Short Review: Schiit Mani

With a new Thorens TD 309 turntable in the house, the Dual CS5000 still manages to live on to play less-than-mint records or non-audiophile recordings.  So it was goodbye Pioneer DVD player that I used for CD playback.  Since the Classe Five preamplifier only has one phono input. I needed a separate phono stage.  There are several budget options available but I zeroed in on the Schiit Mani.  US-made, handsome, the silly name, and designed by Mike Moffat.  What's not to love?

How does it stack up to the Classe?  Not bad at all.  The Mani is a little edgier, not as big and dynamic, and also lacking the inner detail.  But it certainly sounds better than I expected: fun even though it doesn't exactly have the smoothness of a good tube unit, or even a FET based preamplifier.  Oddly enough, the lack of detail works well with the Dual CS5000 turntable, removing some of the veil and analog playback artifact noise.  I'm reminded of a more "really nice CD Player or mid-priced DAC" sort of quality to the sound.

The longer you keep this unit on, the better it does sound.  Given the low power requirements, why not?  With the new KEF Q350 speakers, the Mani does sound way better than I expected at this price point.  Of course many will disregard anything using op-amps but my experience with the Audio Sector Phono Stage disabused me of that notion.  Recommended for budget systems.

Review: Thorens TD 309 turntable

 

I've been making slow but steady steps upgrading my current family shared stereo.  I've gone from decidedly mid-fi gear to something that I consider a step up from the usual bog equipment.  The Aleph J, for example, continues to amaze me as does the clarity of the Classe 5 preamplifier.  The Wharefedale Denton speakers have also been a real treat, easily besting anything I've heard in the sub-$1000 (USD) price range.  However there has been one niggling point that has been pulling back this stereo from being truly great.  I am, of course, talking about the turntable.  The Dual CS5000 has been in service for me for almost a decade.  It does a competent job of playing vinyl, my preferred medium, but I knew it was time for an upgrade.

The question was what to get?  In the past few years the turntable market has exploded with varying makes and models across all budget ranges.  Given my under $2000 (USD) price range I had a few options including the discontinued (and marked down) Rega P8, the Rega RP6, or the tried and true VPI Scountmaster (used or B-stock).  I hemmed and hawed, thinking of my experiences with solid plinth turntable, and in the case of the VPI, the JMW unipivot tonearm.  I wanted something a little different, a little more old school, with a suspension. I won't go into the ancient debate between suspended and solid plinths, each falling in and out of favor as the years have gone by.  I will instead just go with what I heard with the best systems.

Searching through Audiogon listing and doing a lot of review reading, I came to the Thorens TD 309 Tri-Balance turntable.  The reviews, even with the included and very budget Audio Technica AT95S, were mostly positive.  It seemed that any negative points could be ameliorated with a better cartridge.  I was also taken by the engineering with a speaker manufacturer to reduce motor and environmental vibration.  The speed controlled DC motor, the available colors, and the Japanese quality bearings was a bonus.  So I purchased one - used - that came with an Ortofon 2M Bronze cartridge.

Once I received the turntable via FedEx it took me a solid 90 minutes to set up.  Some of this involved running off to the grocery store to buy some batteries for my digital style gauge.  At first glance it looks to be a well-made record player.  I was especially impressed by the methods used to decouple the platter from the motor.

Installation of the 2M Bronze wasn't exactly a breeze.  It required the removal of the headshell and some fiddling of the screws that mount directly to the body of the cartridge.  Using the Thorens supplied protractor I was able to get the alignment zeroed in pretty quickly.  After adjusting the counterweight I was finally able to listen to some records.

Initial Impressions: I can immediately tell there is a difference. With the Thorens there is a lot of weight to the bass.  Music plays with a lot more ease and less grunge than the old Dual.  Which is to say there is a lot less mechanical noise with the new turntable.  This in turn reveals more detail, makes the notes "breathe" easier, and also increases depth and width of the soundstage; allowing the listener to "hear" deeper into the recording.  I'm reminded of the VPI Aries 1 in this regard, and, given the difference between the platter weight, a surprise.  I suppose a well-tuned suspension can replicate the solidity of a table with a solid plinth and heavy platter.

After a few hours of enjoyment and some tweaking of the arm setup, it was time to sit down and do some serious listening.

