Yamaha B2 NS1000X ARC SP10

From Our Readers (21-3): Roy C on Yamaha NS1000X with Yamaha B-2

Ed: As a longtime admirer of the NS1000 (which I'd gladly re-own any day given the right circumstances), and having penned many articles in this blog on these legendary loudspeakers, I enthusiastically welcome this article from a fellow reader, and it's a delight to encounter the equally legendary B-2!

BACKGROUND

Yamaha NS1000M & NAD 3020B has always been my favourite combo in the small 100sf audio room. I enjoyed the sound so much that I finally got hold of the bigger NS-1000X from Hifido Japan… & then the journey began!

ABOUT THE YAMAHAS
Yamaha NS1000X speakers (84'~88'), heavier (42kg) & newer model of the well known NS1000/1000M series. Similar high/mid BE drivers with 12" fibre carbon woofer. The In-line drivers layout is a copy of the higher model - NS2000. NS1000X was used by Luxman Japan as reference speakers up to 1979, along with a pair JBL K2 M9500! Some recognition there… at least in Japan domestic market. [Ed: see vintageknob)

Yamaha B-2 power amp (76'~80') uses 4x VFET per channel, 2x100w (8 ohm), dual mono design, separate transformers & twin volume pots. Some feel that VFET is the "most emotional" power transistor and having triode-like character similar to 300B. The VFET had ceased production since 80's due to its high cost. [Ed: see vintageknob]

THE SYSTEM
Power amp : Yamaha B-2
Preamp : ARC SP10 and Preamp section of NAD 3020B
Digital : Sony SR200P<DAC (Sparkler S306 or Micromega Mydac)
Analogue : Kenwood 600<Jelco<Denon DL301ii
Cables : Gotham & Belden

THE JOURNEY
My original NS1000M/NAD 3020B combo was musical and non-solid state sounding. Though different, it was as enjoyable as my other SET tube system. However, when I got the NS1000X and paired the 3020B with it, the magical synergy disappeared. Perhaps the NS1000X 6-ohm design and carbon fibre woofer calls for higher power than the 20w/ch 3020B is capable of. [Ed:1]

Next came Luxman SQ507X. Someone in Japan had great success with 1000X after auditions against various amps. Having 60w/ch, modeled after the highly acclaimed Luxman SQ38FD, the sound was more powerful, more 3D, but warm & soft just like old tube amp… but to my ears, it was just OK [Ed:2]. As the preamp section of the vintage NAD 3020 series has been praised by collectors [Ed:3], I was convinced to use 3020B as preamp with the power amp section of the Luxman driving NS1000X…Things seemed settled. But searching for ways to improve 1000X has always been on my mind.

In early 2021, a mint & reasonable priced Yamaha B-2 came on board. Paired with the preamp section of the 3020B, with the Yamaha B2 Vol pots arbitrarily set at 12 o'clock, there were more low level detail; mids/high have faster transients, and mico-dynamics had improved…the system appeared very much modern sounding. Still, to someone exposed to years of tube & SET, I felt something was still lacking – musicality.

I then tested B2 with my old ARC SP10 preamp, with the B2 gain pots set at the same 12 o'clock. It was an obvious mismatch (maybe impedance?) as there was unwelcoming high freq edge that was wearing, even with short listening sessions. The 3020B was then back as preamp. Sounded good again with some CDs, just OK with others, but still not as great as I have hoped from a B2/1000X combo.

The breakthrough came about when I recalled how we tested the B2 for function at the dealer's place: no preamp was used, DAC directly connected to B2 & gain pots set at 8 o'clock, A full range sound was audible in the big 350sf showroom. This implies the B2 works well even at low gain pot setting!

I then reconnected SP-10, lowered B2 gain pots to 9 o'clock & upped the volume control of SP-10. The sharp high frequency gone, hall sound & imaging came back, background noise lowered, more space in-between instruments. I felt the energy of piano keys & vibration of drum skin. Transients, attack, rhythm N pace all improved!

CONCLUSIONS

Ability to use power amp gain pots with preamp volume control adds a wonderful new dimension in system fine-tuning. [Ed:4]

Tube preamp SP10 improves musicality for sure. Maybe high-end SS preamp like Spectral DMC-12 or Krell KBL could do likewise or even better with B2, but that has to be tested. [Ed:5]

Tube Pre with SS power is exciting and rewarding. However I still gladly return to my other full tube SET setups for totally different sonic enjoyment. I am very fortunate and delighted to have different setups for different music & listening moods.

Footnotes
{1} Yamaha 1000X placement is of great importance. Huge Improvement achievable by mere repositioning. Great patience and muscle needed. Unlike conventional speakers, 1000X (2nd order X'over sealed box) has to be placed closer to a solid front wall, no toe-in.

{2} Yamaha B2 generates lots of heat. To protect and prolong the VFET lifespan (great pity not replaceable), suction fans are placed on top of B2 casing and ON after 30 mins into operation.

