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I have an SME IV on my recently acquired Nottingham Spacedeck. I have tried it with a number of cartridges, including a Koetsu, Denon DL103, Glider and Rohmann. In each case, it sounds fine (depending also on phono stage and loading), but not as musically engaging as I was hoping. I also have an LP12 with an Ekos, which never fails to sound exciting and engaging, regardless of which cartridge I use. I don't get this sense from the Spacedeck/SME IV.The Spacedeck has a reputation for musicality, but the SME arms seem to have a sense of professional respect for their neutrality and accuracy and their engineering qualities, but few people seem to regard them as great musical communicators. Is this an accurate summary?
I haven't been able to compare the SME with other arms on the same turntable so I have no idea which sonic attributes are attributable to the arm alone. (Although replacing the VDH cable with Kimber Tak-Cu was a big improvement.) What are the sonic characteristics of the SME IV? Is it accurate but dry and mechanical sounding, as some have suggested?
If the SME is ultimately letting down the rest of the system, perhaps it is time to move on to something else. But most competing arms now, especially those with the quality and mass needed for something like a Koetsu, are *extremely* expensive. Are there any realistic alternatives which do not involve some other compromise? Some arms which get good reviews at reasonable prices, such as the Hadcock, only seem useful for a small number of cartridges. Is there such a thing as a reasonably priced arm (say, around US$1500) that is good enough for high end cartridges, versatile enough for a range of MC cartridges and, above all, musical?
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It has been my experience after using many different arms on Spacedecks that they ultimately are more musical when paired with some version of their own arms.
Forgive me for being so bold. I recently sold my Spacedeck and as beautiful as they are, I do not think it wise to ever deam a component perfect so as to remove it from the equation that produces the sum(reproduced sound).
nt.
I haven't heard the SME. Most of my experience is with Origin Live and Music Hall. I don't think you would do very badly if you got an OL Encounter. They are fast, detailed and musical. You will need to add mass to the headshell if you want to run a low compliance cart. If that bothers you then OL might not be a good idea. I'm pretty impressed with mine.
The OL Encounter is loses out to even the Spacearm on a Spacedeck. And the Ace-Space is even better.
Same experience with my OL Illustrious.
A few points to ponder...- You might check the resonance frequency for your arm/cartridge match is inside the 8-11hZ range. You'll need the effective mass of the arm, the weight and compliance of the cartridge. (I'd calc it for you but cannot find the compliance for any Koetsu other than 'medium/low'). Comments are mixed on how well the various Koetsus work with SME arms, although the SME IV and V are about as close as one will find to a universal arm for medium weight and medium/low compliance cartridges. Nonetheless, no arm works with every cart and vice versa.
- A couple weeks ago you described a brand new Koetsu as boring but then said that changed with a different phono stage. Cartridges can wander all over the place for their first 100 hours or so and changes are not always linear. Unless you have at least that many hours on it, your Koetsu may not be broken-in yet.
- I'm never sure what people mean by 'musical', so I'll take it you mean you're not happy with the results you're getting from your front end. A quick search on terms 'SME' and 'Spacedeck' find several folks satisfied with that combo and are not describing the match as less than musical. That would seem to indicate people are not finding an inherent mismatch between an SME IV or V and a Spacedeck.
- Fine tuning VTA/SRA probably needs to wait for break-in to complete. Null points and offset are worth triple checking. A level table is a happy table. Perhaps do a search on what loading folks are using with the Koetsu.
I've had excellent results with an SME V used with Grado, Clearaudio, Shelter, and Transfiguration cartridges. At no time would I characterize the tonearm with any of those cartridges as dry or mechanical. Its presentation tends to be a bit more row 10 than loge. If resonance frequency is in the sweet spot, it won't introduce spurious colorations or cause a cartridge to take on a fundamentally different character. If a cartridge sounded lifeless, I'd suspect my setup before I'd suspect the SME. As critical as the cart/arm match is, my own experience is that cartridges can be just as more or less synergistic with a phono-stage as with an arm.
Its tough looking for an arm around the $1500 price point. Maybe a Moerch? I don't know how well they mate with your cartridges but they offer different arm tubes to change effective mass. Flexibility, ergonomics, and build quality are not at the SME level, but they are generally well regarded in terms of sonics. Best of luck.
