yesterday the isolation platform arrived for my NVS turntable. this is an approx 22" x 22" x 1 and 1/2" thick shelf that goes underneath the NVS. there are circles etched into the top surface where the three pods of the NVS are set. this shelf appears to be 2 piece. the top is anodized aluminum matching the finish of the NVS; engraved with 'Wave Kinetics' along the front edge, nicely done. the bottom is some sort of rough texture composite. the top's outside edge covers the bottom, so you don't see the bottom structure when the shelf is sitting on my rack surface. the top floats over the bottom with some sort of de-coupling process.....tuned to the NVS.

seems innocent enough.

i lifted the NVS off the Adona rack, set the isolation platform down, then placed the NVS onto the platform,....and centered everything....and plugged the arms and tt back in.

i played a few very familiar Lps.

big improvement. the first thing that hit me was a staggering increase in bass dynamics and slam. in fact, the increase in energy accross the board was the most noticable thing. very very lively sounding. also, more snap and attack in the transients, improved harmonics and textures. more air and ambience around intruments and increased soundstage.

all those attributes add up to a more involving musical experience. closer to live, all the little things are better. you get sucked into the performance.

WOW!!

until you hear the NVS on the isolation platform you have not heard what it can do.

mikelavigne August 16, 2011 15:39

Radhel,

i want to say i am in awe of your approach to this hobby. i completely understand your desire to have a pair or Sirius III's, and the Continuum Caliburn. i did think about trying to do that too....that is, try to acquire a Caliburn to go with my Sirius III. unfortunately, it was not a realistic thing for me to do. but that is not to say i would not have done it if i could. it's great that there are people like you (and my friend Ki) who can take things that far. i think you would enjoy adding the NVS and Talea 2 arm to that group.

someday i hope i get a chance to see that collection, or better yet experience it.

i do appreciate these products not just as vessels to deliver beautiful music; but also as works of audio art, as wonderful machines, and as testaments to the passion it took to build them. i know Andy Payor, i know David Payes of Continuum, and obviously i know the guys behind the NVS. it's great our hobby has such people and products.

mikelavigne August 13, 2011 18:58

Okay...

unoear August 13, 2011 17:34

Radhel, Alan and Charles,

there will likely never be another product built like the Rockport Sirius III. in 200 years the Rockport will still be working perfectly. yes, it may be on it's 4th or 5th set of caps in the power supply, maybe it's 5th or 6th off-the-shelf compressor,and maybe it's 10th vacuum gasket.....but everything else is built to industrial machine tool specs. fit and finish impecable, beautiful purpose and integrated design.

even my Studer A820 master recorder, which has amazing build quality and industrial design, is relatively fragile in comparison.

so i agree wholeheartedly that the Rockport is unique and the ultimate piece of audio gear.

but according to my wife, i'm not a collector.

so for me it's the performance. and the Rockport was designed now 16-17 years ago. and whether we like it or not, technology has moved forward. there are better ways to attain speed accuracy and stability, better materials science for vinyl/platter interface, and better approaches for resonance and isolation solutions.

and trust me, i've never been bored with owning or listening to the Rockport. it is an absolutely wonderful piece of gear to enjoy music from.

but there is better.

with the Rockport it's impossible to be able to isolate the various pieces and judge them, as it's a 'system'. so one must guess as to why and where the combination of the NVS and the Talea 2 arm move beyond the Rockport. my guess is that in terms of spinning the record, and interfacing with the vinyl correctly, and isolation/resonance control that the NVS has slight advantages in degrees overall. but pivoted arms have moved beyond the best linear trackers of 16 year ago design.

it's in the arms (and arm interfaces) where the biggest strides are being made.

as far as me being involved in the development of the NVS, or the Evolution speakers for that matter, and that influencing my opinion....well....i was fully invested in loving the Rockport. for years i've been very active in telling the Rcokport story and loving it. i had Steve Dobbins build 4 different tt's for me, the last of which was the Beat, which i was among the first buyers. Steve is a friend, and i certainly was at least as involved with it as the NVS in terms of communication with the builder and in anticipation of it. it's a great tt, and i really enjoyed it; but it was not quite the Rockport, and that's what i said.

