The plumber's here, and he says we need a new hot-water heater because the one we have now isn't maintaining the correct water temperature, and because it's been in use for nine years. "And the thing is, this is a five-year heater." I responded by repeating his last six words, only louder, and with decorations. And I couldn't help thinking: I've had phono cartridges that lasted longer than that. And none of them have attacked me in the shower when my wife flushed the toilet, either.It's reasonable to expect five years or more out of a good cartridge, especially if you keep it and your records clean and avoid using it when you're drunk or high. On the other hand, it's not unreasonable for the cartridge industry, as it were, to ask you for more money every five years or so, because they work hard to make you happy.
You can support them in one of two ways: You can spend $1000 or more on a very good cartridge, then have it retipped and/or reconditioned when the need arises; or you can spend a lot less than that and just replace it altogether when the time comes. For 25 years, Dynavector has made a budget cartridge that suits the latter approach.
Dynavector's cartridges have always been moving-coil types, which many enthusiasts think sound purer and more immediate than their moving-magnet counterparts. But MC cartridges are generally more expensive and lower in output than MMs, making them a tough sell in some neighborhoods: The audiophile on a budget can't afford a new gain stage and a more expensive cartridge in one fell swoop. And the purist, for his or her part, doesn't want an extra gain stage.
The answer, of course, is that budget MC cartridges should also be high-output MC cartridges. Whether or not that seems counterintuitive—spending less and coming home with more—that's the way Dynavector has always done it with their entry-level DV10x series.
The latest in that series is the DV10x5, and it offers some technical improvements over its predecessors. For one thing, this is the first entry-level Dynavector to incorporate the company's colorfully named flux damping and softened magnetism. Dynavector suggests that certain distortions are caused by signal-related changes in magnetic flux—just like back-EMF at the loudspeaker end of the system, which one might consider this phenomenon's mirror image. Their solution is to focus, contain, and even cancel out stray flux lines by means of strategically placed slivers of magnetically permeable iron (the softened magnetism) and a superfluous, shorted coil (the flux damping). Does it work? I don't know.
Sermon on the mounting
The DV10x5 is the first DV10x-series cartridge whose body is fastened to a machined aluminum mounting plate instead of to the usual plastic molding or cheap metal stamping. The DV10x5's mounting surface is quite chunky, and appears commendably flat, although I was surprised to see that it lacks threaded mounting holes.
More to the point, however, the new plate—or the way the body is fastened to the new plate, or something—poses a challenge to whoever installs the DV10x5. Here's how I discovered that: With few exceptions, the first thing I do when I get a new cartridge is to gleefully throw away the mounting hardware supplied with it. That's especially true of inexpensive cartridges, most of which come with slot-head screws rather than the stainless-steel hex-head bolts we all think we're supposed to use. I, for one, know better than to use those cheap, crappy screws and the stupid little round nuts that come with them. Ha.
But mister, you're in deep trouble if you toss the hardware that comes with the DV10x5—you need it, so you'll have to fish it out of the trash. (Hope you didn't have anything messy for dinner.) This is hard to describe, but there isn't quite enough clearance between the top of the cartridge's big red body and the underside of the new mounting platform to which it's fastened for anything other than a screw with a very shallow head—ie, the freebos.
Speaking of setup, I did almost all my listening to the DV10x5 with one combination of turntable and tonearm: a Rega Planar 3 with standard (unmodified) Rega RB-300 arm. It seems likely that many, if not most, people who would buy such a cartridge would use it either with that very package or at least with some other player that has an RB-300 arm, re-badged or not.

PHONO CARTRIDGE REVIEWS

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Given the above, you should know what it takes to use the DV10x5 in that setting. In particular, because the new Dyna is taller than the average phono cartridge—almost 19mm from the surface of the record it's sitting on to the top of its mounting platform (15mm is about average)—there's no escaping the fact that the owner of a Planar 3 absolutely must reposition the tonearm in order to raise it slightly, relative to the platter, to bring the stylus angle within spitting distance of the ideal.

