by TBR contributor Alex Bunardzic

As a musician, I am very passionate about sound quality. To that end I’ve spent a number of years meticulously building the stereo system of my dreams and that system is now built primarily around vinyl playback. When I started building my system the school of thought was that the amplifier is the heart of any audio system. Subscribing to that thought, I started my journey there, and after many unsatisfactory attempts I settled on an obscure product from the UK — DPA separates. Their combo gave me the cleanest, least distorted signal I’d found.

From there I focused on speakers. At the time I was using Castle speakers, and they’re not bad sounding. But the Castles turned out to be too reserved and polite for my taste. So after experimenting with various floor standing speakers I finally settled on a pair of vintage Magneplanar speakers — MG IMP-I. These speakers, coupled with the DPA separates, propelled my system into brand new territory that gave me coloration free, non-congested sound.

Once I got the core components of my system sorted out, I turned my attention to the way I am connecting these components. Not being satisfied with the vanilla, no name cables in my system and after some experimentation, I ended up spending a little money on Shunyata power cables, AudioQuest interconnects and Nordost speaker cables. I’ve learned in the process that it is often cheaper and less frustrating to first discover what your existing components can really do, before going on a treadmill of constantly upgrading expensive gear. Cabling and interconnects are a relatively modest investment that can fix and improve some of the perceived deficiencies in one’s audio system.

So to cut the long story short, after assembling and fine tuning my audio chain, I decided to sit back and just enjoy high quality playback. Everything looked rosy and peachy…

…until around 3 years ago. I came to the realization that no matter how many upgrades I continued making to my digital front end (CD/DVD/Blu Ray players. digital transports, digital streamers, DACs), I would never get to the point where I actually enjoyed hearing digital playback. That was when I decided to go back to the roots – back to the fundamentals — vinyl. After all, early on my love for music started with my love affair with vinyl.

This time around I decided to start from the very instrument that makes music — the cartridge. I’d never had a chance to experiment with moving coil cartridges and I started doing research on them, and no discussion on MC cartridges should exclude the venerable Denon DL-103. I quickly became aware of the almost mythical status of that cartridge, and with the price right, I went out on a limb and ordered one.

When it arrived I began the search for a turntable and phono preamp to host the  DL-103.  I received some recommendations for the Technics SL-1200, but these tables were not easy to find in a good condition. Then I was advised that SL-1200 may not be precise enough for DL-103, so I continued my search for a vintage table, eventually settling on a Systemdek IIX (a poor man’s Linn Sondek LP12) with a Rega RB300 tonearm. The seller threw in a Project Phono Box DC with a hand made Step up transformer (SUT) to complete the package,

When I mounted the DL-103 and gave it a spin, I was pleasantly surprised by the forcefulness of the presentation. It delivered a lot of body and presence to the playback, and right then and there I knew I had made the right decision to go back to analog. But after living for a few weeks with that configuration, I started feeling that something was lacking. I decided to upgrade the phono stage and ordered an Emotiva XPS-1. That little phono stage noticeably improved the sound, but after spending a few months with the new configuration I was still not satisfied with the overall delivery. The sound was a bit brittle and glaring, and the finer details seemed missing. I started looking for alternative components for my analog chain.

After receiving a few suggestions I decided to try a different cartridge, I decided I wanted something that would give me less glare with more details. I settled on the Ortofon OM20 with its nude elliptical stylus and the moment I mounted OM20 on RB300 it became obvious that many previously missing details were now fully present. I was, kind of satisfied, with the upgrade. But the sound, although detailed, was still somewhat glaring and a bit glassy and metallic.

So I upgraded my phono to iFi Micro iPhono 2. That upgrade took the playback to a completely new level and I was very satisfied with the configuration. The metallic, glassy, glaring quality was all but gone and it was a much more pleasant listening experience for me.

Unfortunately (or fortunately, as it later turned out), I managed to damage RB300 tonearm while transporting my turntable. I promptly replaced it with a Jelco SA-750E 10 inch arm, mounted the OM20 on the Jelco and was happy to notice that the sound in the new configuration got even better. With some modifications to the turntable (such as removing the metal chassis and dampening the plinth and the innards with self-adhesive Dynamat) it became clear that this configuration offered ample potential. When I dampened the Jelco tonearm with supplied silicone damping fluid, the sound reached an even higher level of cleanliness and clarity.

But the Jelco (being a 10 inch arm) was mounted on an armboard machined for a 9 inch RB300, and it turned out that the geometry was a bit off, so I ordered a custom made armboard for the Jelco. The armboard was machined from plexiglass and when it arrived and I installed it, for some crazy reason I decided to try it with DL-103.