my only involvment in the NVS (other than it being my friend's company) was them using my room to check on the performance comparatively twice.

as far as Cable Cooker influence :^) my first use of the Cable Cooker was a week ago Thursday night, and a week ago Saturday my first listen to the result, so it had zero affect on my perceptions or those of my visitors over the last month.

anyway; i wish i could have a space and funds sufficent to keep the Rockport, the Beat, and other gear i've loved over the years, but i cannot. my friend Ki Choi has over 50 reel to reel master recorders, almost one of every type. i can't consider that approach.

mikelavigne August 13, 2011 16:50

Radhe1486,
No reasonable person would dispute the importance of engineering design and built quality.At the end of the day what matters most however is the sound. This is the whole point of home audio"sound performance" not price,engineering,appearance,reputation,place of orgin etc. If you buy a component for any reason other than sound(you plan to "listen" to it) what`s the point?
Best Regards,

charles1dad August 13, 2011 16:25

Ultimately sound is subjective and systems and rooms rooms and a lot to play in this,the Rockport is just built to perfection I understand we get bored and like to
have a change. If andy relaunched the system 111 and priced it at what would be the current price of $350000 every one would say the same just because it cannot be purchased any more it becomes a product of little interest.

Mike I understand is involved in the manufacture of the NVS turntable as he is in the emotion speakers.

For me engineering build and pedigree of a product are just as important as sound the fact that everyone wants to compare there turntable with the Rockport speaks for itself. Just out of interest I have been in contact with precision instruments the current price for the Rockport drive and motor drive amplifier is around $65000 and is the most advanced drive ever built.

radhe1486 August 13, 2011 15:11

It seems despite the ultra engineering aspects of the Rockport TT, mike prefers the NVS. Actual listening is the ultimate determinant and it appears mike trusts his ears. All other criteria is secondary to what you hear and your spontaneous/emotional response to it.

charles1dad August 13, 2011 11:21

Thanks mike for me the rockport will always be the greatest turntable ever made compleately without compromise, I have had spoken with Tim sheriden of Lorien consultants who is the person who designed the drive for the system 111 who is a recognised authority on speed rotation and control who chairs various bodies who determin the same. All I can say that I do not know any other turntable that is so well thought all and without compromise and with such buetiful build quality god knows what a system 111 would cost today probebly $350000 dollors I own two system 111 turntables and a continuum caliburn and
for me and my money just in engineeering alone the system 111 is just in a different class that is why i have two.
I still beleave that many owners of the rockport do not know how advanced the rockport is it is after speaking to Tim not even andy can you really apreciate it is a total work of art.

I am happy you like your new turntable maybe I will buy one to just out of interest

radhe1486 August 13, 2011 08:03

as i recall, it's on 63db of gain and 47k ohms loading for the A90 on the darTZeel NHB-18NS phono. i am extremely happy with how it sounds.

mikelavigne August 11, 2011 20:39

Of course, one must realize that Mike's memory of the Rockport's performance in comparison to the new and improved NVS is compromised by the lack of the experience of a cable cooker :)

unoear August 11, 2011 20:11

Radhel,

i just realized i got caught up answering the first part of your question, and did not answer the second.

NVS compared to the Rockport. last summer i first heard the protoype NVS in my room. it showed promise and there were moments of greatness. then a few months later in the fall it was back in my room and at that point it was similar to the Rockport, maybe a bit better in some ways, not quite as good in others. overall at that point i maybe preferred the Rockport.

the NVS continued to be improved and was shown at CES, i did not attend. i was told it was quite a bit better than what i had heard in my room. then the first production NVS (mine) was shipped to the designer in Portland to be tested against the prototype. he told me it was clearly better than the prototype; at which point i drove to Portland and picked it up.

