Hi to all
I am considering the idea of changing the Rega Ania stylus with the Rega Ania Pro …
has anyone made direct comparisons? is it worth the money?
the turntable is a Rega P6 and at the moment the budget doesn’t allow me to evaluate higher cost cartridges like the Apheta3.
thank you very much for your contributions …
Upgraded from Ania to Pro version and very much enjoyed the latter, which is still in use. Definitely an improvement in detail and musicality. Only your own listening can say if it’s value for money.
Suggest you also consider phono stages, to get the benefit of the Pro. I added the very capable Rega Aria and preferred to StageLine.
Good luck with your HiFi journey.
Rather than a better cartridge, you might be better swapping the 6 for an 8. I was really surprised how much better the 8 is - better bearing, platter and very importantly, the arm itself, an 880 rather than 330.
Indeed, as @Suedkiez mentioned, I changed from the Ania to Ania Pro and I am extremely happy with it. Also upgraded to the Rega Aria phono stage.
However the Ania Pro will solve sibilance issues that the Ania has. These issues will be transported to the P8. During my troubles with the Ania the dealer tried the Ania on a P8 and the sibilance issue was there as well.
I’ve just gone from P6 Ania to P8 with the same ols Ania and I am exceedingly happy.
A significant difference. The bass is my favourite, but a grip of every note is pretty cool.
I’m too involved in the music to post pictures and that
I guess it depends on whether you suffer from sibilance or not. I certainly didn’t, when I had an Ania on my P6.
Yes, certainly. It definitely has to do with music type. So if musical taste means it is not hitting it, it’s a non issue.
I wonder if that sibilance that was worse in left channel wasn’t from a stylus that was off centre due to too much anti skate, a new cartridge alone would have cured it. I underbiased my SPU Royal N last year and the sibilance developed in the right channel after about a year of lockdown use. When I looked the cantilever was no longer resting in line with the cartridge body. The details of why I’d underbiased it are irrelevant to Rega arms as
it wasn’t mounted on one.
Twenty five odd years earlier my first DV 17D2 was mounted on an RB300 and I’d set the bias slider to match the tracking weight, that cantilever also ended up skewed and slightly rotated as well, but the other way, from too much bias that time. My dealer suggested the blank disc method and as I’d recently acquired a test disc “The Enjoyment of Stereo” in a job lot of records I used the blank bias setup track on that and had no more skewed cantilevers until the SPU.
I’ve tried two different Ania, both suffered from sibilance so these are definitely out for me.
Maybe you can trade-in Ania for Ania Pro, this will fit P6 or P8 very well.
Whether its worth the money, only yourself can answer that.
No it was not, everything was exactly as it should be. The result of the entire investigation was that the dealer’s Ania exhibited exactly the same as mine.
The reason for the sibilance is the stylus shape used on the Ania (Elliptical on the Ania vs Vital on the Pro). This has been confirmed in my own investigation as well as others on other fora online.
No sibilance issues on my Ania so it’s not a universal constant. if I was replacing the Ania at its end of life I would potentially do so with a pro but I’m not sure I would upgrade from an Ania on a P6, just to try and get a better sound. it is a lot of coin just to get a slightly better stylus profile. . Personally, I think Rega should just kill the Ania and make the pro the baseline MC and drop the price a little, sticking a cheap elliptical on the Ania is a bit tight if you ask me. if you like the base sound of the Rega carts then the pro is a worthwhile option. Lots of solid options in the prop price range though.
My experience is that a lot of people are not as sensitive to sibilance/mistracking (which is what causes it). They attribute it to inner groove distortion, or think it’s part of the noise of vinyl, or don’t even notice it. I’ve heard quite egregious mistracking on other systems that the owner seemed to be oblivious to.
I consider it a defect, and cannot listen past it no matter what. It’s also something that took me multiple cartridge and tonearm changes to finally solve it to get to a point where I don’t experience it anymore.
As such, if someone was experiencing sibilance, I would consider replacing the cartridge as being a repair, not an upgrade, especially as the cheap AT MCs will do it at a much lower price point that the Ania’s.
I don’t know if this is the OP’s case, though.
Fixed it for you. 
Exactly. However in this case it worked very well for classical / instrumental music. It was more on very vocal centric music where it became more noticeable. The dealer could not unhear it after I demoed the problem LOL
But yes, everyone has a different tolerance to defects and foibles in HiFi. Mine is extremely low.
I agree, and my dealer handled it as such to a large degree. Considering the hours I had on the cartridge I found their handling of the matter exemplary.
JUST to clarify for others reading this.
Blank sections on discs are NOT for setting Bias even if the instructions on the disc say so or a
ill informed Dealer thinks so. You will end up with a very high and incorrect setting.
Very simply Bias is the fit of the stylus in the groove so without the groove you can not set it.
And your method is?
Enjoyment of Stereo is NOT a Test Disc. Any record with a Blank section is NOT a Test Disc.
These things came about with the advent of Stereo, this is the R channel L channel etc, They are designed to wire up your Hi Fi that is all. As you do not have one with graduated levels of tracking at say a Fixed 300hz a Laboratory type adjustment is not possible. But not everybody
needs to do this including the said Dealer it seems!
For a Linn Ittok dial the Bias to the Tracking Weight. For almost everything else set the Bias a smidgen below the tracking weight figure you would find this to be near Exactly the setting you would arrive at with a Test Disc. You are now so close to perfection these things are not audible, relax there is no sweat here the adjustment is not super critical the key is to not go off at a tangent and get it all wrong!
If you were and it should be unlikely to have any tracking problems (on more than one record) Test the Arm bearings for even travel by blowing on it. Get a a stylus balance to cross check the T/Weight is accurate inspect cartridge as it is either a type that does not track due to design such as its compliance or it has a visual mechanical fault.
If you are freelancing the cartridge Mass and the Compliance and the Arm mass must be such Arm and Cartridge are compatible in the required resonance frequency regarding record warps etc. Most are so i am just mentioning it for completeness.
I have the hifi news disc too but the bias tracks on that are no answer either, they lead to way too much bias.
The Aro is easy to set, just pick the notch that sounds most dynamic (I remember it being pretty clear using a bit of Scriabin) which is pretty close to the EOS setting but only clears two of the HFN tracks. I never had a skewed cantilever setting like this and before the Aro using the EOS track led to a setting of around 1 on the RB300 scale for a tracking weight of 1.95g on 17D2. The cantilevers stayed in line for the lives of several cartridges over 20 years, set like that the wear observed on using a relatively high powered stereo Olympus scope was even after several years of use. Setting the bias to 2 on the Rega scale on that first 17D2 ended in a skewed cantilever and an unevenly worn stylus.
Setting a Schröder Reference is a bit of an art and one I’m still learning but a bit too beyond the subject of this thread.
That is cartridge dependent. I’ve never had to move bias to higher than tracking weight to clear the 3 bias tracks (the last one is pretty insane, but even then you can get balanced output without going higher). Unless you think that is too high?
In my current one I have bias at 2.2 for a 2.4g VTF, for example.