Description: Three-way, stand- or bookshelf-mounted, sealed-box loudspeaker. Drive-units: 12" paper-cone woofer, 1.5" soft-dome midrange unit, 0.75" soft-dome tweeter. Crossover frequencies: 650Hz, 5.5kHz. Frequency response: 32Hz-20kHz ±3dB. Sensitivity: 85dB/2.83V/m. Nominal impedance: 6.5 ohms (3.6 ohms minimum). Amplifier requirements: 50W-250W recommended minimum/maximum.
Dimensions: 15" (381mm) W by 11" (280mm) D by 25" (635mm) H. Recommended stand height: 8-12". Weight: 54 lbs (24.5kg) each.
Serial numbers of units reviewed: B303001209A/B,…
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Sidebar 1: Specifications
Sidebar 2: System & Setup
The ARs were auditioned in my dedicated listening room driven by a pair of Mark Levinson No.20.6 monoblocks, a Krell KSA-50S, a Conrad-Johnson Premier Eleven A, and a Cary Audio Design CAD-300SEI integrated amplifier (see RH's review of the Cary elsewhere in this issue). The preamplifier in my room was the remote-controlled Mark Levinson No.38S, with a Mod Squad Phono Drive EPS used to amplify LP signals from a Linn Sondek/Cirkus/Trampolin/Lingo/Ekos/Arkiv setup sitting on an ArchiDee 'table.
Digital sources were Mark Levinson No.30.5 HDCD and Parts…
Measurements
Other than impedance (for which I used an Audio Precision System One) and the in-room spectral analysis (footnote 1), all measurements were performed with a MLSSA v.8.5 system from DRA Labs, in combination with an Outline computer-controlled loudspeaker turntable and a B&K 4006 microphone calibrated to be flat on-axis at the typical measuring distance I use. To minimize reflections from the test setup, the measuring microphone is flush-mounted inside the end of a long tube. Reflections of the speaker's sound from the mike stand and its hardware will thus be sufficiently…
Tom Jung's career has been dotted with numbers. In 1969, he and a partner founded Sound 80, a Minneapolis recording studio named by an advertising wizard who had previously conjured up the appellation Cure 81 for a Hormel ham, supposedly while sipping Vat 69 scotch. Some years later, engineers from another Midwestern company with a numeral in its name, 3M, stopped by with an experimental tape recorder that also employed digits. Those zeros and ones proved critical to the recordings Jung went on to engineer and produce at his next company, Digital Music Products, better known as DMP.
Jung…
Lander: What were the pictures, and who were the composers?
Jung: Dressed to Kill, with Pino Donaggio. Star 80, with Ralph Burns. The Cotton Club, with John Barry, was a fascinating project; it went on for about a year. I was still doing records on a freelance basis, primarily jazz, and that's where I began thinking maybe this is the time to start a little jazz label. I started talking about it to musicians I was working with, people I'd see almost every day on sessions, like Warren Bernhardt, Joe Beck, Bob Mintzer, and some of the other guys we ultimately signed and went on to record.…
There is something vaguely disturbing about the idea of an $8000 turntable and arm combination. That's more money than a lot of audiophiles have invested in records through the years. Total overkill! Or so it might seem. But the entire history of analog disc reproduction, from the first LP to the present, has been one of seemingly open-ended discoveries—of subtleties nobody ever imagined were frozen in those tiny grooves, of levels of quality no one ever guessed the medium was capable of. Yes, newer LPs are a lot better than the first ones, but that is only to be expected in any…
The arm parts are machined from steel and aluminum, and, except for the carriage rod and the knurled end "handle," are black-anodyzed. Every physical parameter is adjustable by means of Allen wrenches (supplied, footnote 1), setup is quite simple, and the adjustments don't interact. You can even change VTA while the unit is playing a disc, though tangency readjustment is then required.
There is no arm as such; rather, there is a short arm carriage consisting of two pieces: a removable magnesium "headshell," which accommodates the cartridge, and the main air-bearing assembly. The…
Associated Equipment
Associated components used for my tests of the Versa Dynamics 2.0 were the Ortofon MC-2000 cartridge with its X-2000 step-up transformer, Threshold FET-10 preamplifier and SA-1 power amplifiers, and Sound Lab A-3 full-range electrostatic speakers. Cartridge tracking force was set to 1.5 grams, with the cartridge body parallel to the disc surface. Interconnects were Monster M-1000 Laboratory Reference series, and the speaker cables were by Straight Wire. Signal sources were from analog discs from Sheffield, Reference Recordings, Wilson Audio, and Opus 3 (the Depth of…
Associated components used for my tests of the Versa Dynamics 2.0 were the Ortofon MC-2000 cartridge with its X-2000 step-up transformer, Threshold FET-10 preamplifier and SA-1 power amplifiers, and Sound Lab A-3 full-range electrostatic speakers. Cartridge tracking force was set to 1.5 grams, with the cartridge body parallel to the disc surface. Interconnects were Monster M-1000 Laboratory Reference series, and the speaker cables were by Straight Wire. Signal sources were from analog discs from Sheffield, Reference Recordings, Wilson Audio, and Opus 3 (the Depth of…
The disc damping is much more effective than that of the SOTA Star, even at the latter's maximum vacuum setting. I have no explanation for this, other than to suggest that the Versa Dynamics may use a higher vacuum than the SOTA (I had no means on hand for measuring them).
Readers may remember some discussions in these pages, in connection with the SOTA Star's adjustable vacuum, about how the amount of vacuum can be used to "tweak" the sound of the disc for "optimum" quality. It is my contention that this is nonsense. In any record player, a resonance is a resonance, and it doesn't…
Bass performance from discs, too, now sets a new standard. The Versa Dynamics, in my system, produced the smoothest, deepest, tightest low end I have ever heard from disc! Bass performance is almost exactly like that from Compact Disc, which is to say it is probably about as natural as it is possible to get. It is now clear that the WTA, which has been accused of thinning deep bass, instead slightly exaggerates the midbass. To the ear, the midbass exaggeration tends to obscure what is below.
In short, this player is giving me by far the best sound from analog discs that I have ever had,…