Did, no difference, maybe a little muted so swapped it back. Was told the shielding maybe different at the 2 ends with some cables but I am no expert !
Okay, thanks. What’s your cartridge?
Edit: for instance if it is the bundled Ortofon 2M Red, you might find a change to the Audio Technica AT-VM95E gives more ooomph. Audio Technica cartridges are well proven into Naim phonostages.
that’s interesting. From my experience it’s about picking the right DAC. I will say, similarly priced, DACs beat turntables every time.
I have the project debut carbon too, but it is boxed up. I had it working with the oomph you want, but it was needed to have booming loudspeakers. Caused lack of detail and I was pretty much done with it. After that, I heared some good turntables, like a naimified LP12 with Aro / Armageddon and Rega’s RP8 and that was quite a different kettle of fish. My wife and I agreed on a different TT since she prefers analogue. All we need to do is to meet the financial goals we set for it.
A thing which is not mentioned on this topic yet is the quality of vinyl. The best experience I had with the Project Debut Carbon table was to use old, but good condition clean vinyl. We have a guy in town specialized in it - an old hippie - and though we disagree on the most things in life we agree on the joy of old vinyl. Never got exited with new vinyl unfortunately.
Just as a point of info, Ortofon 2M Black and Bronze (they share the same generator) are IMO almost perfectly matched to Naim phono stages. The loading is spot on and the slightly dark nature of the stages counters the slightly bright nature of the carts.
Fair enough, I did say might.
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“Beats” can be a lot of things, like I said it is not a black and white thing for me. I spent most of the comparison time with the audiophile re-release of the Gilberto/Getz album (Girl from Ipanema) on Verve Records, comparing the fantastic pressing and the hi-res stream on Qobuz. The digital one was more precise but in your face a bit, the vinyl had a laidback quality that I preferred at least with this kind of music.
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Absolutely. Learning all the time
My description was probably not accurate. By full I mean room filling sound whereas the Project produces very clear but flat sound and significantly less bass. Less sound stage than I am used to with the streamer
Agreed. The vinyl/digital comparison is a completely pointless one as you can very rarely get a level playing field to make a valid judgement. Suffice to say both mediums can sound incredible and terrible, just depends on what went before. A great LP on decent turntable can be better than a poor digital file on an ND555 or CD555, and vice versa. Then of course we could talk all day about one persons ‘clarity/linear’ vs another ‘warm/ beguiling’. Easier to just accept they are different and enjoy each for what they do well.
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Absolutely, Gary. I don’t understand this X beats Y or A thrashes B. My Rega with Ortofon costs about £1,600 and the NDX2/555DR over £12,000. The latter certainly doesn’t ‘beat’ the former: both are really enjoyable and are just different. It’s like trying to compare a courgette and an aubergine. I’m so pleased that the Supernait 3 has a phono stage, it’s great being able to plug the turntable in directly, just like in the old days with the 42.5, 32.5 and so on. The Ortofon Black works so well with the SN3, I’ve been very pleasantly surprised. The new Nick Cave Idiot Prayer LP sounds wonderful. And now I’m listening to Steven Isserlis playing Bach on a high res download bought directly from Hyperion. That sounds delightful too.
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Another thing you may find with vinyl v digital is that your listening environment may ‘like/prefer’ one format over the other e.g. digital can sound brighter with more energy & body IME, whereas vinyl is smoother and less fatiguing. This is, in part, due to dynamic range of the format but I’m sure there are other factors in play.
It’s a real game and I’ve yet to hear a system which can play all genres of music well.
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Hi Nigel, just to note that I would not get hugely worried about the VTA spacer on Rega. Aim to get the arm level if you can and then walk way. The spacers don’t make much difference at the stylus. A far bigger difference will be obtained from getting the cartridge overhang and offset correct, especially so for a cartridge with a good stylus profile like the Black. Personally I don’t this is physically possible with Rega’s own protractor hence if you were to try, for example, a Rega Mint Best protractor, that is likely to make for an improvement.
This would be cool, thanks (though not Nigel 
), but can you clarify why Ortofon seems to say it does (for the Shibata tips)?
My 2mm spacer is in the post and I’ll see how it goes. Hopefully it will fit beneath the lid, where space seems limited. My take on this is that if the arm angle is not absolutely critical it still makes sense to raise the arm a bit given the Ortofon is 4mm taller than the Rega Ania. I don’t think 4mm would fit under the lid but hopefully 2mm will. So it’s a sort of halfway house. Of course, the height issue would not be relevant with a Planar 8!
FYI I used to have a 2M Black on a Rega P3 with a 2mm spacer. It sounded brilliant but had the effect of raising the arm just enough that the counterweight would touch the lid when the arm was at rest. Solution was to upgrade to the heavier and smaller tungsten counterweight. Not sure what counterweights the current Rega incarnations use, though. A more low tech solution is to fix two small transparent rubber “dots” at the two back corners of the plinth, which will raise the lid just enough so that it doesn’t make contact (I personally decided against that solution on aesthetic grounds).
the arm height is not adjusted to compensate for differences in vinyl thickness. Rather, you’ll see that the stylus itself is ‘canted’ at a angle (it doesn’t point straight down). This should be to a standard angle that is shared with the record cutter stylus. I.e you are trying to match the two angles. Unfortunately, this is not a very standard standard. Cutting lathes have cutting angles all the way from the mid 20s of degrees to pretty much flat. In any case, this indicates that you can’t adjust it correctly without knowing what lathe was used to cut record. Also a bit of trigonometry would quickly show that a 2mm adjustment at the rear of the tonearm makes little difference at the stylus. By contrast a half degree inaccuracy in cartridge offset can make a large difference to distortion.
Thanks. I did figure this with the vinyl thickness and I get the trig. But is, therefore, Ortofon wrong about their own cartridge?
Technically I think they are. But from a marketing point of view, advocating a slopey arm is probably an error.
If the Black models work well with the Rega, one would think they want to sell them.
(and it’s not really “slopey” for me, it looks maybe the slightest bit non-horizontal, if Ortofon said “this is fine”, I think most customers would believe them)