"The Spacedeck has a reputation for musicality, but the SME arms seem to have a sense of professional respect for their neutrality and accuracy and their engineering qualities, but few people seem to regard them as great musical communicators. Is this an accurate summary?""Accuracy" and "neutrality" imply great musical communication to me.
I've heard the SME IV and V in several familiar setups and they always strike me as sounding dry, mechanical, and emotionally detached. Music, OTOH, has none of those attributes, therefore, the SME arms are not accurate in my experience.
I recommend a Morch UP-4 or DP-6. Both are within your stated price range and are very popular with Spacedeck owners, particularly in the UK. Their interchangeable arm wands are available in four different effective masses, and they come with a mix-and-match assortment of counterweights to ideally accommodate an unusually wide range of pickups.
More importantly, these arms convey the music's energy, natural flow, rhythmic drive, and tonal color quite well. The result is an involving, "organic" presentation that makes the SME arms I've heard seem distractingly analytical and sterile by comparison.
Why not free yourself from the "high end" prison of prejudice and try some classic vintage high mass arms, since that is clearly where you want to go? The problem, if I might conjecture, is that your own ears have told you that your much less expensive rig sounds better, but the powers that be are in contradiction.Ignore them.
Ignore Mr. Elison, too, since he listens to speakers made by a company that also implants speakers into false rocks for your garden. Enough said.
Good Luck,
It sounds to me like you have a millstone around your neck!
I suspect that SME did indeed try to make the tonearm as neutral as possible. Doing so may have opened a can of worms, however. Do you want neutral?The following is a post of mine from a thread on another forum. It is in regard to platters and plinths, but I suspect it would apply equally to anything in the audio chain, so I thought it might have some use here, too. It doesn't answer any questions, though. It only feeds the neurosis. ;)
______________________________________________________________Many people drop a mechanism into a heavy plinth, but without consideration for the necessity of it. Why do they do that? I submit that it is easier than correcting resonance issues that are inherent to the mechanism itself. Why not minimize the resonances? Then, the heavy plinth would be an added benefit, and not simply a quick solution that doesn't really cure the inherent problem. Am I wrong? If so, how so?
Mats are another example of this sort of approach. Awhile back I bought a JVC QL-7 because it was cheap, and I wanted to see how it worked. One thing that struck me was its beautiful mat, so I decided to try it on my turntable. It looked fantastic, but it killed transients, and sucked out highs. I came to realize that those two characteristics are also killed in many direct drive Japanese turntables, regardless of cost. One would need to hear a truly good turntable to appreciate how badly these models perform. It seems that the designers used the lossy mat to hide the noise of their direct drive motors. This experience led me to consider the mat that I had been using. That's when I came to realize that the best solution is to correct noise issues, so that no mat at all would be the favorable solution.
I experimented, and in the end, I sent Blue an e-mail which goes to partly explain the catch-22 that all designers encounter. What is accurate, and what is neutral, and do you actually want it?
Here is part of that e-mail:
...Also, I have added a Delrin top which took it up yet another level. All residual idler noise, and it was only very minimal, is completely gone now. Also, detail is enhanced. When I first made the change however, I got the highly detailed, but clinical sound that some people complain about when they hear certain high-end turntables. I never knew exactly what they meant before, but now I realize that it is a particularly accurate sound that somehow lacks musicality. It is difficult to describe. I had never considered with much concern the aspect of voicing the platter itself, but it was quite an endeavor, and a surprising one at that. Luckily, I managed to retain the increased detail while putting back the character of the music by adding a ring of rubberized cork hidden in a routed area on the bottomside of the Delrin. Until now, I considered my goal to be that of a neutral sounding idler driven turntable, but which came first, the chicken or the egg? Now, I ask myself... What is neutral? Did the Delrin make it neutral, or did it add detail while imparting some other characteristic that deviated from a neutral one? Do I like neutral, and do I know it when I hear it? Does anyone who designs a turntable know for certain? Is it correct to assume that those who make the megabuck turntables know exactly what is neutral, but some people do not prefer that sound? I don't know the answers to these questions, but I don't think the difference is one that is measured with test equipment. That said, I have managed to extract all the detail that this turntable will give, and I have managed to keep it musical and quiet. I have also learned that the platter is more critical than I ever imagined, and mass and the control of ringing are not the only considerations. There is a lot more going on in that area than those things. That's for sure. Anyway, I have managed to build a dead silent idler turntable that is liked those who have heard it. Maybe it is neutral, or maybe it is a musical instrument. Who knows?...
