The Elys2 simply is not as refined of a cartridge for bass. Midrange is amazing but you are just hearing the sound profile of the cartridge. The midrange and treble are spectacular but the bass is obviously muddy. I personally upgrade to the Exact2 which is a much more refined cartridge but is much more expensive. The track it was most obvious on to me was So What off Kind of Blur.

Also, the Elys2 is a MM cartridge and I believe that ProJect only has variable setting for a MC cartridge. The Elys2 should use the same setting you see in the instruction manual for the Ortofon 2M Red.

sv25565 wrote:

I just purchased the mentioned equipment. I have 2 Adcom GFA-555's, bridged mono, powering a pair of Altec Flamencos. The sound is incredibly clean and Jazz sounds spectacular. However when I play albums with a more punchy bass it doesn't feel crisp. The Project Phono DS+ is configurable but Rega does not post the recommended settings for an Elys2 cartridge.

My question is twofold. Does anyone know the correct input impedance, input capacitance, input gain and should I use the subsonic filter for my Elys2 cartridge? Also do you have any advice for getting more punch to the bass? Gotta love some funk every now and then. :)

The cartridge is a MM type with a 7 Millivolt output spec.

I suggest that you set the gain for 45 DB, the capacitance for 47 pF, and the load at 47K ohms.

You should be aware that the capacitance of your connecting cables between the cartridge and phono preamp adds to the capacitance set in the preamp.

Thus, if your cables have a capacitance of 250 pF and you set the preamp for 47 pF, the total capacitive load on the cartridge is 297 Pf.

Most manufacturers recommend that the total capacitive load be kept under 200 pF, although this varies from cartridge to cartridge. Rega gives no specification for this, which is very unusual.

For this reason, one must always keep the cables between the turntable and phono preamp very short. I recommend keeping them no longer than 2 feet long. More much cable length adds capacitance to the the cartridge load, and this can affect sound quality very much.

The cable length between the phono preamp and main preamp/amplifer is not an issue, since these are isolated from the cartridge by the phono preamp circuitry.

sv25565 wrote:

I forgot to add. My rack mounted stereo preamp died so I am using my hometheatre Denon 2300W. The Phono from the project DS+ is going through the hometheatre DVD input on the second zone. That may introduce some kind of change to the sound as the Denon has built in equalizer settings. I do have it set to the 2 channel "Music" output.

I think the way you are doing that is very problematic. It may indeed screw up the sound a LOT.

I suggest that you get a dedicated preamp for your system.

The Schiit SCH-13 passive preamp is something you could put in there, and it is only $59 from Amazon.

It may have a strange name, but Stereophile has checked it out and it seems to work very well (within its limitations).

High-quality preamps are quite expensive, but until you can get one, the SCH-13 would possibly make a major improvement over the way you are doing it now.

For $349, you can get the Schitt Saga tube preamp, which in addition to a vacuum tube buffer circuit to provide impedance matching, also allows you to switch between 5 connected signal sources. It also has remote control.