Dead Can Dance - Into the Labyrinth is a well-recorded gem.  The Thorens/Ortofon combination reveals quite a bit more detail, a pulsing bass, and a soundstage that had width and depth.  The music positively soared, leaving, in comparison, the old Dual sounding like an AM radio.  Voices were especially good, with excellent body and realism.  Congestion was nil, each instrument sitting in its own space without confusion or muddiness.

Background noise, on this original 1993 UK pressing, was suppressed with any ticks and pops riding on a separate plane of the music.

Neil Young's live acoustic album - Massey Hall 1971 - is a well-recorded album.  A good system should sound like live music, revealing not only excellent timbre but the very hall itself.  The Thorens TD 309 does a very good job here.  If I close my eyes it does feel and sound like I'm really there, enjoying the concert.  The only break in the spell is the lack of chatter behind me, and of course no cigarette smoke.

The reverberation or natural slap of the hall walls can be heard.  Impressive with much more life than any digital rig I've ever heard.

Animals is my favorite Pink Floyd album so I was looking forward to hear what the Thorens to do.  Instead of a big vibrant soundscape, I began to hear a lot of compression (at higher levels).  Once I turned the volume down, the compression disappeared.  As an experiment I went upstairs and pulled out my backup amplifier, the venerable Adcom 545, which has roughly 4x the power of the Aleph J.

Long story short, it turned out that the Thorens had such an extended bottom end that it was making my low-powered single-ended Aleph J clip!  Such is the life of trying to live with so little power with a pair of 86dB speakers.  This pointed to a future speaker upgrade.

With the Aleph J back in the system, I went for something a little less bombastic.  Gabor Szabo was a Hungarian guitarist with a delicate touch.  He died too young but luckily left a large body of beautiful work.  The album High Contrast works well with the Thorens: with speedy lead note changes, the shifting dynamic drum work and the perfect rhythm guitar genius of Bobby Womack..  The attack of the guitar is just about right, never edgy, revealing the intricacies and subtle methods of Szabo.  The imaging, given the multi-miked nature of the recording, is also very good with the lead guitar slightly forward of the rest of the instruments.




As you can tell I was quite taken by the Thorens, at least once I understood that it had such a wider dynamic range than the Dual CS5000.  This lower, more refined bass response caused all sort of havoc with my amplifier/speaker pairing, leading me to the decision that a more efficient pair of speakers is in my future.

As regards to overall sound quality:

Bass: Dynamic, at least within the limitations of the small Wharfedale speakers.  The midbass frequencies are special here with lovely timbre and shades that I've heard only on the better turntables.  It's the sort of bass that I prefer over digital, which can plod and sound artificial. 

Midrange: Subtle, expansive and revealing.  Different recordings, well, sound different.  So there's not a lot of coloration or analog "dither" (noise) over the music.  Once again it's not a sterile presentation, which can occur with lower-end digital, but shines a light on the notes in an engrossing way.  It's also easy to shift attention to another instrument.  Organic is a word that comes to mind, but not overly warm like some noisier turntables.

Treble: Smooth, provided the cartridge is setup correctly.  An aggressive recording is not going to sound rolled off, but something well-balanced won't sound dark either.  There is a nice sparkle and shimmer too.

Other: This sort of tight analog foundation seems to be rare but adds to the rhythmic toe-tapping experience of music.  More than once I found my foot moving with the beat.  The turntable plays very quietly, doing an excellent disappearing act in minimizing coloration.  The Ortofon 2M Bronze is a great tracker too, playing the last songs without any audible IGD.

Conclusion: For the money, the Thorens is a nice alternative in a very competitive price range.  Even if I had bought a new unit I still would have been perfectly happy with the choice.  Given the quality of the tonearm, the engineering of the suspension, the DC motor, the platter thickness, and the modern looks, the TD 309 gets a solid recommendation.  As does the 2M Bronze, though a Black stylus may be in my future.

System:
Dual CS5000
Classe 5 preamplifier
Aleph J amplifier
Wharfedale Denton speakers
Canare interconnects
Kimber 8PR/4PR speaker cable

Short Take: BLISS Shibata Stylus for Ortofon Super OM Cartridges

The Ortofon Super OM 20 cartridge has been discontinued for some time now.  This is a shame, especially for owners of turntables with lightweight tonearms like my long-running Dual CS5000.  The Super OM 20 cartridge provided a warm but still lively sound and seemed to have a synergistic match with the Dual.  Given my last one was in need of replacement due to wear, I began researching a replacement cartridge or stylus.

