Brilliant Corners

More surprising still was the GT2's nimble way with rhythm and timing—not the forte of many belt-drive turntables. Sonically, Bootsy Collins's bassline on "Unfunky UFO," from an early pressing of Parliament's Mothership Connection, offered solidity, tunefulness, and long decay, but it also forced my friend J and me to get off of the couch and dance, always a welcome development. Certain lightweight, light-on-their-feet record players—like the ones from Linn and Rega—seem to waltz their way through recordings, a propulsive quality I find appealing, but that is not what I heard here. The GT2 sounds more relentless and metronomic, almost like a direct-drive deck but without the grayish, unmusical sound that plagues some of those turntables. And unlike those lightweight record players, which sometimes imply deep bass rather than reproduce it, it offers extended bottom octaves with lots of meat on the bones but no boom or bloat. Finally, with Parliament playing through the large Klipsch La Scalas at eviction-inducing volume, the German deck remained completely unfazed by the massive sound waves emanating from several feet away.

Compared to my 1956 grease-bearing Garrard 301 in its bonded-plywood plinth from Box Furniture, using the same arm and cartridge, the GT2 sounded more transparent and detailed, more extended at the frequency extremes, and dramatically quieter. And it was only through direct comparison that I was able to suss out its limitations: the Raven created a slightly smaller soundfield than the 301 and played with a smidgeon less color and body. And for all of its rhythmic talents, it couldn't match the Garrard's explosive sense of drive, a quality I associate with idler-drive turntables. Ultimately, though they possess different abilities and priorities, both turntables play music in a compulsively engaging way.

Comparing the two tonearms with the Dynavector cartridge, the Raven easily outclassed the Schick, sounding smoother, more harmonically developed, and propelling the music with a more natural sense of flow. Given the major price difference, this was hardly surprising.

My time with the Raven GT2 and Raven 12" arm combo, an aristocratic record-playing machine that also happens to be refreshingly compact and easy to set up and use, turned out to be a blast. Though it makes me wonder how much more enjoyment Thomas Woschnick's larger, more expensive turntables can squeeze out of my records, I cannot imagine anyone being less than delighted with the GT2's lofty, nearly faultless sonic and musical abilities and fanatical level of engineering. If you can afford it, you owe it to yourself to hear one.

A (very brief) tale of two cartridges
Imagine a guy who looks like Steve McQueen, has a doctorate in anthropology, and makes puff pastry from scratch. He wears radiant white Oxford shirts and his shoes are English and always polished. Despite all this, he's humble, gracious, funny, and a good listener. What's not to love? Well, maybe the art books on his coffee table are arranged a little too neatly. Maybe he inserts a few too many quotes from Dante and Epictetus, in perfect Italian and Greek, into his stories. Maybe sometimes you wish he'd take off his tie and throw back a half-dozen mezcal shots and dance with his hips to the Ohio Players. But hey, he's still a great guy.

Anthropomorphizing an audio product is pretty dumb, but this is what the Dynavector Te Kaitora Rua cartridge ($3650, above; footnote 2) made me think about over the course of the year plus change that I've spent living with it. To be honest, when I first listened to the Kaitora, I worried that it might not be my sort of thing. In audio, I tend to covet tonal density, body, presence, and saturation: for a long while my favorite phono device was the Ortofon SPU Classic G with its plain old conical stylus, the barbecue pulled-pork sandwich of phono cartridges.

The Dynavector turned out to be something else entirely—a superbly transparent transducer with a lovely extended top end, gobs of detail, outstanding speed and separation, and a huge, billowy soundstage. In other words, all the hi-fi bells and whistles I didn't think I wanted. At first it felt like that handsome anthropologist: thoroughly impressive but sometimes missing the point. But a funny thing happened as I lived with it: The Kaitora had a way of making every record—whether Brian Eno or Schubert or Godspeed You! Black Emperor—sound really good, and of cutting straight to its musical essence. I discovered that, in addition to its hi-fi bona fides, the Dynavector had heart.

The Kaitora was the finest cartridge I'd had the opportunity to live with over the long term, and I spent many enraptured hours listening to it laying bare the music on my records. I recall a night some months ago when several music-loving friends came over and we sat absorbed in the melancholy sonorities of "Saeta" from Miles Davis's Sketches of Spain, the kind of recording that brings out the best in the Dynavector. It placed the roughly two dozen ensemble players on a stage that extended far beyond the edges of the speakers and positioned Davis's instrument about 10' above the floor. And it fleshed out the overtones of his harmon mute to the heights of the audible spectrum without rendering them biting or shrill.

