Living Presence

[Mike Lavigne]

I guess, there is no black or white, winner or loser Answer ...
it will depend on your priority, musical preferences, listening to reissues or not and the matching components for it.
the Olympos SL is more a Diva than the Koetsu ...
when your priority is speed, attack, resolution ... plus believable tonal colors ...then that one is the one to go
when your priority is richness, body, vibrant tone, wide dynamic shifts with natural flow ...then the Koetsu Stone Body is a serious choice

yes, I own Blue Lace Diamond Cantilever
did own BL regular cantilever first and sent it back later for diamond cantilever installation

many thanks. that is helpful. attributes of both are in the ne plus ultra realm for what they do.

i recall that 'touch of mink' comment related to the Olympos SL that always rang true to my ears.....and your 'diva' term fits too.

 

[Syntax]

Yes, unfortunately both are very exclusive And expensive ( typical High End Business )
So, both go automatically in the usual Hype of proud ownership. I feel a bit uncomfortable when I write that. My audiophile Life is loaded with these Raves which are at the end of the day good for nothing. But I listened also to similar priced cartridges which made me beg to leave the room.
Finally, both are among the very few which survived in my Comparisons. ... and I still refuse to sell my modified FR-1 mk3 .... that one is my personal wake up call .... unbelievable what is possible when a Designer knows how to do it right

 

[PeterA]

Syntax, That last photograph has great resolution, even down to the reflection of the diamond stylus underneath and the crimped end of the cantilever. What lens and camera are you using?

 

[Syntax]

It was done with Nikon D3s and Nikon 105mm Macro Lens

 

[Mike Lavigne]

It was done with Nikon D3s and Nikon 105mm Macro Lens

do you use a focusing rail for stylus shots? or just a good tripod with technique?

 

[Syntax]

do you use a focusing rail for stylus shots? or just a good tripod with technique?

A good tripod with technique

When you want a very good one

The combination is very good, the original has about 20MB, and the one is reduced to 200KB jpeg, still very sharp I think

 

[andromedaaudio]

A good tripod with technique

When you want a very good one

The combination is very good, the original has about 20MB, and the one is reduced to 200KB jpeg, still very sharp I think

Your digital is outstanding syntax .
Very nice pix

 

[Syntax]

Black
And heavy. And it is a Amp which has the Status „Reference“. Well, to make a very long Story short, the Status, it is true, indeed. It is a Hybrid Design with 1 Tube (6922 Triode tube), maybe it makes the difference, who knows. What strikes the Listener after the warm up is a total different kind of the tonal color compared to other Transistor Designs.



This thing simply sounds different. It gets all of these little details right from the sonic structure and tonal differences.
The amp can be matched to the connected Speaker, at the rear is a switch where you can choose the load, 1-6? or 8-16?, when your Speaker is in between, don't worry, listen to each setting and choose the one you like best. There is definetly a sonic difference between these, but it depends on your X-Over and Speaker in general.
It is pure Class A, healthy, stable and like I wrote, not as dead or clinical sounding as most other similar Designs.



My prior Listening is back to the Time where RCA Living Stereo were recorded, Mercury Living Presence or Decca, Londons...mostly Classic ballet music, very dynamic, complicated from Soundstage, Staging, lots of different Instruments, good channel Separation and Speaker Chassis are neccessary to get it....
Most audiophiles are looking for Artifacts like more Bass, Black background, deeper Soundstage and so on...I can't comment that (it would be easy to support that but I don't like these kind of descriptions..) but what you can hear immediately is, there is something totally different going on in front of you.



Being a visitor IN that Playback Performance (will not work with Rap, HipHop or similar, sorry)...Clear Emotion?
It breathes life into the Performance, it combines technical expertise with emotional intensity, delivery lightning strikes of deep, fast, ultratight Bass (my listening tools are 8?, 93dB, simple X-over speakers ... Easy to go speakers) and a remarkable expression of bloom and air with no loss of detail or control. The impression of a liquid-sounding Playback will come to new life, yes, in a way, the rightness of the musical flow is indeed obvious.
I am careful with the word musicality because this word is used too much from inferior or wrong sounding units, but when your software is one of the better recordings, you are indeed a part of a timeshift. I modified my units with a few higher quality parts, mainly input and speaker terminals...but didn't touch anything from the Layout. The Sound is faultless in every area of Performance, Soundstaging, Imaging, dynamics, harmonics (this here is key), frequency extension, solidity, outstanding transient speed, Clarity...you name it.



Maybe this amp will get some limits with inefficient speakers, can't say, don't have such. Efficient speakers can make life pretty easy and allow the connected amp to shine. Good amps are able to tell the Listener some total new stories with uncanny humanness and realism. This amp is one of those. It has its own ability to respond to a signal, amplify it and going out of its way. I replaced the stock tube with Amperex, very nice improvement, finally I landed with Telefunken from 1970... Linear, straight, clean, quiet.


