The Duel, Part 2

This is continued from the first part of "The Duel", so please refer to it for more details about my set-up!

Tonight, the duel between the Pro-Ject Phono Box S2 and the twice as expensive Lehmann Audio Black Box Statement came to a thundering conclusion. 

Mounted was my sample of a 20 year old Audio Technica OC9 moving coil cartridge. A new moving coil cart is simply not in my budget, but this old classic still works just dandy!

This old beastie, despite all opinions about the cantilever suspension dying a slow rubber grommet death after 5 years (I for one think this is mainly a sales pitch for new junk, as long as you store your treasures in good temperature and humidity conditions), still delivers the sounds locked up in the vinyl grooves in a way, that my most recent brand new and best moving magnet cartridges simply cannot replicate.

It sounds positively great using my Pro-Ject S2.

However, on the Lehmann Statement it really comes to life in a way I never experienced before!

Toto IV (1982, CBS Master Sound, HC47728, 7464-47728-1) is a well known classic. 

On the Pro-Ject S2, the vinyl sounded a lot like the radio and CD deliveries I was used to. There was simply nothing wrong, and the S2 just amplified the sound my OC9 delivered with all the improved detail in a very enjoyable way.

Then I put the record on the other machine connected to the Lehmann Statement. 

It suddenly came to life in a spectacular way. The sound started to pop, bass was cracking, and something magical (hard to describe) had happened to the clarity and spaciousness of just everything. It was the kind of thing you need to hear to understand.

The Lehmann Black Box Statement was absolutely the immediate clear winner without any arguments.

The one question is this:

Is it worth the extra money?

The rest of your system needs to keep up for sure, especially your cartridge and turntable!

As I mentioned in Part 1, the extra money spent on this Lehmann vs. the Pro-Ject S2 can actually buy you a fairly decent amplifier you may not have yet!

Prices for everything have gone up last year, so you cannot include speakers anymore, but still, 200 bucks stepping up from the S2 to the Lehmann is a real word difference that many people cannot sneer at!

Most likely, a phono-preamp will be in your shelf for many years, so budgeting and how to pay it or save for it will be a very personal decision.

I have to say that my personal budget is really restricted, and I am happy with and enjoy my Pro-Ject Phono Box S2. While it is "entry level", cheaper than many other phono-preamps (but expensive for frugal observers), and sneered at by some HiFi snobs, it is certainly already above what most people have in their homes. But had things gone differently, the Lehmann Black Box Statement would be my pride and joy for sure!

If you have the budget, go for it. There is nothing to regret with the Lehmann!

People really think the Taliban is not tied to the US Department of Dirty Tricks?

Yes, we created the Taliban, like it or not! 

Most Americans obviously do not remember, or know about, or they just stupidly deny the 1980s, when the "mujahideen" "freedom fighters" got propped up with US military advisers and weapons deliveries to fight a proxy war against the Soviet Union. 

 

US gave them guided missiles, grenade launchers, machine guns, assault weapons, and all the munitions they wanted and more than they could carry back then. 

More importantly, they also got training from US military "advisers" that taught them some really nasty tricks about fighting a really dirty war. 

 

The warlords we supported in the 1980s (the exact opposite of wet Hollywood fantasies about fictitious royal honourable fighters in "Rambo III" and "The Living Daylights") later morphed into Al Quaida, Taliban, and ISIS. The guys we propped up were absolutely not nice!

 

Yes, they have always had their nasty warlords, but we made them worse and better equipped than ever, and now we have a historically fierce monster that has outgrown and seriously whooped US, with no possible win in sight. The smarter officers who fought there know it, as I just heard in a few interviews. 

 

Afghanistan has been invaded for thousands of years. Even Alexander The Great was not the first emperor to attempt running through it to get to India, but he was the best known of antiquity.

 

Empires always got their asses handed to them by the Afghanis, and the USA is no exception. It is called the "Graveyard Of Empires" for good reason.

 

Everybody who tried to play the tribes, always ended up creating a monster they could not control, because people don't like to be ruled by invaders. The Taliban will eventually fade, if no other empire moves in with guns again. But that fading will take more than a life-time, or three, and will likely be interrupted by another invader.

 

Just a few of the empires that had their butts handed to them in Afghanistan:

 

Greeks

Romans

Persians

Ottomans

Indians

Mongols

Brits

Soviets

Americans

 

So who is next?

