alex.

  3. #13
    Join Date: May 2010

    Location: Vancouver, Canada

    Posts: 2,166
    I'm Alex.

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    Quote Originally Posted by drSM View Post
    Good read Alex, but damn damn damn
    That means i will have to have another go at my 103R...
    (btw are u using the 103 or 103R?)
    I ve done allsorts of 'upgrades' on my 3102II ( new bearings, new wires, increased its mass, brass weights, 10g AT headshell ) and i still couldnt get my 103R to sing.
    I am now much happier using an ancient SL15Q in the 3012 altho it might not seem an ideal match.
    I await the chaps at Cala/AnaMighty rebuild the SL15 that lurks in even more ancient Ortofon S15T but that is taking literally forever...
    Maybe i need a Jelco, huh?
    I'm using plain vanilla DL-103. Not sure if Jelco is ideal for it (I think it needs heavier arm), but in my configuration these two components hit some kind of interesting chemistry that would really be worth hearing. And no, I'm not taking you guys for a ride. I happen to be extremely finicky when it comes to sound, so I cannot rest until I get it to the point where it works on me like some heavy substances would

    Also, I've noticed that a better engineered arm board contributed to the sweetening of the sound...
    Don't you just hate it when you cannot detect where the post ends and a signature line begins?

    Alex.

  4. #14
    Join Date: Jan 2009

    Location: Norwich

    Posts: 2,814
    I'm Hugo.

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    Your experience is simple proof that you cannot totally ignore mechanical and electrical matching of cartridges to the rest of a system. In the case of the DL-103, that's a low compliance cartridge that will not ever sing in a lightweight arm like a Rega, and the SA-750E is a much better match in terms of effective mass (and you can increase that mass further by using a heavier headshell). So, you don't need a heavier arm, perhaps just a heavier headshell, like Jelco's own HS-30.

    The mass analogy here is fitting really stiff springs to a lightweight car and expecting the suspension to faithfully and securely track the bumps in the road - it won't do that but instead the whole car will just buck around and the wheels will not in any way follow the contours of the road. In a cartridge, ideally we want the body to stay still and only the cantilever/tip moves, and for a stiffly sprung cartridge like the DL-103 the suspension will only track the grooves if the body is held still(ish) by a heavy mass. Similarly, put a set of soft springs on a heavy car and the body will wallow around in relation to the cantilever/tip, and that's probably what occurred with the OM20 in the Jelco, so a different mismatch.

    Interesting comments regarding conical (spherical) tips. Conical tips will never excavate the fine groove details that something like a fancy Line Contour tip will, but recent experience with spherical tipped Ortofon SPUs suggests that a good cartridge with such a tip can be innately musical. Not 'HiFi' in terms of searing detail, but really engaging in terms of wanting to listen for longer, in spite of the obvious glossing over of really fine details. I believe that a conical/spherical tip tracks grooves with no time shift between channels as the groove wiggles, where a sharper tip profile does shift time very slightly as it turns (there is a diagram somewhere on the net that shows this); and I do wonder if that's the root of the conical/spherical tip listenability/musicality since the human auditory system (mainly the brain, in this instance) is very sensitive indeed to tiny time and phase anomalies.

    Of course there are good and dreadful examples of cartridges with spherical/conical and other tip profiles, so this is a bit of a generalisation, but I'd be interesting in following Charlie's progress with the ESCo re-worked DL-103 and whether it retains the 'music maker' reputation of the original cartridge, while giving more in terms of 'HiFi'.
    Last edited by Ammonite Audio; 18-03-2019 at 07:11.

  5. #15
    Join Date: Jan 2009

    Location: Essex

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    I'm openingabottleofwine.

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    As far as I know, the only advantage of using a conical tip is the contact footprint with the record groove is a circle, and hence cartridges fitted with conical tips are largely immune to VTA setting.

    I would be interested to learn more about the 'timing errors' created through the use of line-line styli. Hugo, is it possible to provide a link to this (especially to the diagram you mentioned)? Thanks.
    Barry

  6. #16
    Join Date: Jan 2009

    Location: Norwich

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    I'm Hugo.

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    I knew I'd seen it recently - see https://www.tnt-audio.com/sorgenti/s...ibility_e.html

    This somewhat indistinct diagram shows how spherical tips always trace a wiggly groove with right and left channel information properly in time.

    Last edited by Ammonite Audio; 18-03-2019 at 16:14.

  7. #17
    Join Date: Jan 2009

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    I'm openingabottleofwine.

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    Thanks for that Hugo.

    It seems to me, looking at the diagram, that of all the stylus profiles, the elliptical tip suffers the greatest inter-channel time delay. When I have some time I'll calculate what the phase difference is; but I expect it to be very small and inaudible.

    But whatever it is, it always amazes me that with all the tracing and tracking errors produced by dragging a small lump of diamond in a groove cut into a less-than-infinitely-rigid plastic disc, and with all those distortions, vinyl playback can sound as good as it does.
    Barry

  8. #18
    Join Date: Jan 2009

    Location: Norwich

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    I'm Hugo.

