cartridge Benz, Koestu, Lyra

Well, if you insist, quick thumbnails, as audio prose is not my specialty.

The Lyra Helikon was my reference for about 18 months, and I was very happy with it. After living with the other 'mellow' cartridges, the Lyra's transparency, air and spaciousness were very welcome. It could sound lean at times though. Great recordings sounded great, weaker recordings sounded, well weaker.

The Koetsu Rosewood Signature was a very sweet cartridge, lovely bloom, rich vocals, though a bit soft in the high's. It erred on the warm side of neutral. Never offensive, but lacking in resolution.

The Cardas Heart was very similar to the Koetsu. Always easy on the ears, but lacking in resolution.

The Benz, I owned a Glider and a Ruby 2, were similar in sonic signature, though I never really grew to like either of them. I know the Cardas is based on the Ruby, but the Heart had more life. The Benz cartridges seemed to have some mid-upper bass bloat that smeared detail in the midrange, and just didn't sound natural to me. I don't know what Cardas did, but the bass seemed to tighten up enough that the midrange was clearer than with the Ruby.

Dynavector, I owned the 10X4 mk II, and the 20XH. The Dynavector's are really good cartridge's as well. They seem to have a nice balance between the warmth of the Koetsu/Cardas/Benz cart's and the life of the Lyra. Dynamic, powerful, yet no glare or offense. Very good 'bang for the buck' line, I would love to hear their top end DRT-XV-1s one day. If the ZYX has a natural competitor, it could be the Dynevector's.

Which I guess brings me to the ZYX. I first bought the Airy 3 S-SB about 18 months ago, when the Lyra Helikon was my reference. I was immediately stunned by the natural presentation and size of the stage. Timbre's and tonal accuracy just sounded so real it was almost frightnening. 'Right' and 'Natural' are the words that kept popping into my head. Not lean, not sweet, just right. It is very hard to describe, but easy to understand when something (to steal conrad-johnson's line) "just sounds right". Nothing was forced or artificial sounding, no glare, yet no information was missing. Not warm sounding, but 'relaxed'. It's not something that you have to strain to hear either. I sat there for a week with a stupid grin on my face (alright, maybe that's natural).

Anyway, I was apprehensive about trying the UNIverse. It was a big step up money wise, twice the price in fact. I was wondering 'how much better could it get'? Well curiousity got the best of me, and after a couple months with the Airy 3 I bit the bullet and went for a UNIverse S-SB. It was better all around. Actually describing sonic details seems to be a mute point, as in the last 15 months all I've done is listen to music now. No longer do I hear warmth or leaness, no air or rolled off high's, no more listening to bass definition or midrange anomolies. No longer do I listen for a 'good or bad' recording. Now I just listen to the music. It's so natural, so right, that I don't try to dissect the music anymore. I simply enjoy.

Is the UNIverse worth twice the price of the Airy 3? That's a tough question to answer, and would depend on your financial situation. It is definitely better than the Airy 3, but the Airy 3 will get you 85-90% of the way there for 50% of the price.

The highest praise that I can give the UNIverse is that I've owned it for 15 months now and have absolutely no audio itch whatsoever to try anything else. That is saying a lot for someone who doesn't own a single piece of equipment that's over two years old. It's rare that something satisfies me to the extent that the UNIverse has. If only I could find more gear like it, I may just step off this merry-go-round for good. :)

Hopefully this helps clarify my journey somewhat, and answers any of your questions.

Regards,
John

John,
Congratulations on such a great summary review of your extensive cartridge experience.
Really helpful to those of us starting out on the journey.
You picked up that Piedpiper gauntlet with great panache!
Thankyou.

Excellent! Thank you John! We really could use more of that around here.

OK. The ante has been upped and Piedpiper and John have made excellent points and others have chimed in so here goes:

The things that are important to me with phono cartridges are trackability, soundstage and evenness of response top to bottom. Detail retrieval is important but if the other three are not there, then it is unlikely this will also be present, at least in my experience. All cartridges thumbnailed below were used on a VPI Aries 2 with JMW 10.5 arm.

My first really high end cartridge beyond a $300 Grado and a $400 Van den Hul was a Benz Glider L2. Sonically I found this cartridge to be somewhat dry but quite detailed with a good three-dimensional soundstage but that did not extend much beyond the speaker boundaries. For instance, one of my cartridge test tracks is the end of Hendrix' Voodoo Child (Slight Return) where Eddie Kramer gets the pan pots moving and Jimi's guitar starts flying around the room, up around and behind the listening position. The ability of a cartridge to blow the "ceiling off the room" is one thing that better cartridges do while tracking this difficult inner groove and the Benz did this quite well. On acoustic music such as large orchestra or small jazz combos it tracked well, but sometimes got a bit hard on loud solo piano or in conjested areas of triple forte sections, usually at the end of the recordign where it is most difficult from a recording perspective. I ran this one at 1.8 grams.