yes; it's better. lower noise, more detail, better bass, more energy, more real. the Rockport still has a similar 'dead solid imaging'. we are not talking 'good and bad' here, we are talking degrees of good. the Rockport still has the vacuum hold-down and is one of the very very best turntables. i don't yet have the isolation platform for the NVS which should improve things.

to be clear; what i'm saying is that the combination of the NVS and the Talea 2 is better than the Rockport Sirius III system.

i did not have the production NVS and the Rockport side by side; but i did have many many reference Lps and my impressions of them, as well as my Studer A-820 as a consistent reference; as well as a number of long term visitors who came to the same conclusions i did.

back on the picture issue; i forgot i also bought another Studer A820 1/2", and some additional power cables.

mikelavigne August 11, 2011 16:14

hello Radhel,

you got me there, updated pictures are overdue, sorry.

in my defense; over the last few months i've been busy selling stuff; 3 turntables, 3 arms, 2 cartridges, a set of amps, and a phono stage. some of the sales were international and took considerable time and effort to get done.

i've purchased a couple of new rack systems, a turntable and a cable cooker. the last week i've been working on cooking cables so the system has been blown apart every day.

and then tonight; i'm hosting my local audio club in my room......30 people will be here....so i've been dealing with being ready for that.

so lots of change and constant issues of change.

i have posted a number of pictures of my room as it currently appears on this thread; mostly from mid-July. so scroll up and on the previous page and you will see them.

i will try my best to update the main pictures and gear roster asap.

mikelavigne August 11, 2011 15:45

Hi Mike, What are your loading and gain on the Dart phono stage for Ortofon A90 ?

lbelchev August 11, 2011 15:36

Hi mike when are you gona take the pics of rockport down and put pictures up of the new turntable. Do you really prefer the nvs over the Rockport

radhe1486 August 11, 2011 05:23

for years i've been using the Nordost CBID 1 cable break-in device. i thought it was still effective relative to other choices.

boy was i dead wrong.

i've known about Alan Kafton's Cable Cooker for a few years and had heard very positive things about it. recently i assisted an audio friend with cooking his cables on my Nordost CBID 1, then he proceeded to try the Cable Cooker to see if it would improve the cables more.

it made many degrees more positive difference than my Nordost. so he called me and told me about it. so i ordered a cable cooker. i got it a couple weeks ago, and finally Thursday night i tried it.

Wow!!

I love this thing. It’s like my room doubled in size I’m getting so much more ambient information; and my bass dynamics have increased by a significant amount. More air and ease.

I spoke to Alan on the phone and he was helpful to give me a feel for times for different cables and power cords based on how much use they have had and how heavy and thick they are. there is also written instructions that come with the Cable Cooker as well as a FAQ on his website.

Thursday night at 11pm I started with my Opus MM2 speaker cables (6 years old), my long (7.5M) and short (1.25M) Evolution BNC’s (almost 2 years old) and a couple of RCA’s (1.5m Valhalla and 1.5m Opus MM2) I don’t use at the moment which I’ve had for 7 and 10 years.

Sat 7 am I pulled the RCA’s off (32 hours), then at 5pm (42 hours) I pulled off the speaker cables and Evo BNC’s (both big thick stiff cables). I plugged them back into the system and immediately was enthralled. Huge difference, much more than anticipated. I listened and enjoyed them all last night.

This morning in hooked up 4 Absolute Fidelity power cords (for my speaker subwoofers (2) and power amp (2—one extra one for my anticipated 2A3 monos), I’ll do the 3 power cords I’ve had for 6-9 months in my system for 2 days; the new power amp power cord I’ll do for 3 days.

Also doing interconnects for all three RTR decks (8m BNC for the King-Cello, 50 foot XLR for the ½”:Studer, and 9 foot RCA/Mic plug for the ATR-102). I had to use a bunch of other cables (and conversion plugs for the Mic plug) to be able to properly daisy chain everything and allow them to stay in place. As the XLR’s and the RCA-Mic plug are relatively unused and raw, I’ll give them 3 days, and the BNC’s have been used for 6 years, so I’ll give them 2 days.