Like all Dynavectors, the Kaitora kept the music flowing at an exciting, agile-as-a-cheetah pace. And it excavated vivid instrumental colors from the grooves of the 1965 Columbia 360° Stereo pressing—though these were the pastels and golds of a French Rococo landscape, not the inky blacks and deep browns of Caravaggio or Frans Hals. Most importantly, it tracked the meaning and emotion of the music with uncommon fidelity, keeping us riveted. Sure, the Dynavector doesn't offer the deep umami flavors and sheer chunk of something like the SPU, but I was delighted with all of the things it did brilliantly well.

And so the Japanese cartridge and I lived together in happy equipoise like Adam and Eve in Eden, ignorant of temptation. But then one day, as it always does, a serpent slithered into our little garden, hissing with its split tongue about more satisfying sounds. In this case, the serpent turned out to be Miyajima importer Robin Wyatt, who sent me the Shilabe ($3150; footnote 3), a low-output moving coil cartridge from Japan in a lovely African blackwood body.

Both Michael Fremer and Art Dudley have written about the Shilabe in these pages, so I will spare you the technical lore, which happens to be fascinating. What I will say is that the Miyajima offers a dramatically different presentation than the Dynavector that for me scratched every itch that the Dynavector couldn't. After spending several weeks listening to the Shilabe, I had to admit that its tonal density, harmonic richness, and vivid textures made my beloved Kaitora, and frankly most other moving coils, sound a bit flat, bright, and electronic. The Shilabe was a revelation: it played records with much of the body and presence of my favorite old-school conical-stylus cartridges like the SPU but added scads more detail, extension, and refinement, partly owing, surely, to its nude Shibata stylus. Compared to the Kaitora, it shifted the tonal balance downward to the lower midrange and added dimension and heft to recordings in a way that made them feel more like real music.

For some weeks, I was smitten with the Shilabe; I couldn't get enough of its soulful, earthy perspective. But then curiosity set in. Having both the Miyajima and the Dynavector mounted on the Raven GT2, and taking advantage of the multiple moving coil inputs on the Manley Steelhead, I was able to easily compare the two cartridges on the same recordings, and I began to notice things that had eluded me. For one, the Kaitora reproduced wider dynamic swings: on "Freeze Tag" from Dinner Party, an EP from the supergroup of Kamasi Washington, Terrace Martin, Robert Glasper, and 9th Wonder, the vocal from Chicago-based singer and instrumentalist Phoelix and the drum loops hit harder and sounded more exciting. The Dynavector was also the more rhythmically propulsive cartridge: It made the same track sound more vigorous and set my foot to tapping more often. Perhaps most surprisingly, I had to admit that the Dynavector was slightly more colorful, too (though admittedly painting with a lighter, brighter palette).

And so as late winter gave way to spring and the cherry and lilac trees in Brooklyn burst into full flower, I came to appreciate both the golden, limpid wonders of the Dynavector and the darker, richer voice of the Miyajima, and to recognize that there are occasions suitable for each. On Sunday mornings, when I often listen to a Bach cantata or chorale, I turn to the Kaitora to glorify this celestial music. Later, records by Sonic Youth or Nina Simone call for the nocturnal pleasures of the Shilabe. I suppose that is the moral of this story: Only by knowing one extreme can we fully appreciate the other. As Steinbeck wrote, "It's so much darker when a light goes out than it would have been if it had never shone."

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Footnote 2: Dynavector Systems Ltd., 3-2-7 Higashi-Kanda Chiyoda-ku Tokyo 101-0031 Japan. Tel: +81 (0) 3-3861-4341. Web: dynavector.com. US distributor: Toffco, 8116 Gravois Rd., St. Louis, MO 63123. Tel: (314) 454-9966. Email: info@dynavector-usa.com. Web: dynavector-usa.com

Footnote 3: Miyajima Laboratory, 4-3-25, Chayama, Jounan-Ku, Fukuoka City, Fukuoka, 814-0111 Japan. Web: miyajima-lab.com. US distributor: Robyatt Audio, 513 Dotters Corner Rd. Kunkletown, PA 18058. Tel: (855) 762-9288. Email: info@robyattaudio.com. Web: robyattaudio.com