AH! China is next to try and fail you say, because they are already sending people there, right?

 

I for one think China will be there to stay, because they are not moving in with battle horses, guns, and tanks. They are moving in with railroads, bridges, waterworks, power-plants, and other things people actually want.

So far, every place they moved into has been quiet, and nobody really notices how far China has spread its sphere. They don't bomb their way in. They just peddle. And they win where others fail.

Yellow Air, Smoke Choking All

South Pierce County, Spanaway, Washington State:

 

Smoke in the air is getting thicker. 

Has been making me sneeze and has been irritating my eyes for days. This morning I climbed into the shower and ended up dropping my liquefied nose contents into the tub as if I'd been in a CS riot gas attack (often called tear gas, but the military kind) right after taking little Bella outside.

 

With 35 deg Celsius heat (95 Fahrenheit) this afternoon, the air is thick and stinging, and I have not seen any birds in the air for a while!

 

The light is shaping the colours of all surroundings into an eerie golden brown tint, like last year right before it got dark for weeks.

 

This is the second summer we have this biting smoky air and strange light with a mucked up atmosphere.

 

This may well be the new normal, and the end of good summers for years to come.

So what does all that QAnon stuff have to do with ... The X-Files???

 "The government is putting Bill Gates' microchips into people with those vaccines!"

 

These people ARE serious about secret microchip implants to track them, and they also think the vaccine somehow changes their DNA.

 

Do you know, where that all comes from?

"The X-Files" - SERIOUSLY!

 

Before FOX ever got bought by an Australian media mogul to get into the "news" business, they were strictly entertainment. Then Rupert Murdoch started buying them out. Their stations had no news, but in the early nineties they started to experiment with misinformation and how much B.S. they could get away with. First with "The X-Files" (aired 1993 to 2018), and then the infamous "Alien Autopsy" (1995).

 

People took both at face value as completely true, hook, line, and sinker! Even after Jonathan Frakes (Star Trek Next Generation's Cmdr. Riker), who had narrated "Alien Autopsy", stated officially it was a fun hoax, people said "yeah right, it was REAL!"

 

Most of the QAnon madness is straight from the X-Files, and people believed back then it was real, and now they believe it is true as retold by QAnon.

 

It was a chore slugging through all 217 episodes in month long binge this spring (back in the 90s I had lost interest, as they were trying to feed me too much nonsense, and I am a total SciFi freak!), but it was eye opening to watch all of the X-Files series episodes ad-free on Hulu. The movies are streaming somewhere else. You can get it done with a free trial in a month. Just have plenty of beer/wine/schnaps and chips/dip/hot-dogs/pop-corn/pizza or whatever next to you, and a stash of headache pills, because too much of that stuff is so bonkers, it is beyond suspension of disbelief.

Climate change? My ASS! It's Global Heating you dummies!

Whether in Europe or North America, the summers in most areas used to be less extreme with lower peak days. It is the same story on every continent, every island, and all the seas on this planet!

 

While uncomfortable for a few weeks and plagued by mosquitoes, in the 1970s Rhein valley (NO dammit, you stupid damned spell checker, it is NOT Rhine, the river's name is Rhein!) in Germany we took it a little easier than usual, drank a lot, and chilled at water fronts. 

 

In the North American desert areas, humidity used to be lower, so while not for everybody, that dry heat with steady temperatures was something the body could get used to. I certainly loved our visit to the Western U.S.A. in 1977, from the forests in Idaho, to the deserts in Utah, Arizona, and California. I spent 1999/2000 in Las Vegas, and it was not bad, but the old locals had already noticed the humidity going up back then, and told me how much more uncomfortable the place had become!

 

All this has now changed for the worse, because "climate change" (a shitty newspeak {*1} term for Global Heating straight from Orwell's novel "1984") is real, not a hoax!

 

Air conditioning is now a necessity in areas, where people used to sneer at paying the extra electric bills for it, because people fall over and die from the intermittent heatwaves today!

 

Dayton Audio's bargain power house amplifier

In May this year (2021) I finally unboxed and tried out my new Dayton Audio APA150 power amplifier. This only took 13 months, and a shelf rearrangement. I needed a more compact replacement for that old SAE TWO receiver, especially since I don't listen to FM anymore and stream the stations, that are so distorted on FM radio, clearly from the web instead.