Luckily, this is easy to do: Remove the arm, place one or two standard Rega shims (available from your Rega dealer for $12 each) under its base, then replace and retighten the arm. I had fine results using a single shim under the arm base, in combination with a thinner-than-standard Linn felt mat. Before that, with the armtube too low, leading-edge transients were dull, musical timing suffered, stereo imaging was vague and lackluster. My theory is that, whether or not imaging is crucial to your enjoyment of recorded music, it's never a good idea to throw away something you've already bought and paid for.

All that said, it was interesting to note that the Dynavector DV10x5 is a physically perfect match for the Naim Aro tonearm, with its lack of provisions for adjusting overhang and tracking angle. From the cross centered at the Dyna's mounting holes to its stylus tip, the DV10x5 measures 9.4mm, which is exactly what a properly installed Aro requires for "automatically" correct alignment. Suddenly, the idea of a $360 cartridge on a $2500 tonearm doesn't seem quite so silly.

Electrically, the DV10x5 looks for any reasonable load over 1000 ohms—meaning that the 47k ohm load I had in mind, and that the cartridge would surely see in the vast majority of installations, was okay. For the record, the Dyna's own coil impedance is 150 ohms, which would indicate good (ie, efficient, non-bandwidth-compromised) transfer of power at highish preamp input impedances.

And the 2.5mV output? The MM boards on my vintage Naim preamp dealt with it handily, with most of my listening done with the volume knob at about 1 o'clock—this with a Naim 110 amplifier, Quad ESL-989s, and a listener who prefers moderate to loud levels.

One more setup observation: I had the best results tracking the Dynavector at 2.2gm, noted conditionally: ie, cartridge aligned carefully in accordance with a Rega-specific Wallytractor (footnote 1), broken in and played during mid-summer months at an elevation of approximately 1000' above sea level by a left-leaning reviewer. At lower forces than that, tracking ability suffered, especially audible on Wagnerian voices; at forces even slightly higher, the music sounded coarse, sluggish, and uninteresting.

Sing!
But dialed-in and broken-in, Dynavector's new cheapie was like a new Mini Cooper, or a John Deere L100 tractor, or almost every disc I've heard on the Naxos label: ridiculously good for the money.

On Cisco Records' superb reissue of the Milstein-Steinberg-Pittsburgh recording of the Dvork and Glazunov violin concertos (Capitol SP8382), the DV10x5 gave a clear, colorful, and reasonably well-scaled picture of the orchestra, with a large and very well-textured solo violin in front. Pitches were fine, there was faultless sense of musical flow—each of the many times I enjoyed this record with the Dyna, the experience was one of excitement rather than fatigue—and the PSO's famous ability to stop and turn on a dime was fairly portrayed. It was a "stop there" experience in almost every way: Yes, I suppose there are cartridges that make this record sound even more transparent, and maybe even more dramatic, but who can conceive of such a thing when listening to this? And for just $360?!

The DV10x5 was not a cartridge that required a steady diet of audiophile slop in order to earn its keep. There's more great tone than you'd expect in a lot of older Deutsche Grammophon LPs, for instance—the world-beating Beethoven Fifth by Carlos Kleiber (2530 516, available on reissue from Speakers Corner) being just one. The Dynavector found it, delivering rich, woody string sounds without compromising pitch accuracy or pacing.

More evidence of the Dyna's fine rhythmic qualities could be heard on Crosby, Stills & Nash, especially on Stephen Stills' "You Don't Have to Cry." (I have a standard Atlantic SD-8229 pressing and the Classic Records reissue, both good-sounding in their own ways, the latter boasting much quieter surfaces.) The Dyna was sufficiently free from lag, so the song moved forward easily (it doesn't always). The cartridge gave a clear enough temporal picture that it was easy to tell that the electric bass had been overdubbed after the bulk of the performance had already been recorded: The former keeps time; the guitars and voices that constitute the latter don't always.

