Newsletter July 2005

NEWSLETTER

July 2005

Dear hi fi enthusiast

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IN THIS ISSUE

Recent additions to the website

Recent reviews and news

What shape is your stylus?

New Jordan JX53 evaluation

Sonic Impact T-Amp
Grado SR-80 headphones
Pro-Ject Debut III turntable

Boston Audio Mat 1 review

Specials & Clearance Items

RECENT ADDITIONS

Record Cleaning Machine Hire

Origin Live Encounter tonearm

Linn turntable parts

New Hadcock tonearm models

Pro-Ject turntables

Sonic Impact Technologies T-Amp

Grado SR-80 headphones

XLS-800 subwoofer kit

Boston Audio TuneBlocks

RECENT REVIEWS AND NEWS

6 Moons has published a review which confirms the performance and value of the Graham Slee Gram Amp 2SE and Era Gold phono pre-amps. Incidently it also endorses the Pro-ject turntables which we have recently added to our range. http://www.6moons.com/audioreviews/project2/vinyl.html

Leonard Gregory (The Cartridge Man) has just been advised that the The Music Maker III cartridge has been chosen for a “Most Wanted Components 2005” award by The Stereo Times in USA. For their review take this link http://www.stereotimes.com/acc092404.shtm

We are really pleased to advise that the ME 550 MkIII power amplifier will be on the market within a few weeks. After an absence from the Australian market for over 18 months it’s great to hear that production of this fine product is resuming. The manufacturing is being done for Peter Stein by a Melbourne based company. We will taking orders for this very popular amplifier as soon as pricing is finalized.

As Australia’s turntable specialists we are also pleased to advise that we now have access to parts for Linn, Rega, and Dual turntables. We are now selling the Pro-Ject range of turntables. In particular we expect the Project Debut turntables to be a popular seller as they provide a well priced entry level turntable and a model which plays 78s.

Two recently added products that have become immediate best sellers are the Grado SR-80 headphones and Sonic Impact Technologies T-Amp. There’s more information on both of these below.

In the last newsletter I asked for a response to the idea of making a Moth Record Cleaning Machine available for hire. It’s now available and is just $33.00 per week. Freight to the southern states is about $25 each way.

We recently sent a pair of the Jordan transmission line solid wood enclosure kits to a chap in London. You can read about his assembly project at http://www.pinkfishmedia.net/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=13307

We have now added customers in Norway, Russia, South Korea and China to our worldwide customer base – we already had USA, UK, Ireland, Netherlands, Switzerland, Germany, Sweden, Italy, Philippines, Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan, Thailand, Finland, Canada, India, South Africa.

One of our customers from Switzerland reports that the Garrott Optim FGS cartridge which we are selling for A$900 + GST is the equivalent of A$1900 over there. That makes it even more of a good buy!

WHAT SHAPE IS YOUR STYLUS? Information provided by Audio Dynamics – suppliers of the Garrott cartridges and styli. We have also recently added an article by Ortofon entitled “Everything you always should have known about pickup cartridges, but didn’t know to ask”. The link is in the Phono Cartridges category as well as here.

Vinyl record masters are cut using a chisel shaped cutting stylus with a profile that produces a groove in the form of a V with each side being at an angle of 45 degrees to the vertical.

On replay, which was originally performed using a round profile tipped diamond, only a small amount of diamond comes into contact with the groove. Imagine an O shape sitting in the V. During the recording process, frequency compensation was adjusted appropriately for correct playback under these conditions.

As diamond technology developed the mass of the tip was reduced by cutting away unused material on the leading and trailing faces of the stylus as these were not in contact with the record. This reduction in tip mass provided the possibility of reducing record wear partly through reduced forces on the vinyl and the potential to further shape the contact surfaces into an ellipse, thereby providing greater specific contact with the walls of the groove.

A parabolic profile was a later iteration of the elliptical and even more closely conformed to the groove geometry. This specialised profile was mainly a product of the German diamond expert Dr. Weinz and more or less disappeared from the market on his death some decades ago. The present Garrott Microtracer profile can be mounted so as to provide semi-parabolic groove contact and is a near replacement for the older parabolic diamond.

Later cuts such as the Garrott Microscanner II offer groove contact substantially greater than the parabolic profile (at around 65% contact) and the Garrott FGS can give close to 90% contact with very careful arm alignment. By this means groove wear while playing is greatly reduced, as well as allowing undamaged sections of the groove wall to be accessed even if there has been previous damage to the central part of the groove.

Very sophisticated cutting and forming processes are required to produce diamonds that closely replicate the original record cutting process, but without the possibility of actual impact on the vinyl material. The bottom line is that if you want to achieve the best signal retrieval from your precious vinyl records, with the least wear, and with lower surface noise, you should be using a “line contact” style of stylus.

