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The antiskating force is applied by a surprisingly hefty (2.7gm) falling weight, which works against a thin metal lever fastened to the 997's rotating bearing housing. The lever is notched for three different thread positions, these corresponding with downforces of 2.0, 2.5, and 3.0gm—which would seem to exclude the Grace F9E cartridge at one end of the spectrum and EMT's own OFD 65 at the other. But no matter: During its first two weeks in my home, I tried the EMT 997 with three different pickup heads and one cartridge-headshell combination, and concluded that, in every instance, I…
Sidebar: Associated Equipment
Analog Sources: "Thorens TD 124 Mk.II turntable; Miyabi 47, EMT OFD 25, Ortofon SPU Synergy A cartridges.
Preamplification: Auditorium 23 Standard, K&K Audio, EAR MC4 step-up transformers; Shindo Masseto preamplifier.
Power Amplifiers: Shindo Cortese, Quad II monoblocks.
Loudspeakers: Audio Note AN-E/SPe HE, Quad ESL.
Cables: Interconnect: Audio Note AN-Vx, Shindo silver. Speaker: Auditorium 23, DNM.
Accessories: Mana Reference Table; 3 Mana short tables (under turntable).—Art Dudley
Art Dudley wrote about the EMT 997 in September 2008 (Vol.31 No.9):
A misunderstanding: During my first two weeks with the EMT 997 tonearm that I wrote about in my July 2008 "Listening" column, whenever it seemed that the azimuth of the pickup head in use was a little bit off, I would loosen the teensy-weensy grub screw at the bottom of the end of the armtube, carefully rotate the pickup head a fraction of a degree, retighten the grub screw, then look back on my busy day with pride. That regimen continued until curiosity got the better of me and I took a really close look at that teensy-…
There's a retro, Heathkit vibe to the curiously capitalized PrimaLuna ProLogue Eight CD player: a shelf of glowing tubes and a chunky transformer case perched atop a plain black chassis. But on closer inspection, it seems there's much more going on here. The chassis is made of heavy-gauge steel, with (according to the manual) a "five-coat, high-gloss, automotive finish," each coating hand-rubbed and -polished. The tube sockets are ceramic, the output jacks gold-plated. Inside, separate toroidal transformers power each channel. Custom-designed isolation transformers separate the analog and…
And, back to the Górecki, in the middle of the first movement, when the basses growl right before the crescendo, the PrimaLuna didn't let me hear the growl. Fast transients and accurate overtones can go only so far in disguising an absence of truly deep bass.
Dynamic range was compressed a bit, but peaks weren't distorted or clipped; it was more like someone slightly easing up on the pedal. The high octaves were also rolled off a bit (hence the shortage of air), but the rolloff was smooth; there was no sense of a brickwall filter, no harshness.—Fred Kaplan
Comparisons from John…
Sidebar 1: Specifications
Description: Single-box, fixed-output, remote-control CD player with tubed output stage, SuperTubeClock to minimize jitter, and SoftStart circuit for extended life of tubes. Tube complement: two 5AR4 rectifiers, two 12AX7, two 12AU7, subminiature triode in SuperTubeClock circuit. Analog outputs: 1 pair (RCA). Digital outputs: S/PDIF on coaxial (RCA) and optical (TosLink). Frequency response: 20Hz–20kHz, ±0.5dB. Channel separation: 90dB at 1kHz. Maximum output level: 2V, ±3dB. Signal/noise: >96dB. Dynamic range: 120dB. Distortion and noise: <–70dB. Power…
Sidebar 2: Fred Kaplan's Associated Equipment
Digital Sources: Krell Evolution 505 SACD player, Simaudio Moon CD 5.3 CD player.
Integrated Amplifier: Krell FBI.
Loudspeakers: Verity Audio Parsifal Applause.
Cables: Nirvana.
Accessories: Bybee Signature Model Power Purifier, Monster Cable AVS2000 voltage regulator, Black Diamond IV Racing Cones.—Fred Kaplan
Sidebar 3: John Atkinson's Associated Equipment
Digital Sources: Ayre C-5xe, Pioneer DV-578A, Oppo DV-970HD universal players; Benchmark DAC 1 USB D/A converter.
Preamplifiers: Parasound Halo JC 2, Mark Levinson No.380S.
Power Amplifiers: Mark Levinson No.33H.
Loudspeakers: PSB Synchrony One, Epos M16i, Avalon NP Evolution 2.0, Magico V3.
Cables: Digital: Kimber Illuminations Orchid AES/EBU, AudioQuest OptiLink-5 S/PDIF. Interconnect (balanced): AudioQuest Cheetah, Ayre Signature Series. Interconnect (unbalanced): Linn, Canare. Speaker: AudioQuest Kilimanjaro. AC: PS Audio…
Sidebar 4: Measurements
I examined the PrimaLuna ProLogue Eight's measured behavior mainly using Audio Precision's top-model SYS2722 system (see www.ap.com and "As We See It" in the January 2008 issue), as well as our Audio Precision System One and the Miller Audio Research Jitter Analyzer for some tests. As always, I experimented with the grounding between the player under test and the test set to give the lowest level of measured hum (see later).
The ProLogue Eight's error correction was one of the best I have encountered. While its digital output flagged errors when the gap in…
John Atkinson auditioned the ProLogue Eight upgrades in October 2008 (Vol.31 No.10):
Back in the July issue, Fred Kaplan and I jointly reviewed the PrimaLuna ProLogue Eight CD player ($2495). Designed in the Netherlands and manufactured in China, the ProLogue Eight features technologies both old and new. While each channel's DAC chip is a highly specified, 24-bit Burr-Brown PCM1792 fed by a Burr-Brown SRC4192 upsampling converter running at 192kHz, the audio signal is handled by pairs of 12AX7 and 12AU7 dual-triode tubes, with 5AR4 tubes used for power-supply rectification. And rather…