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new Rega Ania Pro MC cartridge

dave charlton said:
Great post, although I'd say the move up to an Apheta from an Exact wasn't subtle for me.
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Considering the price difference, I'd kinda expect that! I wouldn't spend that much on a cartridge, I couldn't justify it. In fact my goal with the RP10 was to reduce running costs as vinyl is a second source for me. I hoped the RP10 with a MM cartridge would be good enough to give me a simple, reliable record player that just worked.

To say it has worked out is an understatement. It's taken me ages to find the right setup but with the Exact and the new cable between the Aria and amp it's just fantastic. Easily miles better than any LP12 setup I've had whatever the cartridge.

That's why I'm cagey about changing anything. Right now I've got the best turntable I've ever heard and it only costs £260 to replace the stylus. I don't know that I need it to be any better.
 
Mr Pig said:
Considering the price difference, I'd kinda expect that! I wouldn't spend that much on a cartridge, I couldn't justify it. In fact my goal with the RP10 was to reduce running costs as vinyl is a second source for me. I hoped the RP10 with a MM cartridge would be good enough to give me a simple, reliable record player that just worked.

To say it has worked out is an understatement. It's taken me ages to find the right setup but with the Exact and the new cable between the Aria and amp it's just fantastic. Easily miles better than any LP12 setup I've had whatever the cartridge.

That's why I'm cagey about changing anything. Right now I've got the best turntable I've ever heard and it only costs £260 to replace the stylus. I don't know that I need it to be any better.
Click to expand...
That’s very interesting as I am considering purchasing a P8 and have a new exact in the box and was contemplating whether I needed an Ania Pro or not. I have heard the Ania on the P6 and to be honest apart from very well recorded lp’s, I find the sound rather strident almost more so now with the Aria. I have considered other offerings from Dynavector and Hana bit really don’t want to fiddle with shins set up etc. Maybe the exact just might be the ticket
 
Conster said:
I have heard the Ania on the P6 and to be honest apart from very well recorded lp’s, I find the sound rather strident....Maybe the exact just might be the ticket
Click to expand...

I think your supposition is almost certainly correct.

Fundamentally, the RP10 has no character. It is a blank sheet of paper, or as close to it as I've ever heard a record player get. My understanding is that the P8, and the other 'plastic' decks, are similar but the P8 has slightly more warmth about it? Most turntables add quite a bit of their own colour and it generally helps give you that likable vinyl sound.

I thought the neutrality of the RP10 would make matching easier but it doesn't. The majority of cartridges are balanced to work on typical turntables, not ones as clean as the Regas. While the Exact has sins of omission, it's the first cartridge I've tried that I feel does nothing wrong. Or rather the vinyl set up as a whole is doing nothing wrong. It lacks a little 'air' but it's not as chronically 2D as cheaper Rega MM carts. It sounds clean, detailed and fast but has enough weight and warmth to fill in what the RP10 lacks. It's sounds....right.

I don't know how big the gap is between the P6 and 8 but the margin over my LP12s is big. I ran LP12s with Norton, Valhalla and Avondale PSUs. Circus and pre-Cirkus bearings, almost all Linn arms up to the Ittok and modified Regas. A lot of carts up to Troika and OC9. The RP10/Exact lets to see how trivial all of those changes were. Just tweaks this way or that. The Rega is a fundamental shift upwards in almost every area. It sounds like what you think a high-end turntable should sound like.

Obviously lots of people are just as happy using better Rega carts and I'm not suggesting they're wrong. It's really just a question of getting the right balance in your particular system. Thirty years with the LP12 meant everything I had or had done was optimizing that particular sound. The Rega has sounded wrong for a long time. I think that's why a lot of people reject them, they don't realize how much they might have to change to get the balance right. But it's worth the effort as it's a cheap, simple way to get really high sound quality.
 
Interesting observations. I remember hearing a P9 several years ago. Had always wanted one. It had a Benz micro glider on it and initially I was impressed but soon after I actually found the sound quite annoying and almost too CD like. I thought to myself I wonder what this would sound like with an exact. Lol. I also had an Lp12 and like you experimented with many cartridges and power supplies phono stages etc but eventually got tired of trying to improve the sound and sold it. Somedays I miss it but when I had it I always felt my systemdek rb300 was nearly as good and with the proper cartridge better. I did purchase another systemdek with another rb300 and it scratches that Linn itch again.
 
Conster said:
I always felt my systemdek rb300 was nearly as good and with the proper cartridge better.
Click to expand...

Agree. The Systemdek was underrated in my opinion. I mean it was well regarded but I think it's a lot better than the price suggested.

The RP10 is similar, has a tendency to sound CD like. Which if you think about it should be a compliment as it implies a lack of colouration! But the colouration on vinyl is a good thing. A lot of the time.
 
Mr Pig said:
Agree. The Systemdek was underrated in my opinion. I mean it was well regarded but I think it's a lot better than the price suggested.