To call the APA150 integrated, as TNT Audio does, is a bit of a stretch with only a volume pot and one input, but it could do for a single source system as a standalone ... for a starter system.

However, for today's generation, any HiFi culture is dismal, and they are outright ignorant in its requirements, which doesn't even include source switching anymore!

For myself though, I run a very compact remote controllable kit preamp, based on the now defunct Sanyo (no longer an entity) LC75342 chip set, with 4 line inputs, volume, gain, balance, and bass/treble controls, a sweet piece worth a lot more, were it to carry a major brand name on its brushed aluminium front plate. So the switching and sound control problem is taken care of, and the (power) amplifier can do its thing without getting niggled!

Aside from saving a LOT of shelf space, how is the APA150?

It is a HUGE bang for the buck!

 

This new amp, much like my vintage about 40 year old SAE TWO R3C, just simply is there, and makes anything from any line level source louder, with all the little details, no bloat, and no fowl attitude, that's it. Which is exactly what a good amp is supposed to do! 

 

Its clean powerful sound reminds a lot of the days when I had a KA-1000 with its Sigma Drive, once Kenwood's top of the line ... when the damned thing worked and didn't need jiggling switches and resoldering the whole main board every few months 30 years ago. Frankly, every Kenwood piece I bought in the early eighties crapped out, so I am left with a really sour aftertaste about one of the big dreams of my teens.

But with this Dayton Audio APA150 you get really neat audio performance out of this comparatively cheap amplifier, that does not claim or pretend to be high end, but I would like to hear it run head to head against a 1000 dollar plus Creek!

 

Only time will tell, how long it will last, and if it will age as gracefully as my most beloved SAE TWO R3C (and the old Superscope, Marantz, Technics, and McIntosh gear piled up in various room systems, shelves and corners)

A nice review is here at TNT Audio:

https://www.tnt-audio.com/ampli/dayton_apa150_e.html

 

THE DUEL, Part 1

It's the duel of the phono preamps at high afternoon!

Lehmann Audio Black Cube goes vs. Pro-Ject Phono Box S2 in toe to toe vinyl combat!

Why no Youtube video? I am not set up for video productions, and my house is a mess, PLUS Youtube is famous for censoring even test videos with short samples, if they happen to recognise any copyrighted music. So no, no video!

The story how this came about (to skip this all, look for the header "The Duel"):

I've had my Pro-Ject Phono Box S2 for several years now, and really love it. It simply is plain pleasure, has no noise, and no hum on my OC9 moving coil cart, which is difficult for any budget phono-preamp!

Some cheap pieces are plain lame and are too low in volume, or they spit, hiss, and shriek. The Pro-Ject in contrast is a joy, as it is refined, and has very good adjustable gain to give music enough impact, without distorting anything.

In the shelf before the Lehmann Audio:

Its companion phono-preamp for a second turntable so far has been a surprisingy good and dirt cheap (around 80 bucks) Technolink TC-760LC from Phonopreamps.com. They sell the TC-760LC on Amazon with an optional higher grade power supply. They come in black and a dark off colour sort of "champagne" silverish kind of finish.
The Technolink is noticeably weaker and has a bit more hum on the moving coil input, but if you are on a budget, it is perfectly satisfactory, delivers fine detail, does not fatigue, and is a good long play listening device! As my first moving coil capable phono box was a cheap Music Hall (which cost 20 bucks more!) with actually a bit lower and non-adjustable gain, this one is not bad at all. If I had not tried and kept the Pro-Ject, I would probably be ignorant and happy with this budget phono-preamp!

The 200 dollar Pro-Ject Phono Box S2 (which has been more than excellent for my very entry level system) had bumped a far more expensive Creek OBH15 without contest. That was easy, as the Creek was playing so bad with my Audio Technica OC9 moving coil marvel, having some kind of deep bass resonance problem, it made my ears hurt, no matter what amp I yanked from my collection of vintage classics that included Marantz, Superscope, Pioneer, Yamaha, Technics, and others at the time. So the OBH then sat in its box in a dusty shelf for several years, and I was glad to be rid of it as a trade in before I even bought the Pro-Ject.

