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The Entry Level #23
"Hi, honey," Ms. Little said. "Going home to play with your cartridge?"
I made a face, nodded, sighed. Sensing some sharp-witted remark forming in Nicole's filthy mind, I beat her to the punch: "Yup, that's what I call it."
"A lot of strange things went through my head," Nicole admitted, "but I'll keep them to myself."
"Why?"
"I'm a lady."
Ms. Little laughed. Nicole and I spontaneously broke into a song-and-dance routine of the Tom Jones classic: She's a lady! Whoa-oh-oh, she's a lady! People on Newark Avenue paid no attention. But not even Tom Jones could hide my frustration.
"Seriously, what's wrong?" Nicole asked.
I explained that I'd been working on a review of a phono cartridge—"the little thing on a record player that holds the needle"—and it had been giving me headaches. "I can't figure out how to get it properly mounted."
Nicole giggled. "But you had no problem setting up Natalie or Kristen's turntables."
"Natalie and Kristen both use the Music Hall USB-1. That turntable includes its own special cartridge. All you have to do is screw it in."
"You're making this difficult for me, Stephen."
"I'm not playing around, Nicole. It's really hard."
"I give up."
"I'm about to give up, too."
How I got into this mess
About a year ago, Art Dudley surprised me with the gift of a gently used Dynavector DV 10X5 high-output moving-coil cartridge. AD had reviewed the Dynavector in our October 2003 issue. At the time, it sold for $360; the price has since risen to $450. Art told our readers, "This colorful, well-balanced, chunky-sounding cartridge played music extremely well, with a bonus of very fine stereo imaging. In other words, it's a great all-arounder. More money can buy more drama, impact, scale, and transparency . . . but the Dynavector DV 10X5 should give you most of what I think you need at a bargain price. Wildly, highly recommended."
With me, Art was less restrained and far more succinct: "This cartridge will change your life."
Change my life? How was I supposed to feel about that? I was intrigued and excited, but also scared. Change is messy and loud; it disrupts my sense of order, my illusion of control, my peace and quiet. But it can also be invigorating, rejuvenating, essential for growth. Recalling the advice of a close audiophile friend (Don't be afraid of the hi-fi!), I opened the Dynavector's tempting gold box, admired the brilliant red cartridge inside, and let my mind wander. I saw wild colors shooting from my loudspeakers. I saw three-dimensional images dancing in my listening room. I heard the irreparable tearing of tonearm leads, the sudden snap of a delicate cantilever, the death rattle of dropped headshell screws. I closed the terrible gold box, set it atop my LP shelves, and told myself that I would get to it—in time. There was no need to rush.
The box stayed shut until this past April, when John Atkinson and I decided that I should review the new VPI Traveler turntable, which had made such a great impression at the New York Audio and AV Show. At $1300, the Traveler would be too expensive for inclusion in "The Entry Level," but it would make the perfect subject for my first full-length equipment report. When I realized that the Traveler doesn't come equipped with a phono cartridge, I thought of Art's Dynavector.
"The Traveler works great with the Dynavector!" VPI's Mathew Weisfeld told me.
That settled that. But installing the damn thing wasn't so easy.
But wait
Before I could use the Dynavector DV 10X5 on the VPI Traveler, I would have to become familiar with its sound on my Rega Research P3-24 turntable—a fact that I found appealing for a few reasons: First and most important, there'd be no way to responsibly and confidently judge the Traveler's sound without first being able to characterize the Dynavector's sound. In an attempt to evaluate a specific component, that component should be the only variable introduced to the review system. Second, because my audiophile friends say that moving-coil cartridges are simply cooler than their moving-magnet counterparts, I've often wondered how my Rega would respond to an MC design like the Dynavector. And third, it had come to my attention, through several uncomfortable interactions not only with those same friends but also with disinterested hi-fi dealers, Stereophile readers, and anonymous forum posters, that my Rega's Elys MM cartridge is, to put it nicely, sorta lame. (Womp womp.)
"But wait—how so?"
"It just kinda sucks, man."
"Oh."
Come to think of it, in the many times I've encountered various iterations of Rega's famed Planar 3, either at a show or at a shop, the turntable was never equipped with Rega's own Elys. The cartridge that most often accompanied the turntable was, in fact, the Dynavector DV 10X5. You'd think that would have been motivation enough, but I was still scared.
