My Ultimate Turntable

Marvel

They are now sitting for AE's LP maestro: Mr. Chik to set it up tomorrow...certainly this is the beginning of my ultimate journey to LP...

Raymond

I had no quality time for the Gabriel. It is something truly special. With Tidal, please try your best to bring out all the finesse and details. Elegance is an attitude. Develop it properly. As far as my humble understanding of the musical philosophy of the Gabriel, it is the details/finesse that form the very backbone of music. That is not to say it lacks dynamics; quite the contrary the dynamics are very good. But the spirit of the Da Vinci school - you must understand. If you don't feel that elegance very attitude, something must be wrong. Good luck and merry Xmas.

Your room - please do something meaningful.

Jeff

Uncle Ray

Your English is descriptively good. That elegance attitude is not just the rich tonality/texture but also the pacing of rhythm and agility of attack. It is an balancing act in a very elegant form. You term it well but as a user, I got what you meant.

VoyR

It seems no one has ever written a concrete review or impression of any sort on the Gabriel in spite of the good sales. I reckon this group of people must be high flyers no damn time to enjoy something takes time to mature the potential. Turn tables are real pain in the ass, so many parameters, not to mention the quality of the supporting table. Adding arm board takes two months from the manufacturer. Everything in the vinyl world is about time.

Even if you have the time, then there is the gain issue between the cartridge and the phono stage. Nowadays, low gain cartridge dominates and that calls for a step up transformer. This part is tricky. For the purists, there is no universally adaptable step up transformer. For the generalists, the step up transformer may cost too much and then a MM input is required. How many top flight phono has MM input this days???

It requires careful planning right at the beginning. Then time, time and time. By the time everything is OK to bring some friends in, the temperature or humidity changes everything. Damn it. I went through this a lot. It was fun.

That explains why the Vekian CDT/DAC is such an instant success because even Vinyl lovers agree it is something special, trouble free, clean sound etc. Frankly, not any LP system can rival the Vekian suite.

The nature of LP of course has more bandwidth and less compression. But it is also its nature that is vulnerable to mechanical vibration and hence coloration. Instability does not guarantee quality even though the bandwidth is there.

I am not against LP but just want to play the bad guy role here to stimulate more interesting discussion.

The only LP setup that impressed me was the time when PT's Unison was going into the full Da Vinci 4-box phono setup. That is really something that can convince me even though his speakers and acoustics at that time were not up to where his standard today.

Marvel

I use Organic power cord on the Gabriel as an initial start...I tried this cable on the DAC which I find quite extraordinary value for money for a power cable at this price range....of course transparency and treble extension cannot be compared to their flagship Argento FMR power, it is already doing the best for a cable with pure copper conductors....

Marvel

Another shot with the reflecting surface of the SRA platform

Marvel

Being a Unison user for about 2 years, I can easily tell the jump to Gabriel is not a small step at all, albeit in the eyes of many Gabriel expert like Mr. DV and DSo, I am still in the kindergarden class in learning to make best use of this TT.

I am mostly impressed by the much refined texture and spacial stability of the music images! Mechanical vibration can do a lot more damages to the overall sonical effect and it is more difficult to be dealt with! I am happy that Gabriel has taken me up a few notches on this! What remains the key challenge is my room acoustics as Ray has pointed out...believe me, I am doing something about it....before that, a lot has to be done in order to fully explore the potential of Gabriel...

Marvel