That’s when the unexpected happened. Although it had been clearly demonstrated to me before that replacing the conical stylus DL-103 with the nude elliptical OM20 provided much more and finer details, going back to the conical stylus now with the new tonearm configuration the DL-103 completely destroyed the Ortofon! The DL-103 was now delivering much finer details than Ortofon OM20 ever could.

My conclusion was that DL-103 was just a poor match for the Rega RB300 arm and was severely underperforming. The Ortofon OM20 was a much better fit for the RB300 and it easily beat DL-103 with the Rega. But on a better arm the OM20 lost on all counts. And I use the word ‘lost’ to avoid any hint of a hyperbole. A much better description would be that the DL-103 TOTALLY DESTROYED the OM20 on Jelco 10 inch tonearm!

So after this long winded story I reach my main point: the Denon DL-103 has completely transformed my experience of listening to music playback. This last adjustment (mounting it on Jelco SA-750E arm with properly designed armboard) created a very unique presentation of the music. I’m sharing this with you because I have never heard anything like the sound I’m now getting out of this cartridge. It is hard to put into words, so I feel forced to reach for some analogies (I’ll be probably stretching the analogy too thin here, so I apologize in advance):

A long time ago when I first visited France, I had an eye opening experience regarding their food. Before visiting France I was never much into food, but trying their specialty food items awoke a field of new sensual perceptions in me. I remember trying tart au citron (lemon tart) for the first time in Paris. It was a crazy experience, because not only did I taste lemon, eggs and butter, I also tasted something else, something that has no name. That something is the quality that results from a well assembled compound where the final result is greater than the sum of its parts.

In a similar fashion, when I now listen to good vinyl pressings using the DL-103, I hear something that goes beyond the instruments and vocals that comprise the recording, and it’s like nothing I’ve ever heard before. This new, elusive quality that has emerged from my system is so bloody seductive, I completely forget about instruments and the vocals. I forget about the soundstage and the imaging. I just sit back and experience the music as though it were some divine substance washing over me.

I know this sounds crazy, but that’s the revelation that hit me with this new configuration. If I now put some other cartridge on (I’ve tried Ortofon, Dynavector and Audio Technica), I do not get even a trace of that new presentation. What I do get is a good old familiar ‘hi fi’ sound where what attracts my attention is the precise imaging, the sizable soundstage and the finer textures of voices and instruments and so on. But switching back to DL-103 all those facets become secondary, because an elusive ‘tone’ commands my full attention and plays centre stage.

Soon I started visiting friends with good audio systems and listening to their configurations. None of the elusive quality I was hearing in my own system was to be found on other systems. I visited some local high end audio stores and spent some time listening to their flagship ‘statement’ systems, and still none of the magical quality I was hearing on my own system could be detected. These systems did offer very respectable, very convincing hi fi delivery with loads of details, vast soundstage, razor sharp imaging, etc – but not the revelatory sound I’d found in my own system.

My most recent auditioning experience included an extremely expensive configuration with top of the line McIntosh amplification, some crazy expensive speakers, etc. After listening to a few tracks I concluded that while the precision and accuracy were breathtaking, the actual body and heft that DL-103 gave my system was lacking.

After all of these comparative listening experience I’ve now concluded that what I have in my listening room is not so much a music reproduction chain as a new musical instrument. It’s an instrument that makes sound by dragging a mechanical stylus through a piece of rotating plastic and it’s an instrument I LOVE the sound of! And the LOUDER the better!

I’ve noticed that there are a number of audio components and various configurations of those audio components on the market which sound okay at low and moderate loudness, but if you crank them up you begin to cringe. I’m not talking about outrageously loud playback, merely loudness levels which approach the volume of real life performances. On the other hand, a well configured system that is playing a well produced and properly manufactured vinyl record will render the sound pleasing to the ear even at very high volumes, an experience I was never able to have with digital playback.

But if the vinyl record contains music that was not recorded, mixed, mastered and pressed properly, no component and no amount of system tweaking could ever make it sound pleasant. Since embracing the DL-103 I’ve begun to notice that the vintage LPs in my collection sound more pleasing to me than the modern reissues.

This remains an unsolved puzzle for me. There should be no reason for a vintage pressing to sound better. If anything, in the days of higher demands for vinyl and the hyper-production of copies required to satisfy that demand, it would seem the challenges for delivering quality vinyl pressings would be greater than it is today. But while lower production volumes theoretically mean higher quality pressings, the quality of current vinyl production remains marginal at best.

The Denon DL-103 revealed to me more than any other component in my system the value of good vintage vinyl. This little cartridge has shown me something big – that vintage vinyl is by far the best source material for a truly high end audio listening experience.