I found it impossible to enjoy those acoustic guitars without wanting an even stronger dose of same—as on Rice & Blake, the first album recorded by bluegrass and old-time masters Tony Rice and Norman Blake (Rounder 0233). Tony's capoed guitar on the traditional "Little Beggarman" had just the right timbral fingerprint and perfect sonic texture; notes tumbled out with clear pitch and rhythmic shadings, and an almost startlingly realistic sense of the real human force of the picking behind them. That set the stage nicely for the next tune, "Shipyard Apprentice," on which Tony plays without capo—his instrument's consequently deeper bass showed off the DV10x5's rich, colorful, tight bottom end.

The fine Beethoven Egmont by George Szell and the Vienna Philharmonic (Decca SXL 6465, also on a Speakers Corner reissue and a fairly easy-to-find London LP) showed off the Dynavector's good poise under fire: It got louder without showing too much strain—the high-priced spread remains almost inevitably better, of course—and during the louder passages the sound slapped realistically off the walls, with what I consider the right amount of die-away. Imaging was fine, too—even the flutes, even under the great duress of the final bars of both the Egmont and the Siegessymphonie.

PHONO CARTRIDGE REVIEWS

Dynavector DV10x5 MC phono cartridge Page 3

 

 

And most of all, it made Guided by Voices' Bee Thousand (Scat 35) sound messy and fun, which it is. What else is there?

The only other thing that comes to mind is the issue of vinyl noise, be it steady-state (groove grunge) or not (tics and pops), said performance being a function of stylus profile, stylus condition (the extent to which it's been properly polished), and the cantilever's ability to shrug off rather than store resonant energy. Here the DV10x5 gets a solid "Good" rating: It was better than all the MM cartridges I know and even some of the MCs, pricier ones included, although severe record damage could still trip it up. (Lyra's cartridges remain the best I know in this regard, for whatever combination of reasons.)

It's finished
Here's a list of things I liked about the Dynavector DV10x5:

• Top of the list, I liked the way it played music, which it did with pitch and timing accuracy and a fine, organic sense of flow.
• I liked the way the Dyna did textures. As I said above, the first Dyna I heard did textures like that when I didn't even know my LPs contained such a thing. Feel free to think me merely nostalgic, but it's not only that: This cartridge had the same kind of magic.
• I liked the way the Dyna imaged. It had depth, but not so much that my attention went there instead of to the notes and beats. Ditto image placement and solidity.
• I liked the fact that the Dyna had color without being colored.
• I liked that it didn't sound tiny. It wasn't as big as could be, but it wasn't puny, either.
• God help me, but I love the way it looks. I'm glad the DV10x5 looks pretty much the same as the old DV10, which itself was somewhat anachronistic, being so big and all. The big, translucent red housing is beyond cool, I think, and while Dynavector makes better cartridges, none is prettier than the DV10x5.
• I liked the fact that the DV10x5 is a high-output MC cartridge that didn't sound hard. Sorry to paint with so broad a brush, but the sounds of most such products—even expensive examples of the breed—have struck me as having an edgy or hard quality. It has never been explained to my satisfaction why most high-output cartridges sound worse in this regard than their low-output brethren, all other things being equal; and while it's not difficult to imagine how a more massive coil former or even more massive coils can present certain performance shortfalls, I have a hard time accepting that as the culprit. Whatever: The important thing is that Dynavector's cheap, high-output cartridges have never sounded harsh to my ears, and the DV10x5 carried on that fine tradition.
• I love the price. While Dynavector makes better cartridges, none is a better value than the DV10x5.

Here's a list of things I didn't like:

• When Dynavector designed their new mounting plate, they could have threaded the holes. They didn't.

Finishing it
What does a megabuck cartridge give you that the Dynavector DV10x5 doesn't? Those Lyras and most van den Huls are quieter in the groove, and while the DV10x5 was no slouch in that respect, it can be bettered. Some more expensive phono cartridges can also sound more open and transparent than this one, and they and others will deliver a little more imaging precision and depth, if that's your bag, and a more realistic sense of scale.

