Editorial - That Vinyl Thang


Vinyl replay can be a tricky thing to get right, and I think that's at least in part what attracts a lot of hi-fi buffs to it - there's always another tweak to try, and so many variables mechanical and electrical, that one could spend a lifetime (and a lot of money) in the endless quest for the best possible sound.

A few years ago, as I was just beginning to produce vinyl transfers for commercial issue, I contacted Expert Stylus in England to enquire about what might be my best bet for those early mono LPs. I knew I needed a slightly larger stylus tip than that found on a regular stereo cartridge, and Expert were able to provide just the thing - a diamond custom-ground to a new profile they'd been working on for many years, mounted in a Benz Micro Glider moving coil cartridge.

A couple of weeks later it arrived and my jaw duly dropped - it really did sound excellent, better than anything I'd heard from vinyl before. Mounted in a heavily-upgraded Rega tone-arm it served me well for half a decade. Then, a few weeks ago, disaster struck - somehow as my wife was dusting the studio she managed to accidentally knock the permanently-exposed cantilever rod and stylus of the Benz with her cloth. The tiny boron rod and its diamond have not been seen since...

This set a whole load of wheels in motion: the urgent requirement was a cartridge - fortunately the retirement of my colleague Peter Harrison meant that an identical Benz was sitting unused in his studio in England, and Peter shipped this over by express post immediately (it's no coincidence that we put out a Katchen recording transferred from commercial open-reel tape at the time!).

But the whole experience got me thinking hard about Pristine's on-going expansion into the stereo era, and the replay of stereo LPs. I'd already discovered that my Benz "mono" cartridge was very good at replaying most stereo LPs, rarely being troubled by the fact it was riding slightly high in the grooves, and delivering much better sound than my "proper" stereo cartridges. Even so, I now had a broken Benz cartridge body which might be repairable - and then tipped with a stereo-profile diamond. (In the end it was too damaged, but I received a generous trade-in for a new Benz.)

But this left me with another problem: Cartridge-swapping is a nightmare at the best of times, but to be in a position of having to do this every few days. or possible several times a day, is just asking for trouble. It was time to investigate the second tonearm mounting point on my Nottingham Analogue record deck. First I needed the right mounts, which N.A. were happy to supply. Next it was a new tonearm. I returned this time to Origin Live, who had supplied me nearly a decade ago with the various upgrades for my Rega tonearm. I opted for one of their own designs, based on the Rega principles that have proved so successful. Thanks to various supply delays at Origin Live the arm eventually arrived yesterday, and after some wrestling with bolts and counterweights and the like, it was soon fitted (something one should do even less frequently than changing cartridges!).

So I now have a system where I can place two styluses on a record at the same time - they sit about a third of a revolution apart on the disc - and find the optimum replay for a specific disc (0.7 thousandths or 1.1 thousandths of an inch stylus) quickly and easily, with no more cartridge changing. I can switch between the two on my Musical Fidelity phono pre-amp - it has a moving magnet and a moving coil input, and although both Benzes are moving coil, the mono cartridge is a high output device designed for moving magnet pre-amps. Thus I can keep both permanently plugged in and ready to go, simply switching the MC/MM button to toggle the outputs.

It so happened that in testing the new tonearm, the nearest LP to hand was a copy of the 1955 Keilberth Bayreuth recording of Wagner's Die Fliegender Hollander on Decca stereo Eclipse. It sounded pretty amazing from the outset! Then I had a thought: this came out about 5 years ago on a Testament CD issue, supposedly taken from the original Decca tapes. I knew I had a copy of the CD somewhere - how might it compare to Decca's LP, transferred from tape three decades earlier?

I played the opening couple of minutes of the LP into my system, then called up the same section from the CD. A very quick declick of the LP and some level matching made sure there wasn't anything that should prejudice me one way or the other. I then played them side-by-side, switching from one to the other, having first lined them up perfectly. I'm sorry to say that, despite Alan Blyth's gushing review in Gramophone in October 2006 of the Testament CD, the LP won hands down. Whether this is down to tape deterioration, Testament's processing or Decca's 1970s LP mastering I cannot say. What I will say is that you can expect to hear this recording on a Pristine release in the very near future - sounding exceptionally good!



New Website Player - for iPad users and others: Success at last on playing samples on our website! I've managed to find a player which will allow iPad users to replay all of the samples on our website without compromising the ability of other browsers to do the same thing. It's currently on our welcome page and very latest release pages - and I'll be gradually replacing players on other pages as time allows. Given the scale of this job, it'll be a while before it's complete, I'm afraid. PADA users may have to wait considerably longer.

As for our zip downloads of FLAC files, I cannot yet recommend a means of doing this on an iPad. I suspect the files themselves are simply too large for the iPad to handle as none of the various ZIP utilities seem able to cope with a typical Pristine FLAC download. You'll have to download on your PC or Mac first and then transfer the FLACs to your iPad, I'm afraid.

"Whoops - you did it again" - Download competition

It was a bit too easy last week - the joy of copy and paste (or not, as it turned out) meant that an entire paragraph was left in from the previous newsletter. That and, of course, the incorrect info on Colin Davis's Grieg recordings (which I should have checked rather than taken on spec, though the originator should have known better!). The winner, picked by computer at random from a deluge of entries is Christopher Salter, whose FLAC of Walton's Belshazzar's Feast may already have been downloaded by him!

Here's a reminder of how this works: if you spot a glaring error in one of these newsletters (spelling mistakes excluded), e-mail me and tell me about it - to the winner I'll send you a free download of your choice. Because this goes out around the world I'm looking for the "best" error or, in the case of several correct entries, will pick a winner out of the digital hat.

NB. This week's newsletter has the same reviews as last weeks - this is deliberate and not a candidate for the competition!

Just send an e-mail with the title "Whoops - you did it again" to me at andrew@pristineaudio.com detailing the slip up, and the winner, chosen next Friday, will receive the download of your choice. Let me know what download you want - and its format - in your e-mail and if you're lucky you'll get it in your in-box next week.

(NB. The word "whoops" must be in the e-mail title and you should use the above address - and don't simply reply to this e-mail - or it won't be registered as an entry.)

I should point out again that I never intend to put any errors into this or any other e-mail deliberately - but that won't mean they're not there! Good hunting - naturally again there are no mistakes this week. Ahem...


Andrew Rose, March 18th, 2011