My friend Peter, proprietor of "Turntable Treasures" in Tacoma, was curious about what I thought of this "Lehmann Audio Black Cube Statement" and loaned it for a little testing.


The Setup:

This called for 2 turntables, close enough to start with and set up to sound identical.
My main living room turntable has been a Dual 510 for some time now. The original platter mat has been replaced by a foam mat, which makes the normally slightly dark sounding machine (due to its factory mat it turns out) a little brighter. It is augmented by a secondary player, a Dual 1246, fully automatic, with a very similar platter, but different mat. This mat was also replaced by a foam mat of the same type. Having the same arm and counter weight, and both running with a Grado Black now, we now have two practically identical source turntables.
The machines feed into the Lehmann Audio (Dual 1246) and the Pro-Ject (Dual 510), then into a remote control Sanyo LC 75342 chip set kit preamp, into a Dayton Audio APA150 power amp. The Dayton came out of an audiophile scrutinisation on TNT-Audio with flying colours, and I have to say I like it!
The weakest part of the chain is my speaker pair, the Dayton Audio B652, but I cannot play loud in this neighbourhood, and the B652 is actually highly regarded in many circles, so there would be absolutely NO point for me to spend more money on other speakers. They deliver the goods at low to mid volume.


THE DUEL:

FIRST RECORD

Archiv Produktion
"Musica Antiqua Koeln", Reinhard Goebel
Digital Recording on vinyl
Digital Stereo 2566127

side 1 track 1, Pachelbel, Kanon & Gigue D-dur

Lehmann: more chunkie sounding cembalo with more impact

track 2, Handel, Sonata G-dur, 2 violins & coninuo

On the Lehmann the violins are more open/spacious sounding vs. more boxed in on Pro-Ject.

I drifted off on the rest of the record and just enjoyed through both preamps, somehow turning off my critical listening mode. This actually means, that BOTH preamps achieve a most important goal, which is just forgetting about the equipment, and enjoying the music. I have certainly had equipment, where I kept thinking and imagining what a better piece would sound like, but these preamps just simply are. "Zen", just being, has been achieved. 

 

FIRST RESULTS FOR MOVING MAGNET CARTRIDGE TEST ONLY:

This is a comparison test, so while close, if you have the extra money, the edge goes to the Lehmann Audio.

Both are a step above cheaper phono stages, and they are VERY close. 

The Lehmann Audio Black Cube does appear to deliver a "sturdier" bottom end foundation and sounds more spacious than the Pro-Ject, so it gets the nod!

However, we have entered the realm of "high end" audio, where differences and improvements are subtle. Too often, an upgrade of one piece means skipping another vital part altogether, so setting up your budget is first, and choosing the second best option with something else you need for a complete system will often win over not having a missing piece. 

In this case, the more than 250 dollar difference between the Pro-Ject S2 and the Black Cube phono stages (you need a phono stage for playing vinyl) means being able to buy the Dayton Audio APA150 (which you can use as a standalone without any remote control preamp) and a pair of the reasonable good and audiophile approved Dayton B652 speakers. 

Plus, the differences noted in this first comparison will likely only be noticed in a direct back and forth comparison of the same record rapidly plopped from one player/preamp to the other.

BUT ISN'T THERE A WINNER FOR NOW? 

Yes my Dear, it is the Lehmann Audio Black Cube Statement.

Here is TNT-Audio's take on The Lehmann Audio Black Cube:
https://www.tnt-audio.com/ampli/statement_e.html

Here is the TNT-Audio review of the Dayton Audio APA150:
https://www.tnt-audio.com/ampli/dayton_apa150_e.html

The low budget, but very acceptable Technolink TC-760LC:
https://www.phonopreamps.com/TC-760LCpp.html

The TC-760LC with upgraded power supply:
https://smile.amazon.com/TC-760LC-BLACK-Phono-Control-optional/dp/B00II2L880/

The TC-760LC with upgraded power supply in silver(ish ... sort of)
https://smile.amazon.com/TC-760LC-SILVER-Phono-Control-optional/dp/B00IHHNVNG/

Pro-Ject Phono Box S2:
https://www.project-audio.com/en/product/phono-box-s2/

Lehmann Audio Black Cube Statement:
https://www.lehmannaudio.com/phono-stages/black-cube-statement.html

MORE comparisons with Audio Technica OC9 MOVING COIL and different music on the platters TO COME!