Koetsu Urushi - moving up to this cartridge for the next few years from the Benz was a revelation in sweetness, liquidity and trackability with greater detail in the highs. The Koetsu works well on all styles of music and from lightly to heavily modulated recordings. It is highly sensitive to VTF and VTA settings and is quite revealing of the quality of the recording and the pressing; there are several pressings I have of several of my favorite albums, having picked many of these up cheaply at used stores and markets. It is very easy to discern which recording is which via the Koetsu. Where this cartridge really shines is on new pressings of 70s rock recordings and 50 and 60 classical and jazz pressing where the dynamic range wasn't crunched too heavily. Bass extension was about as good as with the Benz, clear with a lot of texture; one can hear the Moog Bass pedal definition well in recordings such as Genesis "Lamb Lies Down on Broadway." I ran this cart at 2.0 grams.

While traveling on business in Japan I found a new Shelter 501 mkII for a great price and installed this on the Aries to give the Koetsu a rest and figure out where to go in the future; have the Koetsu overhauled or go for another brand? I am also running a second Shelter on an Music Hall MM7/Project arm combo in a second system. Both Shelters are excellent at retrieving detail at 1.7 grams and are as good at tracking as the Benz; there are some highly modulated recordings such as Ray Brown's Soular Energy where some of the piano hits can slighty mistrack a bit at this VTF. Increasing this to 1.8 results in better trackability but I feel I lose some of the highs so 1.7 is the preferred VTF for both tables. The Shelter presents a deep and wide soundstage with detail retrieval that allows one to hear the separation of musicians in space with good three dimensionality. I can use this cartridge on all types of music and the mids are what I would point to as this catridge's strength. On both solid state and tube systems I enjoy a bit of laid back mids that don't present an ice-pick-in-the-ear quality even on low-fi punk with vocals screaming; this was sometimes a problem with the Benz. Also, the Shelter seems to be quite immune from playng at very loud volumes that, with the Koetsu, would get the woofers really moving at the resonance frequency. Probably this is due to a good compliance match between the cart and two arms I am running these with.

Finally and recently, I swapped out the Shelter for a Lyra Helikon on the VPI. This cartridge is one of a few components of any type that upon playing the first recording my wife exclaimed, WOW! The Lyra reveals more detail and air, solid clear bass and sweetness in the midrange than I have ever experienced before in any system. It tracks as if it was on rails and hugging all the groove undulations with its line contact stylus and mid-compliance susupension; even on the most heavily modulated recordings I have (Ray Brown), the piano never hardens but remains true to timbre, attack and presence; the envelope of each note is intact. Also more than the other carts mentioned above, I can hear much more ambience of the recording space, either added as processing or from the natural venue space. And ambience is really low signal level retrieval afterall. A great example of this is on Saint Saens' Organ Symphony 3 when the organ begins its appearance. The texture of the rich low pipes can clearly be heard with a naturalness that conveys the emotion the performance. You can tell the musicians really got into this performance. The Lyra only has about 20 hours on it so far but even if this was where it finally settled I would be very satisified with the results. Clearly the VPI/JMW is an excellent match for this fine cartridge. If there are better cartridges out there, I really don't to know about them right now simply because I am enjoying rediscovering my record collection with this fine component. Those bass pedals on The Lamb never punched through better even with CD. So clear and textured ae they, it's a bit scary in some ways. For now I am satisified with the Lyra. They are making some of the best out there. I run the Lyra at 1.70 grams.

Now if I can justify the cost of rebuilding the Koetsu, perhaps that cartridge can be restored to near Lyra performance levels.

Hope this helps

Oh yes, and with the Helikon, the ceiling completely flies away on Voodoo Child.
Steve

Steve, you win, you get to be the next Stereophile reviewer. Seriously, very nice evaluations, and I am glad that you are enjoying the Helikon. It is a fine cartridge, and you are right that it mates well with the JMW arms. The JMW's are one of the warmest arms out there, so the Lyra's speed balances well. I had the Lyra on a JMW 10.5 arm and a Basis Vector 3 arm, I definitely thought it sounded better on the JMW. The Vector 3 is more revealing than the JMW, but not as warm. The leanness that I noted with the Helikon is more apparent on the Vector 3 arm.
VPI was packaging the Lyra Helikon with some of their tables/arms when it first came out.

It would be interesting to hear the Helikon side by side with the Argo i, as Kehut mentions above, to see if the newer generation Lyra's are getting warmer. I remember when the Helikon came out it was hailed 'the warmest sounding Lyra yet'. It was sweeter than the previous Parnassus da Capo. Perhaps with the newer designs (Skala, Argo i, etc) Lyra has moved even further towards warmth. Lyra still is much faster than the Koetsu, Benz cartridges though.

Great review, thanks.
John