I have always had a proplem with any kind of hifi equipment. The problem has been that whatever the equipment was doing good it was not enough to balance what it was not doing or doing wrong. This has been valid for amplifiers, cables, CD players or transport, DAC, streamers, but has been more present in preamps, and more so in the pre-pre categories.
The phono MM preamp is a bad animal, but still belonging on the same kingdom of line preamp. The MC step up preamp… is a wild beast most of the times born with heavy handycaps. This is since it has to deal with more deep problems then the « normal » preamps, and dealing with deep problems is always more difficult then dealing with more superficial ones. The mainly problem is noise. The pre-pre has to develop in its preamplifying action as less noise as possible or proposing « something else » in echange for it, or proposing a more natural, less intrusive felt noise if such thing exists.
There are very good MC phono preamps that are dead quite. The thing for me is that all these very good preamps, except the ones that cost more then 15000 euros, will make you very happy only when you turn them on and put your ear close to a loudspeaker. They are quite like a tomb. But the more you listen music with them, the more you are happy appreciating how good they should sound, for all their quiteness, the more something strange will start to take shape inside of you. Or at least inside me. They get too close to digital reproduction. You feel as something that makes analogue special, is getting lost in this quest of absolute noise reduction. Anf this lost thing has some quality that is extremely difficult to explain and to put in words. I guess it is something that is related to a dialogue between noise and silence. It feels as part of the noise has the capacity to store something related to the musical message. I really cannot say what this something is, but I can say that it is lost. This is also very clear with cables. And expecially with power cables and power conditioners.
MC step up transformer, in this case are for me the best bet for pre – pre applications. But…yes the but can have a profund meaning. There is a terrible matching hell to fight with before having a very good result. If you get out winning this match, a good MC step up transformer with a fairly economic MM preamp will sound more musical then a full box phono preamp costing 4 - 5 times more. At least for my personal taste. But it will be the result of either trying different MC transformer step up with your cartridge, very difficult thing to do since it is extremely rare to find a dealer that has few to let you try, or just a lucky strike. Many of us believe in the lucky srike mostly because we don’t compare this lucky stike with something else and to realize that is just a strike with half luck. There is also another option : buying the MC step up transformer that has been made to go with your cartridge. Also this could not be the best since it will have to match the other gear is connected to. But it remains the safer bet.
The MC preamp is a wild best because it kills timbres, and it kills energy. It flatten energy and timbres in its proces of amplification. And what it kills no other parts in the chain will be able to resuscitate.
In this case Lector came out with something "wrong": a tube MC step up.
How the hell you think to step up very low voltage with something noisy as tubes are?
The thing with tubes is that they are noisier then solid state, and noise is not good. But as I said before it is not that if noise is not good and I have something that makes less noise this something is going to sound better. It will just have less noise.
So the matter is giving more essential good introducing less meaningfull bad things.
I think that Lector aimed at this.
How does it sound?
When you try this unit coming from very expensive SUT, like the EMT, that I love, or the Auditorium 23 Hommage, that I deeply like, the first thing you want to know is if there is any noise out of it. You go to put your ear close to a loudspeaker and... you hear the wind of tubes! It is not loud, since you cannot hear it from the listening position, but you know it is there. And this knowing is very fastidius.
So I have started listening this step up with a very bad attitude toward it.
Add to this that the first 30 hours it does not sound well at all.
Highs are disconnected, the flow is restricted, the resolution is not that good.
After about 50 hours things are different. You will start to appreciate that it is more fluid then many others and that the differenciation of timbres is more evident and that the rithmic capabilities are surprisingly very good, excepionally so for a tube pre, but more so is that all is given in a coherent manner. The partecipation of all the elements are better glued togheter then of a more classic step up or MC phono preamp. Yes, the music makes a little more sense, and you start forgiving it adds a little noise. When you go back to a normal step up transformers, it means in the class of 1000 euros, you will discover that step up transformers, in the keeping a richer timbre in comparison to the solid state pre phono, bring a caracteristic distorsion, a pleasent distortion. You will realise that a solid state has less distortion, but a worse one.
At my age, I am 57 right now, listening is much less a dissection of elements. My listening is directed more toward the emotion then anything else. This was the case when all started, but then, in the quest of getting better sound, I have become more concerned about this and that, about the depth of stage, deeper bass, focalisation and bla bla bla. And I managed to get better sound. But rarely better music.
After many years I started not to care about the elements of the reproduction if the result is not convincing even though seducing.
I have listened to too many hifi objects, most of them quite expensive, that in the quest of some great caracteristic, like a cavernous stage, or whatever, have lost the capability to make music out of these elements. It is true that we like to justify how we spend our money and it is easier to justify it when we have something easy to target to. Also because if our quest is musicality, the essence of music expression, you realise the most gear you listen to, does not give you more music but just more of a part of it, and most of the time at the cost of the all picture.
It is extremely difficult to get more meaning, more vibration, more expression, more musical intent out.
This long prelude it is just to say that it is useless to talk about all the hifi elements if these are not balanced in a coherent and meaningful way, the way that brings sense to the musical message.
This unit has a good portion of all the hifi things we like, none of them is great but it has them in good portion and expecially proportion. It has good focalisation, good depth, good dynamic swing and so on but it has something that most of them lack: it makes them able to gel well togheter.
Let's got more in depth about some special caracteristic this step up has. First of all, it proposes a different nature of distortion in comparison to the MC step up transformer, keeping the same richness of timbre that for me only MC step up transformer are capable of preserving. And I can say this kind of distortion is less mechanical to the ears. You get a less mechanical distortion for more noise. I say "mechanical" distortion even though it is not a correct term. I refer to it as mechanical since it is a distortion that in some frequences gives more rigidity to the musical message.
