With Touraj at Vertere Acoustics

[Ron Resnick]

Yes, Lloyd, it was great fun! Thank you!

 

[Billy Shears]

I met LL21 today at KJ West One, a high-end audio dealer in London. KJ West One is a beautiful store with lots of my favorite brands (including ARC, Jadis, VTL, Martin-Logan, Magnepan, DarTZeel, Transparent, Vertere) and very knowledgeable, seasoned audio experts. We listened to the Vertere SG-1 turntable and the SG-1 tonearm with a Dynavector cartridge into a VTL pre-amp to VTL monoblocks driving Wilson Alexias.

Playing the exact same tracks Touraj played for me at Vertere I can report that while the lower-end Vertere sounded good it did not sound like anything special. I stand by my view (especially surprising when you factor in that I prefer VTL electronics driving Alexias over solid state (even if it is FM Acoustics) driving PMC studio monitors) that the top-of-the-line Vertere record player and tonearm together form a very, very special record-playing system -- I think one of the top vinyl systems available today. (And I give most of the credit for that view to the Vertere Reference tonearm.)

You would hope that it would be possible to experience a large part of the reference sound at a lower Pricepoint. Sadly in this instance it seems expecting 99% of the performace for a tenth of the cost is asking a little too much...

 

[Ron Resnick]

Dear Billy, I think the mid-range components allow you to experience a large portion of the sound of the reference system. The Reference turntable and tonearm are Touraj's effort at cost-no-object and state-of-the-art vinyl replay. There just is something very special about the reference components I did not hear with the lesser components. I cannot quantify the difference.

I do not think we can expect 99% of the best for 10% of the cost. I just think that is an overly optimistic ratio. I think something like 2/3 of the best for 1/3 of the cost is seen more often in high end audio companies' product lines.

 

[Billy Shears]

I do not think we can expect 99% of the best for 10% of the cost. I just think that is an overly optimistic ratio. I think something like 2/3 of the best for 1/3 of the cost is seen more often in high end audio companies' product lines.

I am with you on that one.
But there luckily are exceptions to that rule....

 

[LL21]

Yes, Lloyd, it was great fun! Thank you!

Thanks for the invitation...that was good fun, and i particularly enjoyed comparing notes on what we heard, what we have heard in the past (listening notes) and what we look for. I think going forward when we compare listening notes, it will be that much easier to understand each other, which is a lot of fun. Enjoy your next few auditions which are likely to be absolutely great...particularly the ones which i know and have already heard before.

 

[Ron Resnick]

Lloyd, yes it was fun and very helpful to begin to "calibrate" each other's sonic preferences!

 

[Ron Resnick]

My wife and I had another absolutely wonderful afternoon and evening with Touraj! Touraj was very excited about a positive development in a speaker cable prototype. Vertere Acoustics is doing well and he is expecting to move into larger space in a couple of months.

 

[spiritofmusic]

That all sounds good. Despite me not having any Roksan gear anymore, he's a Hell of an engineer, and it looks like his current project is working well for him.
Sounds like you had a lot of fun.