Editor's Postscripts: [1] Both rated at 90 db, the lower 6 ohm rated impedance of NS1000X is certainly less benign than the 8 ohm of the NS1000M. That said, the 20 wpc of the NAD is marginal even for the NS1000M, though the synergy is surprising indeed, as I had enjoyed this combo in a smallish space for 6 years; [2] Luxman usually sounds softish; never consider their preamps - no dynamics; [3] actually, I think few use the preamp section only. I am one who had praised it, as did my friend Hoi. That said, the standalone 1020, which is basically the same, does have a good reputation; [4] your results can be used to argue by some that a passive preamp will work just as well, if not better, though I don't think so. The B2 is likely of high input sensitivity, which is why it does not work well with the high gain SP-10 (a whopping 26 db just for linestage) initially. Then, there is the issue of the volume knob of the preamp, which at low settings besides not tracking stereo linearly often does not sound so good. It should be noted that many preamps, including the ARC SP-11 (but not the SP-10) have both Level and Gain controls, allowing one to finely tailor. That said, when 2 components both have volume knobs, it always pays to experiment with settings; [5] I doubt it. Certainly Krell has never made an outstanding preamp.

LYRA Skala

From Our Readers (21-2)：Craig S on LYRA Skala, A phono cartridge

Editor: As usual from Craig, this is a deceptively simple article with some thoughtful observations. The third to last paragraph is particularly brilliant.

I hope I am not too familiar when I suggest that we all know what a phono cartridge is. I always thought it was a tiny box of mysteries with a little stick protruding therefrom. And there are all the brands we know, Shure (if you are old enough) Decca (even older), Ortofon, Blue this or that, and of course Grado. You may have kept abreast and that is admirable.

While I was asleep, 1990 to 2018, a huge craft industry of phono cartridge manufacturers emerged and uncoiled like ferns in a dark wet forest at springtime. Now we have Hana, DS Audio, and Lyra. It is Lyra that I would like to write about today.

My ever-patient audio dealer saw my Ortofon 2M Black, the safest choice ever, mounted on a Clarity Arm, attached to a Clearaudio Performance SE, and sighed. “You could do so much better”, he said. But don't they all say that? Turns out, he was right.

From my many years of reading Listener, a true joy when a new edition appeared in the mailbox, I was brainwashed into the idea that low output moving coils were the gateway to nirvana. They were more lively, tracked better, were cooler, were handcrafted, etc, etc, and anyway they are just better, I was told. With a dozen of such cartridge articles under my belt, none of which I owned or even heard, the brainwashing was complete. So when my dealer nudged me to a Lyra Skala (barely used of course), I said yes.

Well, what a difference. And it is differences that sell, isn’t it? That cartridge replaced my Ortophon 2M Black which was perfectly satisfactory, and here is my story with the Lyra:

Tracking. We have to admit, this is a big deal in the enjoyment of vinyl. No record is perfectly flat, or at least none of mine are. Suddenly skipping forward seven bars during Whole Lotta Love just because your wife walked in at the worst possible time, is a bit on the nose. You see, I had a bouncy wooden floor in an old 120 year old house. Before I go to the sound may I tell you what I did about that? Thank you: A carpenter friend (who worked at Tannoy Kitchener) came up with a cunning plan: instead of 12 million dollars spent on stands and isolation devices, he went to the basement and installed heavy steel pillars that reached from basement floor to underneath the audio rack above. Essentially, now the rack sat upon concrete. All my floor walking problems were gone and I could now approach my playing turntable like a real man, rather than the wide-eyed, creeping, slipper-wearing thief that I was before.

So tracking matters. This Lyra Skala seems to be an unmovable tank. Everything is set up to factory spec by my dealer so anyone else can get similar results. May I offer some advice here? Do not let your cleaning lady go near your stereo. This goes double for ex wives, cats or other possibly careless do-gooders. They will ruin it.

Then there is the loading. We played around with different loading settings on my McIntosh C22, which has loading adjustments for MM and MC, and ended up at 100 ohms, though I think this is largely a flavour thing and ymmv.

Okay, everything is set and I am dropping the stylus on my “hot stamper” version of Name of This Band is Talking Heads. Golly! The tightness, the energy is far more acute then I have head with this familiar track, digital or vinyl. Ultra clear and punchy, with seemingly more air moving in the room. This cartridge is definitely more fun. I have the the requisite darker backs and much more dynamic range. Very engaging.

Placing some old Bossa Nova in the form of The Warm World of Joao Gilberto I hear much the same, an engaging, tight presentation that leaves pretty well zero to the imagination. Guitars are beautiful rendered and voices are legitimate and authentic in my room. It seems that flab is relegated to the basement. Lovely.

Maybe a record groove has a bit of a fight with a stylus. Is that groove life as it presents to us, and your cartridge life as you would like to see it? What is that connection? Good, bad, ugly? Is your stylus and cartridge really your interpreter? I say yes. For those of similar mind this is great way to enjoy “reality”; bouncy, fun, clear, low noise, and smiling, always wanting to please you.

The Lyra has been a zero fussbudget in my application. How nice to have such a stellar performer with no high maintenance downside. I am entirely happy with this cartridge until the next time my long suffering dealer comes around. What else have I been missing?

For those invested in HOMM, try LOMC and see if it can improve your life as well. It did for me, plus you can torture your friends with these acronyms.