There are a few makers of high compliance cartridges out there but I have ventured in that area without too much success, at least compared to the good sound I was getting with the OM 20.  With that in mind I decided to buy a replacement stylus.  I could have gone with the OM 30 or 40 replacement, but this aftermarket unit available at TurntableNeedles.com caught my eye.  The Shibata needle profile, in theory, will pull in more detail and have a better high-end response than the ol' nude elliptical of the OM 20.  It's also priced lower than the higher end OM models so I decided to give it a chance.

Given that the cartridge body is the same and the only difference is the stylus, needle, and cantilever what kind of changes did I expect?  Not too much.  The body of the music is the same, as is the fun liveliness nature of Super OM series.  But, compared to the OM 20, there is more fine detail and treble information.  A minor step up to be sure, but one that is the worth the small price difference between a stock OM 20 stylus and its aftermarket Shibata replacement.  Highly recommended.

Project: Building a Pass Aleph J Amplifier

After the success of the ACA amplifiers, I decided to tackle something a little more difficult: the Aleph J, which is yet another Nelson Pass design that he released to the community at DIY Audio. Like the ACA, the Aleph J is single-ended design but instead uses two output devices in parallel, along with a current source. Power output is in the 25W range, which is good enough for my small listening area, even with 86dB efficient speakers. Except for the input capacitor on the negative leg of the input, the entire amplifier is also DC coupled which means the output offset must be nulled out.

Nelson Pass has a manual on the Aleph J here.

DIY Audio Build - with better pictures than mine - is here. Also includes a schematic.

I first stuffed the circuit boards, including the power supply PCB, with the passive parts:

And next was the installation of the Jfets and FETS, along with the placement of the circuit board on the heatsink. I ran into some problems that the DIY Audio community graciously helped me with. Turns out that I have too much of a soft touch with the soldering iron and had a few cold solder joints. It's that fear of burning up those rare 2SJ74 jfets that make me nervous. Also note the Keratherm output transistor insulators which are a lot easier to install than the old "white goop" thermal grease, and also make removing the board easier for troubleshooting. 

  

I'm obviously skipping a lot of the build steps - power transformer installation, power switch, and the wiring. So with the magic of my time machine, here is the end result of most of my labor: some magic glowing blue LEDs. I do have to say that the DIY Audio Store supplied chassis and circuit boards made this project a lot easier - everything, with the exception of the power transformer, just fits without having to drill holes or battle with placement.

Here is a picture of the completed amplifier :

Note on playing the Aleph for the first time in the main system: I'm quite impressed - lots of little detail on records that I hadn't heard before, super fast but delicate sounding - ie, not aggressive. Excellent bass control. Some actual depth and wide imaging. They would make excellent mastering/studio monitoring amps.

The sound is a tad "clean" - lacking some of that bloom that I hear with the best tube amps. So like digital television versus 70mm film. Perhaps not the best analogy but the only one I can think of. It does need some more break-in time so I'll be patient. But - at least in this system - it is the best solids state amplification I've heard. I think a really good SE tube amp would be preferable but at half the cost, the Aleph is certainly in the running.​

01/04/19 Update: The Aleph J is one of the more interesting amplifiers that I've ever experienced.  It has such a lack of apparent "character" that it just blends into the background.  I'm not trying to say it is boring, quite the contrary; you can hear the differences between recordings.  That is to say every record sounds different, as to be expected.  And, for a solid-state amplifier, it has some of the best body and definition I've heard.  I'm really beginning to hear the limitations of my front end now!  The bottom end is also tightly controlled too, giving quite a bit of boogie factor even with the small woofers of the Denton speakers.

Now the Aleph still doesn't sound like a tube amp - but it also doesn't have that upper-midrange glare or treble edginess I hear with lesser solid-state amps.  Highly recommended for its neutral character and dynamic ability.  This amp will be running in my system for a long time while I start to explore different turntable and speaker upgrades.  Stay tuned!

Project: Building the Pass ACA Amplifier

 

The ACA amplifier is a Nelson Pass design created to teach basic concepts about amplifier design. It is low-powered (6-8Ws per channel), run in pure Class A, capacitor coupled on the output, and is even single-ended.

