Some New Toys
On Tuesday a few new toys arrived, and I have been listening to them and so far so good, so here they are below which I thought may be of interest to some.
The first is a Schiit MAGNI 3 Heresy headphone amp, having dug out my old Trio headphones and having a listen I thought it was about time I treated myself to a new pair, but how to listen to vinyl with them when my amp does not have a head phone out, hence the Schiit. I have a Beresford TC-721 is a bi-directional RCA/PHONO selector on the way from Stan, so this will alleviate the need to plug/unplug the line feed from the phono stage output.
So to use with it I have opted for the newly out KLH Ultimate One headphones, these have been highly recommend is several reviews in respected hifi mags, and fit in my budget.
And finally after my excursion into MM cartridges and listening to the Ortofon OM with a DN165e stylus and 40 Stylus I came to the conclusion that actually a good MM had a lot to offer in terms of sound quality and VFM, it also meant I could economise on the use of my expensive MC. After much reading and hand ringing I opted for the Goldring 2500 MI cartridge.
Initial impressions:-
Schiit MAGNI 3 Heresy headphone amp -
This is a very well made amp and has great neutral tonality IMO, I would say it does not add any colouration to the music, and as the specs say I doubt it has any audibly discernable distortion, and as others report does not suffer from hum and has a very quiet sound floor. here is a good technical review https://www.audiosciencereview.com/f...reviews.10311/.
Early days yet but I think it is ideal for my use.
KLH Ultimate One headphones -
Well I am very pleased with these, I have listened to them using the Schiit MAGNI 3 Heresy and also my Caiman SEG and they give a really nice musical rendition, and are very comfortable to where, and very well made with a feel of quality. I find that they give a good soundstage in your head with a good sense of depth, they sound very accurate, mid and top end is very smooth, bass is also very good. I need to listen to them some more to give a better report but for £289.99 I think they may prove to be a very good purchase.
Goldring 2500 MI cartridge -
Some of you may have read https://theartofsound.net/forum/show...-playing-again thread which ultimately lead to this purchase. For those of you that are not, in summary I listened to a couple of Ortofon MM styli on and OM and was rather surprised by how good both sounded. Because I listen to a lot of vinyl I wanted to find a more cost effective solution giving good SQ and VFM. I have opted on the Goldring 2500 as several reviews stated it was quite a revealing cartridge with good bass control, which I believe is due to it being a Moving Iron design, this explains better than I can https://www.goldring.co.uk/cartridge...artridges.html. (still has the benefits of replaceable stylus)
I only set up the Goldring this morning and popped on a couple of favourite listening tracks, I was not expecting much from it straight out of the box but was very pleasantly surprised, immediately I was struck by the level of detail, in fact very comparable to a MC, at least to my ears anyway, soundstage is also very good. What is also nice is it is very quiet in the groove on quiet passages. I have so far played 3 LP's and so far I am very impressed, currently I am listening to Anand Bakshi – Taal (bollywood film soundtrack) this has lots of drumming, bass and mixed percussion, with beautiful vocals, and sweeping soundscapes, quite a testing record for any cartridge to be able to keep everything under control and not become muddled, but the Goldring is holding up extremely well, very enjoyable. I think it has improved in just 3 hours of use so I will report more after 20 hours or so.
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Originally Posted by hifi_dave