Moisin,you are right. Any solution (mat, plinth, tonarm etc.) that damps resonances at a turntable system will kill the "bad" and the "good" resonances. You get rid of distortions, but dynamics and details get lost too.
Im not a friend of damping - the best way would be not to have the wrong resonances and work on the source of that resonances instead of damping them.
But this way is much more complicated and sophisticated instead of damping.Back to the modern SME arms like the 309, 310, IV and V. My expierience is that they are much more damped than other straight forward designs.
A lot of modern MC carts need damped arms due to their uncontrolled resonances, but a older MC design f. e. Koetsus were damped to death at such tonearm designs.Best
"Any solution (mat, plinth, tonarm etc.) that damps resonances at a turntable system will kill the "bad" and the "good" resonances."There is no sure thing as "good resonances".
Tre'
Have Fun and Enjoy the Music
"Still Working the Problem"
"There is no sure thing as 'good resonances." (I assume you meant 'such' thing...)I disagree. Everything resonates, like it or not. Most attempts to damp out resonant energy merely shift its frequency around, sometimes for better, sometimes for the worse.
Oft times when something light and rigid (high resonant frequency) is allowed to resonate freely, it quickly dissipates its resonant energy and does very little harm to the musical presentation.
OTOH, when a designer places too much reliance on primitive mass loading in an attempt to damp out resonance, the result is often excessive energy "storage" due to the resultant low resonant frequencies involved.
If, for example, a bass note excites a massive TT component to resonate, the note quickly ends but its energy is still being released back into the system after the event, causing the note attack to be smeared, its sustain bloated, and its decay truncated. That's why so many TTs that rely on excessive mass-loading sound mechanical and lifeless.
The judicious use of mass, coupled with some real engineering work can yield musically spectacular results (Linn, Avid, Michell, Roksan, etc.), but all-out resonance damping assaults via crude mass-loading usually result in a musically-incompetent TT, IME.
What you say is true, but even then there are subjective decisions to be made. Those are made depending on the degree of change the maker believes is most suitable, assuming he has a decent starting point. I believe that some components are doomed at the outset because the original design is inherently flawed. On the otherhand, I am pretty sure that some would have immense potential, but the maker went too far with his tuning. Then, there are those which make the grade, some acceptable, and some spectacular.Anyway, the job isn't easy because endless prototypes aren't practical, and there are other constraints for manufacturers to consider that have nothing to do with the audio aspect of their businesses. It's no wonder most of us are on some bizarre upgrade path. It is an unending learning process.
.
Actually you are both right and wrong.If you have a stylus in a groove it is resonating and its resonance adds to whatever is in the groove. Look further down the chain. Your cartridge engine is resonating. The cartridge body is resonating. The headshell and tonearm is resonating. The platter is resonating. Even the electrical signal resonates.
Now look at the damn speakers. These things are creating and reflecting a whole different issues regarding resonance. Your entire system is pressurizing a room and the room creates some really fascinating resonance.
You simply cannot eliminate resonance in any electronic audio reproduction event. Nor can you eliminate resonance in the live musical event or the processes used to capture the event to the media of your choice. Even the microphone resonates!
How we manage resonance is absolutely critical to getting a life like sound reproduction.
Managing resonance is not a simple matter just as Mosin describes. We have to first reduce resonance to the lowest point of intrusion and then manage the resonance so it does the least harm to the music.
Some manufacturer's have this really nailed. Some are attrocious. System matching is hugely responsible for managing good and bad resonance.
Even my Viola when perfectly played will exhibit good and bad resonance. The result is music and the music is natural. Where I stand on the stage will determine how my Viola sounds to the audience. So even the live music event incorporates resonance management issues. If the Viola is not resonating there is no music. Eliminating all resonance...what is the fun of that?
"Im not a friend of damping - the best way would be not to have the wrong resonances and work on the source of that resonances instead of damping them.
But this way is much more complicated and sophisticated instead of damping"René,
I agree. Getting it right is a very serious balancing act, however. I believe it is also the reason that people sometimes buy equipment that is all first-class, yet their systems are somehow lacking. What they have are wonderful executions, but by designers who work independently. It happens even if they get all of the equipment from the same maker, and perhaps more so. I suppose that the trick is to carefully match everything. It is easier said than done, though.
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