The RP10 is similar, has a tendency to sound CD like. Which if you think about it should be a compliment as it implies a lack of colouration! But the colouration on vinyl is a good thing. A lot of the time.
Click to expand...

agreed. New vinyl for the most part sounds rather lousy these days. Apart from offerings from tone poet analogue productions mobile fidelity etc front ends that err on the neutral side make the other recordings not so fun
 
Conster said:
Apart from offerings from tone poet analogue productions mobile fidelity etc front ends that err on the neutral side make the other recordings not so fun
Click to expand...

I run my turntable through the tuner input on my amp, which has a gain/buffer stage. Basically, it adds colouration! Swapped between it and the straight through input many, many times. The clean input offers a little more clarity but it lacks something, something critical. I just don't enjoy it.

The problem is that the CD player sounds better through that input as well and I only have one! So I tend to play vinyl for a while, then swap the leads around and play CD for a while.

Distortion is not always the enemy.
 
Mr Pig said:
I think your supposition is almost certainly correct.

Fundamentally, the RP10 has no character. It is a blank sheet of paper, or as close to it as I've ever heard a record player get. My understanding is that the P8, and the other 'plastic' decks, are similar but the P8 has slightly more warmth about it? Most turntables add quite a bit of their own colour and it generally helps give you that likable vinyl sound.

I thought the neutrality of the RP10 would make matching easier but it doesn't. The majority of cartridges are balanced to work on typical turntables, not ones as clean as the Regas. While the Exact has sins of omission, it's the first cartridge I've tried that I feel does nothing wrong. Or rather the vinyl set up as a whole is doing nothing wrong. It lacks a little 'air' but it's not as chronically 2D as cheaper Rega MM carts. It sounds clean, detailed and fast but has enough weight and warmth to fill in what the RP10 lacks. It's sounds....right.

I don't know how big the gap is between the P6 and 8 but the margin over my LP12s is big. I ran LP12s with Norton, Valhalla and Avondale PSUs. Circus and pre-Cirkus bearings, almost all Linn arms up to the Ittok and modified Regas. A lot of carts up to Troika and OC9. The RP10/Exact lets to see how trivial all of those changes were. Just tweaks this way or that. The Rega is a fundamental shift upwards in almost every area. It sounds like what you think a high-end turntable should sound like.

Obviously lots of people are just as happy using better Rega carts and I'm not suggesting they're wrong. It's really just a question of getting the right balance in your particular system. Thirty years with the LP12 meant everything I had or had done was optimizing that particular sound. The Rega has sounded wrong for a long time. I think that's why a lot of people reject them, they don't realize how much they might have to change to get the balance right. But it's worth the effort as it's a cheap, simple way to get really high sound quality.
Click to expand...
I will offer a different take on the upper Rega's.

I run P9 with Orto Jubilee and P8 with Nag MP500.

I find that matching an ultra-neutral MC or MM with these ultra-neutral decks makes for a best possible combination.

I do listen on a full-range system with big amp stacks. I also use a combination of Funk mat topped with the very thin carbon Extremephono layer. I have come to like this better than the felt.

It's " CD-like" in that it has subjectively better than digital dynamic range and near CD SNR but coupled with great image focus, detail and harmonic integrity/complexity.
 
Mr Pig said:
Considering the price difference, I'd kinda expect that! I wouldn't spend that much on a cartridge, I couldn't justify it. In fact my goal with the RP10 was to reduce running costs as vinyl is a second source for me. I hoped the RP10 with a MM cartridge would be good enough to give me a simple, reliable record player that just worked.

To say it has worked out is an understatement. It's taken me ages to find the right setup but with the Exact and the new cable between the Aria and amp it's just fantastic. Easily miles better than any LP12 setup I've had whatever the cartridge.

That's why I'm cagey about changing anything. Right now I've got the best turntable I've ever heard and it only costs £260 to replace the stylus. I don't know that I need it to be any better.
Click to expand...

Really pleased you find the RP10/Exact combo so satisfying as I sold you the latter. Must be the best £150 you ever spent on hifi.
 
chartz said:
I meant in Europe... Linn, Thorens, Rega, Ariston, Michell et al didn’t have the industrial ability to produce DD’s. Belt drives are cheap and cheerful, and profit inducing. They always were.
Click to expand...

They didn't need it. Matsushita were perfectly happy to sell DD motors to any turntable company for many years.
Some small companies gave it a go, e.g. JBE which was a Linn LP12 competitor in the early 80s.
 
Anyway, back to the Ania Pro - just ordered one.

Looks interesting enough to try. Ogura Vital comes in a few variations so lets see what we get :)
 
Hey I guess if someone has a 2nd hand gyrodec being used for spare parts, it'd be a...a...

Donar-Gyros-Dec.

Ahahahahaha. Oh, oh middle eastern food humour!

(lowers head, walks off stage left)
 
Arrived today and installed it this evening.

I'll comment on the sonics at the weekend once it has played a few discs and settled in.
One very good sign is that during setup it sailed through my Ortofon test discs clearing all of the tracking tests, and the channel separation is the best I've ever encountered from a cartridge - its better than the test record and somewhere north of 35dB on both channels. Great result.

Some pics, including the loading as per Rega spec:

anp2 by Rob Holt, on Flickr

sig by Rob Holt, on Flickr
 
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