There is a long, and very detailed article from Mr. Pass which, to put it bluntly, far surpasses my more vacuum-tube orientated knowledge. I see a single jfet driving a current sourced Mosfet, capacitor coupled on the input and the output, along with some modest feedback.  Anyone who wants to know the nitty-gritty of this amplifier should take a gander at the link for more information. For those who are a glutton for punishment here is the schematic:

 

My own requirements are modest wattage and an attempt to capture some of the magic that I hear with single-ended tube amps. The ACA amplifier can also be bridged, via an XLR input, to double the power, something I will need with my 86dB efficient Wharfedale speakers that are in a moderately sized listening room.  I won't need gobs of power for reasonable listening levels. Since my Classe Five preamp has XLR outputs, I will be going this route, building two stereo amps to use as bridged monoblocks.

Enough babbling - let's get building the first amplifier:

Here you can see the passive parts and the circuit boards. It's best to populate the small parts first - the resistors, followed by the caps and solid-state devices.

Once the circuit boards were stuffed it was time to start assembling the amplifier chassis for PCB fitment, along with RCAs, XLR, switches, and binding posts.

Here you can see the stuffed circuit boards attached to the heatsink. The Mosfet outputs are mounted too.

And I did some more work on the back panel, which has all of the connections.

Powering up the amp for the first time is always exciting. But I ran into a snafu - the power indicator LEDs would begin to flicker. Measuring the voltage from the power supply brick, I could see it was fluctuating from 24VDC (good) down to 5VDC (bad). A check on the DIY Audio forum indicated this is the lap top power supply going in protection mode if there is short.

To troubleshoot I removed a power supply lead from the boards, one at a time.  Once I found the board with the problem, I disconnected it from the heatsink. And then the problem went away. This was a clue that there was something wrong with this board.  I ended up having a cold solder joint that was easily fixed.  I guess those years of point-top-point wiring has come back to bite me.

Here I am biasing the output mosfets, each side set to 12V:

And then once that was done, I was able to - FINALLY! - give it a listen:

Initial Impressions: lower gain than the old workhorse Adcom 545. Instead of 9-10 o'clock on the dial, I have to turn up the volume to 1 o'clock to get the same sound levels. The ACA is very smooth, a little lacking in bottom end thump but still very articulated. Jazz - like Chet Baker's album Broken Wing - sounds fantastic, while harder rock albums seem to lack some of the macro dynamics. Of course we are only talking 6-8Ws here with 86dB Wharfedale speakers (6-ohm impedance) so not an optimal match. I wouldn't say the ACA sounds like a tube amp - some similarities: with a non-fatiguing top-end - but it also doesn't sound like your stereotypical SS amp either. Obviously some break-in may also be needed.

Luckily the second amp was a lot easier to build, taking almost half the time and with no problems to troubleshoot.

In this picture I still have to install the front power indicator LEDs and the top and bottom part of the chassis, but I did manage to listen to them bridged, using the XLR output from my Classe Five amplifier. Very impressive.  Neil Young - Live the Cellar Door sounds good on just about any stereo I've owned, but this may the best I've heard it, even compared to the days when I had an all tube chain and big UREI 813A speakers. Lots of micro dynamics, very realistic, and engaging. The amps sound way more powerful than the 12-16Ws it is making.

Some further listening - The Bee Gees - Trafalgar - revealed a slight metallic sheen that seemed to fade with further break in. Very clean but not lean. Detail, studio reverb, etc was all there. Frequency response was very even, no warts, and less "lossy" than some of the lesser tube amps I've owned. Single ended Mosfet is interesting, to say the least, not quite tube-y, nor is it "classic" solid-state (whatever that means). Just different, even more so than Class T (Tritpath) designs I've built. The old, and much need of a recap, Adcom 545, when put back in the system, sounded more indistinct, gray, and uninvolving, though it does have superior deep bass reproduction (and better damping and more power).

Gain is still a bit lower than I would like. Deep bass isn't as prominent as other amps, but again, 6-ohm and fairly inefficient Wharfedale speakers with 5" woofers here.


Listening Update: After a few weeks in the system, I'm quite impressed.  Very neutral with a touch of sweetness.  Some of the best depth I've heard out of a solid-state amplifier, along with very good detail retrieval.  Some of the better tube amps I've build or owned are slightly better at separating voices and instruments, but the ACA amps do a very passable job, just not quite as much "breath" to the performers.  Whether the tube amps are revealing realism or a coloration is an interesting question.  Considering the capacitor coupling, low output - even bridged, and the low damping factor the ACAs still managed to control the Wharfedale Denton speakers quite well, with just some minor loss of bass control.  These amplifiers just make me want to build an Aleph J amplifier that much more - stay tuned!