Streaming Classical 21-3 Ladies I

Streaming Classical (21-3): Ladies Under the Radar, Part I, Introduction

Women musicians have it easier today. There are many famous women musicians now. Pianists Martha Argerich is a living legend and Yuja Wang is a superstar who deserves her fame (I have heard her many times and she always delivered). Mitsuko Uchida and Maria Joao Pires are now elder stateswomen, with less showy and narrower repertoire that they hone to perfection (too bad the great Alicia de Laroccha had passed; almost all her recordings are worthwhile. The ones on Decca are in resplendent sound; one little know gem is her Bach and Handel album). I also like wolf-warrior Helene Grimaud (DG). As for upstarts, I like old-fashioned Beatrice Rana (EMI), and am puzzled by the Yellow Label's support of Alice Sara-Ott (likely more popular in Japan, as she is half Japanese). While we are on DG, let me gratuitously lament their support for duo pianists Jussen brothers, whose recordings are totally superfluous. Yes, they are handsome, but hey (come to think of it, I am not so crazy about the Labeque Sisters either; older piano duos show more finesse)! And then two attractive Lady Firebrands, Valentina Lisitisa and Katia Buniastivili. The former shot to fame through her own efforts on recording and the internet and was taken up by Decca, but I like most of her recordings (Decca). Not so the latter, who no doubt has a phenomenal techinque and whom I may like to hear live, but her complete distortion of the score (on whatever she plays) is a travesty to composers and does not fare well on repeated listening (Sony). Violinists Come to think of it, there are way more star women violinists than pianists! In fact, they seem to dominate the scene even more than men. Julia Fischer, Janine Jansen, Hliary Hahn, Lisa Batiashvili, Nicola Benedetti I have all heard live and they are the real thing. On recordings I always enjoyed Arabella Steinbacher (mostly Pentatone and some Orfeo) and sometimes the eclectic twosome, Alina Ibragimova (Hyperion) and Patricia Kopatchinskaja (Alpha). If you ask me, this younger generation is more exciting than the older one: Victoria Mullova and Midori I have heard live; the former somehow always edgy and the latter plain boring; Ann Sophie Mutter is always reliable but not too inspiring; better Kyung Wha Chung, who at her best is formidable, even today (recent individualistic recordings on EMI). I have also heard the excellent Kyoko Takezawa many times in HK (very elegant manner that many could learn from; her excellent RCA recordings are totally forgotten now), and there is no reason at all why someone like Anne Akiko Meyers is better known (not to mention Vanessa).

We are not even covering women musicians in jazz and pop. Legends like Nina Simone were trained classical pianists (hers is a unique story). Here, my favorite is Shirley Horn, whose late venture You won't forget me (Verve), with assists from a starry roster of jazz greats, is one of my favorites. Audiophiles will point to Diana Krall, but in both pianism and vocalism she's not in their class. I rather rate Patricia Barber's compositions and performances much higher (I don't like audiophile's preference for the rather generic Cafe Blue, instead much preferring something like her original Let it Rain on Companion). In pop, we have Alicia Keys. When it comes to jazz violin, admittedly a niche, I have a soft spot. One of my desert island picks is Ellington's Indigos, because of Ray Nance's incredibly nuanced playing on Autumn Leaves. Today, I like Regina Carter's playing.

Pianists The greatest classical re-issue box in the last years is that of Ruth Slenzynska (Eloquence/DG). Bar none: (1) because these were American Decca (divested from and unrelated to UK Decca) recordings (now owned by DG/Universal) that have remained out of print until now. For an LP collector like me, American Decca's are relatively rare, and Slenzynska extremely so; (2) because she is a supreme artist, touted in her days by all the piano greats but then fell into oblivion likely because she is female (the long-locked vaults of American Decca were to blame too). She is still alive, and playing superbly. I consider it one of the greatest luck of mine to have heard her some years ago in Taiwan in an (!) all-Brahms program. Can you imagine the difficulty in concentration? Yet I was mesmerized for the whole duration; I'd not expect to hear Brahms like this for the rest of my life. Behind me, her former student, now a professor, was sobbing - no greater testament for her artistry. Her simultaneously harrowing and uplifting autobiography Forbidden Childhood, which mainly chronicles her difficult early years as a prodigy, is, of course, like many great books, out-of-print in English, but strangely available in a Taiwan Chinese translation, which I read with tears of joy. If you are still into physical media, grab this box while you still can. She has also made some relatively recent recordings (Ivroy Classics) which should be treasured. Next, I turn to another neglected favorite, Reine Gianoli, whom I first encountered in her impeccable Mozart sonata cycle (Doremi, borrowed from the HK Library; later, I chanced upon an MCA gatefold LP re-issue of the original Westminster LPs for 2 bucks, and I was ecstatic, even if it was only half the cycle). Many of her recordings are still unavailable, but you can stream a few. Most notable is the re-issue box of her Schumann (Decca), which sets an example on how Schumann should be played - lively, considered, fluent, but not given to wanton impulses, like in so many modern performances. Rare and highly recommended. There are many others who have passed that I'd like to mention, but that will have to wait till the next installments.