Anyway, after what I heard last night, I’m looking for more big results.

After I get thru this group of cables, I’ll still need to do the power cords on the dart pre and Playback Designs, and then after that I’ll do the power cords on the King Cello, and the 2 Studers. When I do those I’ll also do my Oyaide power distribution bar and it’s power cable. I’ll leave that connected so I can break in the distribution bar.

Then I’ll come back to the speaker cables and Evo BNC’s and try them another 12 hours and listen, see if there is any more performance I can wring from them.

the Cable Cooker is relatively affordable in the context of a high end system, $999 plus shipping for the Anniversary model. then you might buy some connectors to allow you to connect and daisy chain various types of cables.

the Cable Cooker is nicely and solidly built and it looks like it will last a long time.

highly recommended, and IMHO essential.

mikelavigne August 07, 2011 16:31

Henry,

i agree. there are products that change the sound. some of them add or subtract color. like adding spice to food. products that affect the power grid do certain things.....like adding filters. other products isolate or add a material impedence changes.

the trick is to identify movement toward the musical truth, away from musical truth, or sideways to a different flavor.....as you try things. and then to identify synergistic combinations of products that work best.

a case in point. my darTZeel NHB-18NS is magnificent product. for a long time it sat 'naked' on my Grand Prix shelf; happy. then i recieved some prototype footers from Wave Kinetics which i tried in a number of places, they ended up under the dart pre. they added nuance and focus, and took away nothing. a nice gain. later, i did get the production Wave Kinetics footers, which i used everywhere, and they worked amazingly well......except....they improved the preamp part of the dart pre, but took away the bass impact in the dart phono stage. so i removed them. jtinn figured it was a synergy thing with the GPA de-coupling combined with the Wave Kinetics. so last week with my new 'grounded' Adona rack (a wood-granite shelf and no de-coupling) i tried the production A10 U8's again. same result. a nice improvement in the preamp section, but it robbed the phono of bass impact to an even greater extent. so back in went the prototype footers.

moral; when tweaking the goal is not change, it's better. and there is no predicting the result.

mikelavigne August 02, 2011 20:03

About lowering noise floor. My personal experience. There are other solutions out there. For example, I learned about a guy in Germany (Creaktiv)who creates, amongst other things, products just for reducing noise levels in everything touching your music signal. I tried a whole set of, according to him, his most effective products.

And Mike, you know I have much the same system components as yours, the noise floor dropped SOOOO RADICALLY that I found it way too spooky and took most of it out again. Just to say what Mike mentioned before, you have really NOOO idea about the noise "polution" in everything around you. All matter around you is made up of atoms that have energy stored in it which affects your feeling/hearing. The more you take that away, the more unnatural it feels, effectively because, it is a piece of "life" you are reducing.

So the art of noise reduction is to do it in those places and things that add a non-natural element to the experience of enjoying music. And this is where our hobby gets very very tricky, because our hobby consists of using eletrical energy to move air to reproduce a historically recorded event.

Now, how's that for some hobby phylosophy! Enjoy, but don't overdo it :)

mtkhl567 August 02, 2011 15:01

Travis, thanks. noise and distortion is something all us audiophiles can relate to. and thanks for the update, i'll look forward to more of them as time goes by.

mikelavigne August 02, 2011 03:29

Thanks Mike. Great post there. I agree with your point likening distortion to noise floor. While not absolutely the same they share enough DNA to be family. Hope to have another update for you in a few hours.

t_bone August 01, 2011 10:55

today i had a friend visit who has not been to my room for about 14 months. he just sent my an e-mail.....

hi mike
good to visit with you today, even if it was a bit short. your system really sounds better than it ever has - the noise floor is the lowest i've heard on any system. despite my penchant for the musicality of vintage style systems, i've always had two big issues with them, one of which i could live with, which is the lack of full frequency range coverage, but the second is that it is nearly impossible to get low noise floor with them. i've heard a million modern gear systems too, the best of the best - never have i heard, or rather not heard, or whatever, so little noise. amazing. i wonder, of the things you've done in the last year plus, what you think is the biggest factor in achieving this - the equitech? the room treatment changes opened up the sound, but shouldn't change the noise floor like that, i would think. i didn't listen to CD today, and was not familiar with those tapes in the context of your older system configurations, but i guess the other factor then, with LP's, is that new record player of yours.

my answer to his question......