The task of reviewing the VPI Traveler was the push I needed to finally face my fears and make the change.
It was time to play with my cartridge.
False start
My initial attempt at installing the DV 10X5 on my Rega P3-24 was entirely unsuccessful. When I opened the gold box and closely inspected the contents, I found, in addition to the cartridge itself, only a single mounting screw—no other hardware whatsoever. What was I supposed to do with a single screw? In search of clues, I returned to Art's original review.
Turned out that Art had had two main complaints about the DV 10X5: First, the mounting holes weren't threaded, which made installation slightly more difficult than usual; and second, the Dynavector's shape and size mandated the use of the included cheap, shallow-headed mounting screws. And then I read, "With few exceptions, the first thing I do when I get a new cartridge is to gleefully throw away the mounting hardware supplied with it."
Hmm.
So I had a tantalizingly pretty, potentially life-changing Dynavector DV 10X5, but no way of attaching it to my Rega P3-24. It was the perfect opportunity to request a new sample and learn more about the DV 10X5. I contacted Dynavector USA's Mike Pranka, who informed me that the latest iteration of the cartridge has one very useful improvement: threaded mounting holes.
A shiny, new DV 10X5 was in my hands in no time. It came in a nice black box with all the necessary hardware.
The necessary hardware
What's the big deal about moving-coil cartridges? What makes them cooler than the moving-magnet variety? In our 2005 Buyer's Guide, Wes Phillips broke it down simply. In MM cartridges, a tiny magnet is attached to the cantilever at the end opposite the stylus. As the stylus traces an LP's groove, its side-to-side and up-and-down motions drive the magnets through small coils of wire, creating electrical signals that are then passed on to the phono preamplifier. In MC cartridges, the wire coils are attached to the cantilever and the coils move in front of fixed magnets. The coils are generally lighter than the magnets, making MC cartridges more responsive to the microscopic motions of the stylus in the groove. Improved response equals better sound: in general, more inner detail, greater drama, scale, and grace.
On the other hand, because the wire coils of an MC cartridge must be extremely small and the wire itself extremely fine, MC cartridges are usually more expensive than MM cartridges. Additionally, those light coils generate weaker signals than MM designs, requiring additional amplification in the phono preamplifier or by an outboard step-up transformer—clearly a daunting proposition for the budget-minded audiophile.
The beauty of a high-output cartridge like the Dynavector DV 10X5 is that you get the benefits of an MC design without needing the extra gain. The cartridge, therefore, places less responsibility on the preamp—an especially attractive attribute, considering that high-quality (ie, high-output, low-noise) phono preamps are neither cheap nor easy to manufacture. But to achieve its higher output, the cartridge must use coils of higher mass, which, if not properly implemented, can minimize the benefits of the moving-coil design. To solve this problem, Dynavector employs a proprietary coil-winding machine—a tool that no doubt contributes to the DV 10X5's attractive price. According to Mike Pranka, Dynavector "has been perfecting the art of coil-winding for decades." The company uses coils of exceptionally low mass for their given output: 2.5mV, in the case of the DV 10X5.
Source : stereophile[dot]com
Classé CP-800 D/A preamplifier
I hadn't realized that the CP-800 is an example of a new breed of audio component: Not only is it a two-channel line preamplifier, it offers a complete set of digital inputs, including USB and an iPod connector. It can serve as a system's one-box heart, replacing the D/A processor and the cables connecting it to a conventional preamp. It even has a headphone output and a complete set of equalization features.
Plugging my laptop's USB output into the CP-800's rear-panel USB port, I was good to go chez ListenUp! I also vowed that the CP-800 would spend some quality time chez Atkinson.
What it does
The CP-800 shares the curved aluminum front panel Classé has used for its Delta-series products since the beginning of the century. This starts life as a flat extrusion with raised edges, and is gently bent into a U to form the front and side panels. Dominating the front panel is a large color LCD touchscreen that, in combination with the chunky metal remote, gives the user access to all functions via the usual hierarchical menu tree.
