I was playing with Jubilee and kind of turn to like. It is might not be the best needle that fulfill all aspects of my sick imagination but it is very-very good cartridge that I have not too much compliance. In fact there is a certain growth on what   Jubilee does and I kind of fell that I got under Jubilee spell. It is very nicely balanced, it is very “agreeable” and it is spectacularly colorful – colorful but in very smart way, not like SPU. 

Do you think that it is it? Well, not really                .

A few weeks back, right after posting the following post:

http://www.goodsoundclub.com/Forums/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=8427

. ..I contacted Otophone distributor and asked about the “Compliance Noise”.  He did not strike me as a person who has a great deal experience with playback. I said that he never heard about the effect but he was very nicely stating behind his product and he proposed to send him the cartridge back for replacement as “he did not like what I report and it shell not be this way”. Well, I found it very commendable. I send my Jubilee back and he sent me another one. The New Jubilee turn out to have the absolutely same “Compliance Noise”, I presume that the sustention material that Otophone use is contaminated with run-away magnetic domens. Well, at least no one gave me a better explanation and I, following follow the Occam's razor principle, will blame the “contaminated Otophone materials as the guilty party. Sure I will not be able to make Otophone to acknowledge and it is not my objectives since the practical effect from the “Compliance Noise” is minuscule.

So, what I am talking about? Well, I am talking about the very surprising fact that the second Otophone Jubilee that I got as a replacement torn out to be better than the first one sonically.  I was very much surprised as I presumed that the needle of this lever and coming not from a basement-bases sweat shop but from a big manufacture shell be more of less stable in quietly. It turned out to be not. The new Jubilee has much (much!) less surface noise and might read wider variety of records with less noise – something that disappointed and surprised me with my first Jubilee. Also, the new Jubilee has much better bass – a bug and very welcoming discovery. I was playing with VTA and VTF thinking that it might be some minute change in setting. The less noise and more bass then before looks like feels at ANY setting. Also I do feel that the new Jubilee even more dynamic then the one before.

I was looking at all of it and figure: I might continue to harass the Otophone people with their “Compliance Noise” but I am most certainly not willing to let my last Jubilee out of my home.  So, considering the cons and pros I decided to closed the book on my Otophone discovery and leave everything as is. The new Jubilee behaves juts wonderfully, purely like dream. I hope sometimes Otophone have another not-deaf and paying attention customer who would help to Otophone to find the sources of the “Compliance Noise”. Well, bitching about Otophone I sell not forget to mention my recent discovery: at my 3 reference arms (Stereo arm, Mono arm and Romantic Stereo arm) nowadays sit 3 Otophone cartridges…. Thanks, Otophone.

This new “Rev B” Ortofone Jubilee surprised me with it amassing agreeability

I have a nasty habit to emphasize in my listening attention the things that I do not appreciate.  I might listen something, would it be amp, or speaker, or live event, or whoever and to discover a thing that I do not like. Other people acknowledge it and move in their listing attention. My stupid mine works in ugly way: if I discover it once then I begin to hyper-sensitively recognize the very same problem each next time I listed the same thing. Sure, like anyone else I do mental compromises and agree to embraces the various aspects of “non-perfection” but in my listening practice the understood sonic bugs bother me look like much more then they bother other people with whom I shared those thoughts.

I know well all “issues” of my entire playback and the “issues” of my individual components. The stranger to me is that the longer I am experiencing my new Ortofone Jubilee (as I call it jokingly “Rev B”) the more I surprised that this cartridge does not piss me off. The Jubilee is so “roundly good” and so well balanced that if give a sense of complete immunity to criticism, at list my criticism. It does not strike me as out of ordinary performer in any assessable dimension but at the same time it does not give any room for criticism ether. It is very infrequently seen behavior in audio when the bitching about NOTHING might be applied. At I have seen it only twice (and both time with analog!!!) – first time with SME 3012 tonearm and the second time with Expressive Technology ET2 transformer. The Jubilee looks like strike me in the very same league – I, being me, would like to complain about something but the actual performance does not give me the justifications to do so. Ok, not I ma, thanks god, pissed!

Romy the Cat wrote:

I have a nasty habit to emphasize in my listening attention the things that I do not appreciate

Would it be possible for you to post some samples? 

With kindest regards,

LBJ...With a little help from Giacomo Puccini

drdna wrote:

I am actually very surprised to hear you say this. I have stated before my thoughts on a preference in listening for additive or subtractive errors, based on how different people's brains process the information.

Adrian, I well understand that there are the sounds and there is Sound. I reported what it is and I do not see anything surprising or conflicting in what I said. It might be an interesting and separated subject itself – our adhesiveness to negative thing we recognize in our listing practice. Anyhow, I am not proposing myself in a role of Hans Christian Andersen’s  story about the The Princess and the Pea but I feel that there are Removable Peas, or at least the Peas with which it is possible to deal with in audio….