But if you want something that does everything better—sound and music—you have to buy something like a Linn Akiva or a Tubaphon TU-2 ($2950 and $2150, respectively). And from there up, improvements cost crazy money—like the $3950 Miyabi 47. Go ahead: It's your kids' education, so what do I care?

The first entry-level Dyna I ever heard was the first DV10x cartridge—which I bought, sound unheard, on a dealer's recommendation back in 1979. It was the first MC cartridge I'd ever owned, and I was knocked out. I remember especially listening to Leonard Cohen's New Skin for the Old Ceremony and being astounded at how much rich detail and texture that Dynavector pulled out of the grooves: Voices and stringed instruments sounded like themselves, the latter sounding especially...well, stringy—just as they do in real life. I remember playing "Who By Fire" and "The Bells" over and over, so mesmerized was I by the beauty of both the sound and the music-making.

The Dynavector DV10x5 more than lives up to my memory of its predecessor. This colorful, well-balanced, chunky-sounding cartridge played music extremely well, with a bonus of very fine stereo imaging. In other words, it's a great all-arounder. More money can buy more drama, impact, scale, and transparency, just as more money can buy a slightly faster car or torquier tractor. But the Dynavector DV10x5 should give you most of what I think you need at a bargain price. Wildly, highly recommended.

 

     -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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Please feel free to view our other used items for sale on Audiogon or come to our website to view our new products and see the exciting new lines we have to offer you like Bowers & Wilkins, Bryston, Aqua Acoustics, Rel Acoustics, Synergistic Research, Roon Labs, Pro-ject, Van Den Hul, Marantz and many others.

We are proud to be the dealers representing the new B&W 801 D4 Diamonds.

It is best to call David and visit: www.weinhartdesign.com with questions or come to our Los Angeles Showroom 310-472-8880 or on my cell after hours and weekends 310-927-2260 any time from 10AM - 7PM PST.

Weinhart Design has lots of other items new and used and if you’re in Los Angeles or visiting please accept my invitation to experience our World Class Audio Showroom and please visit our web site @ www.weinhartdesign.co

We accept payments by Bank Wire Transfers without fees and is the only form of payment on all sales out of the U.S. and Canada. 

We prefer this method of payment and also makes shipping to addresses other than billing agreeable. VISA, MC and Papal are gladly accepted within the U.S. and Canada as long as the charge is approved and shipping to the billing address is to the one on record and plus 3% to cover card service costs. 

Please call me directly in my world class showroom in Los Angeles weekdays @ 310-472-8880 or any reasonable time on my cell including weekends @ 310-927-2260 and I can answer your questions and help you with all of your new and pre owned needs.

* * * We are always interested in purchasing quality Audio and Video items, LP collections and quality trades are welcomed. * * *

Please feel free to view our other used items for sale on Audiogon or come to our website to view our new products and see the exciting new lines we have to offer you like Bowers & Wilkins, Bryston, Aqua Acoustics, Rel Acoustics, Synergistic Research, Roon Labs, Pro-ject, Van Den Hul, Marantz and many others.

We are proud to be the dealers representing the new Diamond B&W Reference Speakers.

It is best to call David and visit: www.weinhartdesign.com with questions or come to our Los Angeles Showroom 310-472-8880 or on my cell after hours and weekends 310-927-2260 any time from 10AM - 7PM PST.

Weinhart Design has lots of other items new and used and if you’re in Los Angeles or visiting please accept my invitation to experience our World Class Audio Showroom and please visit our web site @ www.weinhartdesign.co

We accept payments by Bank Wire Transfers without fees and is the only form of payment on all sales out of the U.S. and Canada. 

We prefer this method of payment and also makes shipping to addresses other than billing agreeable. VISA, MC and Papal are gladly accepted within the U.S. and Canada as long as the charge is approved and shipping to the billing address is to the one on record and plus 3% to cover card service costs. 

Please call me directly in my world class showroom in Los Angeles weekdays @ 310-472-8880 or any reasonable time on my cell including weekends @ 310-927-2260 and I can answer your questions and help you with all of your new and pre owned needs. 

 

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David Weinhart  and the Weinhart Design Audio team

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