Flanking the touchscreen, within its bezel, are the Menu (left) and Mute (right) buttons, these duplicated on the remote. A black horizontal styling strip conceals: the Standby On/Off button to the left of the screen and, to the right, the infrared remote receiver window; a USB host connector for an iPod (Apple portable devices only; the CP-800's remote can control the iPod's transport functions); and a ¼" headphone jack. The large black knob for the shaft encoder that controls volume is at the right end of the black strip.
On the bottom of the rear panel are, from left to right: three pairs of unbalanced analog inputs on RCA jacks; two pairs of balanced analog inputs on XLR jacks; and two pairs of balanced outputs on XLRs, along with a single XLR output labeled Sub—all with their unbalanced counterparts on adjacent RCAs. The second pair of outputs can be assigned to double the main output pair, to permit biamping; alternatively, they can be used to provide stereo subwoofer outputs. The Sub output passes a mono low-frequency signal when enabled, but when the CP-800 is set up via the menu to manage bass, there is full control of crossover frequency and high-pass filter slope.
From left to right along the top of the rear panel are: the On/Off switch, and the AC input on an IEC jack; a USB port for connecting to a computer for audio streaming; a single AES/EBU digital input; three electrical S/PDIF digital inputs on RCAs (all digital inputs are galvanically isolated); four optical S/PDIF inputs on TosLinks; and various trigger and comms ports, including RS-232 and Ethernet. (On the review sample, the latter had still to be implemented.)
How it does it
Inside the CP-800, in front of the rear panel, a large, six-layer printed-circuit board runs the full width of the chassis. This carries the analog circuitry and the A/D, D/A, and DSP sections. Above this board and connected to it with two ribbon cables, a smaller, full-width, six-layer board carries the digital input circuitry. A small board behind the touchscreen, again connected to the main board with two ribbon cables, as well as to the screen with another ribbon, carries the CP-800's microcontroller.
Next to the controller board is the power supply. This is a switching type, but unlike conventional switch-mode power supplies, which have a bad rap in high-end audio circles for their propensity to introduce noise and enharmonic spuriae, the CP-800's supply uses Zero Volt Switching (ZVS), in which the primary switch operates when the incoming DC voltage is at a minimum, thus allowing the supply to have a low-noise RF footprint. In addition, the CP-800's supply is fully power-factor corrected, meaning that the incoming AC voltage and current are sinusoidal and in phase. (A white paper on this and the other technologies featured in the CP-800 can be downloaded here.)
The CP-800's rear-panel USB port operates in asynchronous mode, in which the flow of data is controlled by the DAC clock, not the computer. But the CP-800's operating mode, which Classé calls Optimal Asynchronous with Single Clock Substrate, differs from topologies used in competing products. Usually, the microcontroller in the asynchronous USB receiver chip controls the master clock. In the CP-800, a high-precision clock signal is buffered by a high-speed Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) chip placed next to the DACs and master-clock oscillators. This is said to result in increased clock purity and more accurate D/A conversion. Additionally, when the CP-800 is processing data encoded at 44.1kHz and its multiples, the 48kHz master clock is turned off, and vice versa, to avoid cross contamination.
In Analog Bypass mode, analog signals are fed straight to the volume control and output circuits and the digital clocks are turned off. (The volume control is implemented with two two-channel Burr-Brown PGA2310 programmable-gain chips, one per channel used as a differential volume control.) However, the tone or equalization controls are implemented using two Analog Devices DSP chips. So if the user wants to use these controls, the analog input signals are converted to 24-bit digital data with a Cirrus Logic 5381 A/D chip. Digital data are turned back to analog using two Wolfson WM8741 DAC chips, each of these a high-performance, multi-bit, sigma-delta, two-channel type capable of operating with 32-bit data. Each DAC chip operates in differential mode, one per channel, and runs at a constant rate of 176.4 or 192kHz. The voltage-output DACs are followed by a fourth-order reconstruction filter with a 100kHz passband.
Operation
While the CP-800 offers myriad customizing options via its touchscreen menu, the default settings out of the box proved to be all that I needed. Pressing any part of the touchscreen's Home screen or the Source Select button on the remote allows you to choose a digital or analog input. The chosen source is then displayed on the bottom left of the Home screen. If digital, the Home screen displays the current sample rate in small print at the bottom. Large numerals in the top half of the screen indicate the current volume setting.
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Source : stereophile[dot]com