As far as how the system has achieved low noise, I can think of a few obvious reasons and maybe a few not so obvious ones.



---yes, the Equi=tech does get a share of the credit. Not only for low noise, but an increase in dynamic contrasts, and it’s contribution to bettering the power supply of every piece of electronics. My darTZeel amplifier has those annoying red lights on the front. When the amp gets to ‘near clipping’ those lights flash. Before the Equi=tech there were many recordings which could push the amp to flash in time with the music. Since the Equi=tech the lights almost never flash. I think the power supply stays much more stable when pushed than before. Every piece of gear has received that benefit, but they don’t have warning lights to call attention to the benefit.



---a lower noise turntable, and lower distortion arm. The combination makes considerable difference.



---all new power cords. I was using the Jena Labs Fundamental One with in-line conditioners. When I got the Equi=tech I re-visited my power cords and found a significant improvement in lower distortion and lower noise with the Absolute Fidelity power cords from Gary Ko of Genesis Loudspeakers. He is a local friend.



http://www.absolutefidelity.com/philosophy.html



these power cords are designed for specific applications. It has improved the synergy of the system as well as lowering noise and increasing vividness.



---the Wave Kinetics A10-U8 footers; I have 7 sets of them ($700 each set of 4). These really improved things particularly under the network pods of my Transparent Opus speaker cables. Don’t laugh. Next time you come over we’ll pull them out, listen, and put them back in. huge issue. Distortion in your speaker cables cannot be ignored. There is no other solution for it. and until you hear it removed, you’ll never know the distortion was there.



---the out of phase subwoofer driver on the right side caused distortion, and made it impossible to adjust the speakers properly.



---closing up the bass trapping in the ceiling, and adding the diffusion reduced distortion.

Remember; lowering noise and reducing distortion are almost the same thing. When things clear up the detail pops out. If the bass is clean and energetic, you hear far into the recording, the foundation and ambience are clear, nuance is easily perceived.

mikelavigne August 01, 2011 04:21

correction to my last post; pro level is typically +4db, not +10.

consumer line level is typically -10db, and got them mixed up.

mikelavigne July 31, 2011 11:51

there is not yet a 'modified darTZeel phono board' appropriate to a tape head output. what's actually been discussed more is a darTZeel modified sound card to go into the card slot in the Studer A820 and A810. i don't think there is any definite time frame as far as i know. and jtinn and i spoke about it very recently. i agree it would seem easier to change the EQ profile of an existing dart pre phono board than mess with the Studer boards.

i do know Herve wants to do something along those lines.

the ATR single ended output i mentioned has already been EQ'd and amplified some; just not to +10 pro level. so it can be input into an RCA input on the dart without drama.

mikelavigne July 31, 2011 03:34

Mike,

Are you connecting the wires from the tape head directly to a modified Dartzeel phono board?

microstrip July 30, 2011 23:19

hi Sam,

yes; when Ki installed the switch on the heads of my Studer, he ran a single ended cable to my King Cello and terminated it with RCA's. RTR machines use transformers to create the balanced signal for the XLR outputs. avoiding those is one advantage of the King Cello.

here is the ATR on the other side of the room with the NVS.

when Jeff Gillman (of Precision Motor Works) did my ATR he added a single ended output for me and made a cable with a 'mic' out plug on one end and RCA's on the other. so i have that going directly into my darTZeel preamp input.

mikelavigne July 30, 2011 17:09

Hi Mike!

Are you using RCA's between the Studer and the K/C head pre? Is Ki using one? I saw the second Studer :-)

Where's your ATR?

Long live analog,

Sam

c1ferrari July 30, 2011 16:12