Most existing cartridges can be re-tipped by the Garrott Bros with one of their special profile diamond styli (from $200). New Ortofon and Garrott cartridges with “line contact” styli start from under $300.

JORDAN JX53 EVALUATION

Well I’ve had some fun over the last few weeks. Firstly I was lucky enough to receive a pair of the new version Jordan JX53 drivers to evaluate.

The JX53 is the little brother of the more well known JX92S driver. It still features an alloy Contraflex cone and unique fluid suspension but is only 2” in diameter. The rectangular shape makes it easier to stack several together or use a very slim enclosure. Frequency response extends past 20Khz. The new version has a modified suspension which has resulted in better low frequency performance making it easier to match them with a subwoofer. Previously they had to be crossed over to at 300Hz or higher and most subwoofers only go to 150Hz. In a 2 litre enclosure without rolloff circuitry the new model starts tapering off at 200Hz and our new XLS800 sub can be set to the same frequency.

How do they sound – in a word brilliant. What I particularly like is the fact that I can listen at quite low levels and still hear all the details. They have the same clarity and smoothness in the midrange as the JX92S but the high frequencies are smoother and more extended. I think overall they give a cleaner sound than the JX92S. Of course you can’t compare them side by side too critically because the JX92S goes down to 40Hz in the TL enclosure whereas the JX53s have to be used with a subwoofer. I initially tried them in little cube enclosures on stands in conjunction with the XLS800 subwoofer. This works very well – creating a wonderfully precise stereo image with tremendous depth. I have now made up some slim tower enclosures as well.

I also tried them in the linear array configuration as described on Ted Jordans website. This involves setting them up so they are very close to the front wall and angled in to 30° so they fire along the wall creating a hemispherical wave front. This gives a great stereo image which is stable as you move around the room as compared to the “hot spot” you get with conventional speaker positioning. I found this worked well although there was some loss of precision in the placement of instruments in orchestral music. Overall I preferred the forward facing arrangement until some more drivers arrived and I was able to try the proper linear array as specified by Ted Jordan on his website. This is a different situation altogether. The 4 drivers per side provides tremendous power handling and driven with my ME 550 power amp they produce an awesome big sound. I am particularly pleased with their performance on large orchestral works. I had them set up on the front wall of the room about 3 metres apart and 90 cm off the floor.

The next experiment was to make up a home theatre system using 6 JX53s and the XLS800 subwoofer. For the last couple of years we have been using the Joe Appolito Audax based home theatre speaker setup. This is a highly praised design and produces impressive high sound pressure levels in a large room. What I wanted to assess was whether a system based on these little Jordan drivers could match it. Initial impression with a Latin Jazz DVD called Calle 54 was that the midrange and treble were better, but there wasn’t the seamless “big” sound you get from a set of large enclosures. I also couldn’t achieve the same sound pressure levels as the drivers are less efficient and the home theatre PC I was using as the source couldn’t drive the power amplifiers sufficiently. I discovered that the sound card software would only allow a crossover frequency up to 120Hz, which is too low for the JX53s. So the subwoofer was not being fed enough of the upper bass frequencies and the centre JX53 was bouncing around alarmingly because it was receiving too much bass. After a bit of investigation I found out that Rotel home theatre receivers do provide a crossover frequency up to 200Hz, and other brands probably do so as well, but I haven’t had a chance to try them out yet. On TV this problem is not really noticeable. At this stage, although the sound is very good, it doesn’t outperform the Audax system across the whole frequency range. I guess the old line about a good big speaker will always beat a good little speaker is true in this instance. Six 2” drivers up against nine 6” isn’t a fair contest. I’ll report on my further experiments in the next newsletter..

So far I can give a recommendation to the JX53s with the XLS800 subwoofer as a stereo system, and certainly to the linear array, but not in a home theatre system. By the way the JX92Ss are just about perfect for home theatre because even in the 3 litre cube enclosure they can be crossed over at 120Hz. In the 8 litre bookshelf and TL enclosures an 80Hz crossover is fine.

We’ll be offering a variety of enclosure kits for these drivers, small cubes, slim towers, and aluminium extrusions designed for wall mounting (particularly for home theatre use).

Stock of these drivers is very limited but we have a few pairs available this month. It will be several months before they are readily available.

SONIC IMPACT T-Amp

About the same time as I had put the JX53s into their little enclosures the first batch of Sonic Impact T-Amps arrived. If any product fits the Decibel Hi Fi goal of value for money this has got to be it.

For those that haven’t heard about them these are a cheap little stereo amplifier which use a Tripath TA 2024 integrated amplifier chip. They produce only about 6 watts per channel into 8 ohms, and the first surprise is just how loud that can be with reasonably efficient speakers. (I used the JX53s of course).