The very expensive MC step up transformer such the EMT, or the Auditorium 23 Hommage, have in much less degree then cheaper onese, but they still have it a little of it.
But with this unit we have something that these two MC step up transfomer don't have: the capacity of loading the cartridge the way you like.
For me this is the "bad disesase" of MC step up transformer: you cannot be sure they will sound good with your cartridge in your system. So either you have different cartridges and different MC step up transformer, or you will never can be sure about the matching issue.
After I started liking this unit quite a lot, I started playing with resistors for loading the cartridges.
A different resistor of the same value, many say in this position should not change the sound and instead it changes the sound!
I have loaded two videos where you have the same value resistor but from differnt makers and from different materials: one is the Audio Note Niobium and the other is a Takman metal resistor. The difference is more or less clear, and if you can hear it on these videos, in reality it is even more clear.
The Takman metal resistor makes the "bodily" difference betwen instruments and silence more clear. Instruments are more carved out in space, but they are more closed in in their timbric expression. The Audio Note Niobium makes timbric differences between instruments more clear, it is more fluid and more nuanced. The Takman has more dynamic contrast, it pushes stronger. It has a kind of wave energy in storing and giving it back.
I would have liked to try with other resistors, but unfortunately I had to return the unit to his owner.
For which kind of listener this product is?
The Lector is certainly for the ones that are not concerned with anything else then musicality.
That's it.
Great work Lector!
PS: I wonder why this brand is not more popular. I guess it is for its almost inexistent marketing effort. I have to say that I have never listened to a Lector product that was not great in its price range and above. Its CD players, transports and DACs are really excellent. Its preamplifier is a steal for the money. This MC step up phono is exceptional... It is like Lector is uncapable of proposing an average product!
Audio Note Niobium resistor (the pink one) vs Takman metal
PS: the Audio Note Niobium will sound much better after about 50 hours. It will improve dynamic contrast and it becomes more rithmical overall. The improvement in rithmic let me perplexed but it happened without expecting it.
The music in the videos is from this immortal album!
When its stilus touched the LP I realised I was not liking it. It was a strange sound. Expecially it was dynamically constricted, dynamically muted. The biggest problem was that this was not balanced by some other magnificient quality so that you could say : yes, you don’t like it but have you ever heard its 3D presentation? or something like this. No, nothing at all. I thought it was a bad cartridge. Moreso it was on the lowish output even for an MC and this proved a problem for the first preamp it was connected to. And this was the only reason why I realised I had made a mistake. The thing was not properly loaded. I have made a big mistake with my step up. You know sometimes, even though you need glasses, you just say to yourself you know by heart were the setting are. But when I was ready to change my phono preamp I had my glasses on and said : what the hell ! I have loaded it at 37 ohm !
I started it all again. I used a step up transformer on my Lamm phono preamp and things… changed. Yes they changed. Dynamic it was sure not its forte, but was acceptable, normal, not too good not too bad, but it was emmediate to my ears that it had soomething special et unique. It had a kind of sweet fluidity with a certain tinbric density coupled with not really muted transient attack. Generally when we hear a certain fluidity we also hear diminished transient attacks, and expecially fluidity and density of timbre don't go often toghete, but in this case, its not that it had great transient capability, but the fluidity of its musical reproduction was perfectly balanced with everything else in a way that I was feeling nothing was missing. I perfectly know this trick. And is a rare one. So the thing that gets you captivated is this kind of uniqueness of sound. When you hear it after a while you realise that all other MC cartridges really have something in common, you realise that all belong to the same family with some variations that meke certain cartridges more appealing to you then other ones. But this one is like it has a different nature. In a way it is exremely interesting since it is really like a new interpretation of the music. on the other side the way you have learned to judge and to select cartridges is challenged to the point that you ask yourself who got it right. While keep on listening to thos cartridge few times I have thought all the others got it wrong, since there was a certain expression a certain charge in the music that was completely absent from all the other MC cartridges I have listened to. They all sounded mechanical in comparison to this one. And the ones that sound less mechanical and more fluid were achieving this at the expenses of body, or transient attack.
The only really fastidious point was that after so many years of being used to MC sound whenever I wentr back to another cartridge, I was feeling more "at home" in its wrong doing. I am sure that if I had lived with this cartridge for much longer time I had to seriously readjust to all my other cartridges with some difficulty.
For this reason I can surely affirm that this cartridge has some kind of magic. Not because it immediately will blow you away but it will suck you in a strange world. in a world were thing are there like suspended in a different reality you are used to ear.
You can buy some cartridges that have some universal pleasing sound like Dynavector. I don't know anyone that does not like Dynavector. That he prefer something else yes, but that dislikes Dynavector never. Then there are other cartridges that are disliked only by people that don't let them express as they were supposed to sound like Ortofons. Ortofons sound the way they should only with step up transformers in my opinion if not they sound uninvolving. But if you use with the right step up they are not going to be disliked by anyone. Then you have some others like VDH that are either disliked or loved like it happens with Naim electronics.
In this case, with this Miyajima, it is absolutely impossible to predict by who it is going to be loved. I guess it will fit well in a reproduction chain with low power amps and horn speakers.
It is a cartridge that all vinyl lover should hear. I guess this is valid for all miyajima cartridges. Right now I am listening to another Miyajima, the Shilabe. It has the same family sound of the Saboten, so I think this is the sound of Miyajima cartridges.
One thing is sure: if you like this sound nothing can be an alternative to it.
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