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    Perhaps this is worthy of a separate thread!

  9. #19
    Join Date: Jul 2010

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    I'm Charlie.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Ammonite Acoustics View Post

    Of course there are good and dreadful examples of cartridges with spherical/conical and other tip profiles, so this is a bit of a generalisation, but I'd be interesting in following Charlie's progress with the ESCo re-worked DL-103 and whether it retains the 'music maker' reputation of the original cartridge, while giving more in terms of 'HiFi'.
    Hugo,

    My initial impressions were jaw dropping, compared to the stock 103C1. Yes, it keeps the music maker reputation, but delivers in bucket loads in addition.

    Charlie
    R2R: Studer A820 1/2 inch 2 track; Otari MTR-12 1/4 inch 2 track; Sony APR 5003; Sony APR 5002; Studer A807/II. Vinyl: Platine Verdier Allaerts MC1B/Schroeder Reference & Model 2 Decca C4E/Hadcock 228 TRON Seven Reference phono. Keith Monks MkII RCM Other analogue source: Nakamichi Dragon with ANT4066 mods. Amplification: TRON Meteor preamp TRON Voyager 20B SET power. Speakers: Avantgarde Duo. Digital: computing at last with Prism Sound Lyra 2 A2D converter

  10. #20
    Join Date: May 2010

    Location: Vancouver, Canada

    Posts: 2,166
    I'm Alex.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Ammonite Acoustics View Post
    Your experience is simple proof that you cannot totally ignore mechanical and electrical matching of cartridges to the rest of a system. In the case of the DL-103, that's a low compliance cartridge that will not ever sing in a lightweight arm like a Rega, and the SA-750E is a much better match in terms of effective mass (and you can increase that mass further by using a heavier headshell). So, you don't need a heavier arm, perhaps just a heavier headshell, like Jelco's own HS-30.

    The mass analogy here is fitting really stiff springs to a lightweight car and expecting the suspension to faithfully and securely track the bumps in the road - it won't do that but instead the whole car will just buck around and the wheels will not in any way follow the contours of the road. In a cartridge, ideally we want the body to stay still and only the cantilever/tip moves, and for a stiffly sprung cartridge like the DL-103 the suspension will only track the grooves if the body is held still(ish) by a heavy mass. Similarly, put a set of soft springs on a heavy car and the body will wallow around in relation to the cantilever/tip, and that's probably what occurred with the OM20 in the Jelco, so a different mismatch.

    Interesting comments regarding conical (spherical) tips. Conical tips will never excavate the fine groove details that something like a fancy Line Contour tip will, but recent experience with spherical tipped Ortofon SPUs suggests that a good cartridge with such a tip can be innately musical. Not 'HiFi' in terms of searing detail, but really engaging in terms of wanting to listen for longer, in spite of the obvious glossing over of really fine details. I believe that a conical/spherical tip tracks grooves with no time shift between channels as the groove wiggles, where a sharper tip profile does shift time very slightly as it turns (there is a diagram somewhere on the net that shows this); and I do wonder if that's the root of the conical/spherical tip listenability/musicality since the human auditory system (mainly the brain, in this instance) is very sensitive indeed to tiny time and phase anomalies.

    Of course there are good and dreadful examples of cartridges with spherical/conical and other tip profiles, so this is a bit of a generalisation, but I'd be interesting in following Charlie's progress with the ESCo re-worked DL-103 and whether it retains the 'music maker' reputation of the original cartridge, while giving more in terms of 'HiFi'.
    Fascinating observations. I have been making my own observations regarding the differences in timing between vinyl and digital playback. But it never occurred to me that there could be timing discrepancies between stylus shapes!

    Turntable is a super sensitive mechanical contraption, and often even small changes tend to affect the sound. However, even ho-hum turntables have the capacity to outperform digital playback in terms of timing.

    The issue, I think, is that we haven't really developed instrumentation/tooling to deal with measuring timing issues/discrepancies. Most of the metrics applied to the engineering of sound capturing/sound reproduction deal with static qualities. We sample a 'moment in time' and then examine it. Then we plot many adjacent moments in time and present them as a graph, to illustrate such KPIs as frequencies and amplitudes. But we don't have (or I haven't seen any) metrics that validate if each individual snapshot of a sound wave is properly coalescing with adjacent snapshots. And this coalescing, or gluing, is what produces the propulsion of the music reproduction.

    So whenever I listen to the digital sound reproduction, even on an amazingly high end players/DACs, I always experience music as a collage. Switch over to vinyl, and even if it suffers from other inadequacies compared to digital, the timing, the flow is always much more convincing. Which is why I think many of us still prefer vinyl to digital.

    MQA I think proposes to patch and fix this unpleasant patchwork that digital seems to deliver, but I haven't had extensive listening experience with MQA to make a call whether it indeed is successful in fixing the digital format.
    Don't you just hate it when you cannot detect where the post ends and a signature line begins?

    Alex.

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