The second surprise is the extremely clean and extended sound they provide. The bass response isn’t tested with the JX53s so I also tried them with several full range speakers. At $88 these have got to be the best bargain of all time. If you love “messing around with hi fi” you just have to have one or more of these. And if you want to experiment with bi-amping, active crossovers, self powered speakers etc what a great way to do so inexpensively.

By the way you can run them from AA batteries, rechargeable 12V batteries (great for camping or boating), or DC power packs. We have a suitable power pack available for just $33. You can use them to drive a pair of speakers with the signal coming from your PC, CD player, MP3 player etc as well. The only negative is the fact that they a bit toy like – the spring terminals for the speaker leads are quite flimsy (although I did manage to get the Origin Live Solicore cables into them). You’ll have trouble using thick cables with them – there is a little adapter which helps (see product PT3021 in the speaker cables category).

Overseas people are making all sorts of mods and adapters for them – some costing much more than the original amps themselves. Many of them are concerned with the power supply. We will be investigating some of these options, in particular a different case with better quality connectors.

GRADO SR-80 headphones

Grado headphones have been widely praised for their performance and value for money. The SR-80 models provides better bass response and a more open sound than the acclaimed SR-60s. What Hi Fi had this to say “"...these are truly wonderful headphones, they've got the bass energy... ripping into heavy tracks with a gusto that eludes lesser rivals. With vocals they intoxicate with a natural feel and beautifully proportioned soundstage: few headphones can transport you as convincingly... The Grado SR80's are special. Buy'em, and Love'em."

These have previously been selling in Australia for $259, our price – just $176.

PRO-JECT Debut Mk III turntable

We often get asked for a good basic turntable, and also for one that can play 78s. We can now provide both. Pro-Ject Audio Systems is a European manufacturer and their factory in Litovel (near Praque) has been making turntables for over 50 years.

The Debut Mk III is a manual, entry level turntable - belt drive, good tonearm, and complete with an Ortofon OM5E cartridge for only $396. For those of you with a good turntable already this could be one to suggest to your friends who make enquiries about “getting into vinyl”. There is also an external basic phono preamp available at $137.50.

The Debut III Phono SB at $599 is the same turntable but includes a built-in phono preamp and an external electronic speed control box which enables 78s to be played as well as 33s and 45s. This is an ideal unit for someone wanted to play their collection of LPs and 78s again and perhaps convert them to CDs.

I have tried out the Debut III, and while it doesn’t offer the upgrade opportunities of a Rega, it provides a good basic level of performance and is great value for money.

BOSTON AUDIO Mat 1 review

This has got to be the easiest review I have ever done. I put the Mat 1 on my Decibel Special turntable (A Rega 2 with acrylic platter and modified Rega 250 tonearm) and played a track of an LP which I am familiar with. I was impressed with the clean sound from this excellently engineered record. Then I removed the Mat 1 and played the track again. It wasn’t as clean. It’s that simple. With the Mat 1 the music seems to emerge from a blacker background.

How can this be true? For a technical explanation go to http://www.boston-audio.com/products3.html These mats are endorsed by Origin Live, who make some of the best performing turntables available at any price.

This is a product which should improve the performance of any turntable. It is sold on a 30 day money-back basis. If you buy one and don’t think it makes an improvement worth the $297 price you can return it for a full refund (including the initial postage). You’ll find it in the Turntable Upgrades category on the website.

SPECIALS and CLEARANCE ITEMS

The last few TLSK units have been further discounted to clear. As mentioned in the last newsletter we decided to stop selling The Loud Speaker Kit range because of our commitment to the Jordan drivers.

There are just 6 units left. 1 pair of the flagship TL6 demo units for just $935 (RRP $1199). 1 pair of F5 kits $495 (RRP $699). 1 C6 kit $396 (RRP $599), 1 S100 demo subwoofer $396 (RRP $599).

If you have been thinking about assembling a pair of speaker kits this is an opportunity to save at least 30%, and if you buy one of the demo models the assembly has already been done for you.

Wireless Headphones – just 2 sets available at $88 instead of the usual $109. See Innovative Products category.

Origin Live Soli-Core Ordinary speaker cable is on special for the month of July at just $13.20 per metre (normally $18.70), save 30%. Make sure you mention the special price in the Customer Instructions section when you place your order via the website.

That’s about it for now. The next newsletter is scheduled for September. Amongst other stories it will include our new omnidirectional (à la Sonab) speaker kits, and transferring LPs to CDs. If you have friends who are interested in hi fi, please forward this newsletter to them or tell them to subscribe.

All the best with your hi fi’ing

Brian Maddern

brian@decibelhifi.com.au

Unit 1, 201 Evans Road, Salisbury, Queensland, 4107, Australia

PO Box 536, Sunnybank, Qld 4109

Phone: 61 (0) 7 3272 7660 Fax 3216 6284

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