Probably I can write their abilities in one Sentence:
There is something which makes you refuse to shut them off.
Or
2. sentence
they make you almost forget that you are listening to recordings...

 

[jeff1225]

I was under the impression that you moved on from the M1.2 to the Wavac?

 

[dan31]

The cartoon at the bottom looks like my speaker setup. Very maxell.

 

[Syntax]

I was under the impression that you moved on from the M1.2 to the Wavac?

I own Lamm ML 2.1, the M1.2R and the Wavac833

 

[jeff1225]

I own Lamm ML 2.1, the M1.2R and the Wavac833

View attachment 76438


View attachment 76437

What amps get the most use?

 

[Syntax]

I own a serious modified Lamm ML2.1 ...I had a time where I thought about ML3 ..but when listening to it, that one was not able to tell me anything new in any range so I still stay with that 2.1...it has a high frequency headroom which is a class of its own (straight, fast, full in volume...)

 

[PeterA]

Syntax, How are your ML2s modified? I’ve heard those in two different systems in Utah and they are fantastic amplifiers. I also heard the ML3 there but not in the same system.

Did you ever have the ML2s on Vibraplanes? Also do you use a Lamm preamp? If not, why not?

I have heard some gear similar to yours with a Micro Seiki SX 8000 II and all Lamm on horns, and it made quite an impression. I bought the Micro Seiki. Do you still use yours now that you cancelled your Apolyte order?

 

[Syntax]

Oh, it was done more than 10 years ago, it still sounds like a Lamm amp but with more of everything. A lot of different things ...
All on Vibraplanes, the Omnigon Preamp is very reliable and still the best preamp I ever listened to. I own some Lamm stuff as backup but didn‘t use it for years ... I use my modified Micro, have no problem with the cancelled Apolyt order. My main priority beside sound quality is reliability. In my former years i saw a lot of complicated designs... my next task is to get rid of my awful MFSL records ... and ... some of this ... and that ...

 

[PeterA]

Thank you Syntax. I missed the Vibraplane in the ML2 photo. I also did not see the large plastic platter modification above the Micro metal platter. I do see what looks like a Lamm phono though. Good stuff.

 

[assessor43]

not all the Mofi's are bad but many really are not that good. Thats for sure.

 

[Syntax]

Well, new day...new game ....

Ready for comparisons ....

 

[Syntax]

One of the Golden Age




The soundtrack, like everything else about the movie, was over the top. "The legend is that the original master tape had 'mad' levels on it," says Harry Pearson, editor and publisher of the audiophile bible Absolute Sound and, by general consensus, the person most responsible for creating the "Casino Royale" cult. Mr. Pearson explains that a sound engineer usually adjusts recording levels so that when musicians are playing their loudest, the meters on the console reach zero. "Once the meters pass zero, it means that you're saturating the tape and running the risk of distortion," he says. "On 'Casino,' they used a supposedly very fancy grade of tape, and the engineers really pushed it, so the meters were typically running deep into the red -- plus one, plus two, plus three, plus four." As a result, he says, the record has an "extremely wide dynamic range" -- higher highs and lower lows.



"They weren't afraid to push the medium to the limits of the recording process," Mr. Pearson adds. "It can lead to disaster, but in the case of 'Casino,' it doesn't. There's no saturation, no distortion. The record is as clean as a whistle."
For this reason, ever since the album's release, audiophiles have valued "Casino Royale" as a test for stereo equipment. "The better your system gets," says Mr. Pearson, "the more you get out of that album."
The Look of Love" provides several such tests. Dusty Springfield recorded her vocal in a "tiny isolation booth, so on a really good system, you can hear her voice emerging from what sounds like a little hole in space," Mr. Pearson says. "She's not part of the general orchestral acoustic, and once your system gets to a certain point, you can hear that."
The song also features a sudden saxophone dip and rise that, on less sophisticated equipment, sounds like two or three distinct instruments, and a serrated gourd called a guirot, whose every notch will sound, under ideal conditions, Mr. Pearson says, "like a tooth on a comb. A normal sound system simply can't reproduce this series of very quick transients" -- stiff sound waves -- "at a very soft level. Just cannot do it.
Mr. Pearson founded the Absolute Sound in 1973 when he was still an environmental reporter for Newsday, and he tries to apply objective reporting to the subjective experience of listening to music.

"Whenever we get a piece of equipment that we think is setting new records," he says, "out comes 'Casino.' "

 

[advanced101]

Thank you for being active here on WBF, always interesting.