Lbjefferies7 wrote:

Would it be possible for you to post some samples? With kindest regards, LBJ...With a little help from Giacomo Puccini

What so you mean” to post samples”?  Do you mean to post WAV files that might be indicative to the sound of Ortofone Jubilee. This is a complicated subject. Farmer when he went into his Australian TT craze spread CDs that according to him demonstrated “good sound from the new TT”. I always felt that the idea was completely idiotic and demonstrated absolutely nothing. Well, the bigger question would be: is it possible to have a methodology that would show off the difference between the cartridges and make this different portable into some kind digital, easily portable format? I partially answered this question by posting the image my interpretation of the Albert Memorial’s bas-relief above. How about a CD with a few optimumly- performing cartridges playing the same record under identically-dependant conditions? Perhaps it would be useful but here is the catch – I do not need it. If I was a dealer who care many needles and I need to convince somebody what to buy then I would do it and invest some time and efforts into a development of some kind of “Remote Cartridges Assessment”. I y case I need no one to convince beside myself, so my scope is very limited.  If you are considering buying Otophone Jubilee then I might record some files with Jubilee and SPU playing the same material but the question that I would ask somebody if it was done for me: how do I know that each cartridge in the recording is identically optimumly- performing? So, it is not so simple to convince others if you respect the mater of the subject and the essence of idea.

Romy wrote (in blue)
Do you mean to post WAV files that might be indicative to the sound of Ortofone Jubilee.
Yes.

Farmer when he went into his Australian TT craze spread CDs that according to him demonstrated “good sound from the new TT”.
Well, if an accredited professional audio reviewer does it,   No, just kidding.  Using a digital sample like he did is just foolishness.  It is Mike afterall, what can we expect?

...posting the image my interpretation of the Albert Memorial’s bas-relief above.
Yes!  I thought that was an excelent visualization, but I was interested in more specific aspects of the Jubilee's color.  You said above...

...it is very “agreeable” and it is spectacularly colorful – colorful but in very smart way
"Colorful in a very smart way" is something I have been thinking about and has risen many questions.  The way my system handles dynamics is quite important to me and I am fairly satisfyed with it's "smartness" in this aspect.  I can imagine ways many ways that color can be used smartly and I thought that a WAV may prove to be educational.  Of course, it may not as well. 

If you are considering buying Otophone Jubilee then I might record some files with Jubilee and SPU playing the same material but the question that I would ask somebody if it was done for me: how do I know that each cartridge in the recording is identically optimumly- performing?
No, I am not buying one and I am not interested in comparison tests.  With Warren Buffett being one of Obama's new cronies, I am focusing all funds on Berkshire-Hathaway stock.  I got some Halliburton stock when the Iraq war started in 2003...It did just fine.  My interests in the Jubilee have nothing to do with equipment, but rather with Sound.  Color is something my system is lacking (though the blacks, greys, and whites keep me fairly amazed, especially in "spacious" recordings) so I would like to educate myself.  Any advice you would offer would be cheerfully appreciated.  If you don't think samples would help or would just be a pain in the ass, don't worry about it.

I would like to ask a question.  Does the Jubilee add a specific color signature, or does it change appropriately with the music it plays?  What does it do when you play Rachmaninov's Second Piano Concerto?
Cheers,
LBJ

Lbjefferies7 wrote:

I would like to ask a question. Does the Jubilee add a specific color signature, or does it change appropriately with the music it plays?

Romy the Cat wrote:

This is very interring subject for me to think about. I even mounted 901 on another arm of mine as I would like to explore this topic more. Even though Jubilee is not broken-in yet but it is clearly that it has “less bass”, that last sensational “space crash” is not there. However, the Jubilee has “softer” bass and I mean the word “softer” in very positive connotation. It is not even “softness” but rather some kind of very fluent connectivity between space and LF notes where bass does not conflict with space but rather an organic part of the space. I have to agree that it is very natural and very present and it is quite different from what accustomed to recognize as “good bass”. I still would like to have juts beyond of that Jubilee’s non-contradictory bass the ability of the cartridge to open the door to the “other side of sub-word”, to the world of the sub-harmonics, that enable the whole system to play orgasmaticly slow and pleasurably bright. The Jubilee kind of not doing there but it on other side offers an interesting alternative of “different view on the bass”. I need to love with this for a while and to think about it. It very much might work…

I got last week two emails and one this morning, from people who read this thread and ask me basically the same question: Romy, do you recommend the Ortofone Jubilee? The people who did it before and received from me no replies or the replies with suggestion to go screw themselves know how it works. People have no concept how much I do not care what you people consider to purchase or willing to use. The poor audio freaks are so accustom that any knowledge in audio get converted into a tradable commodity that they do not feel that the “conversions” might not be necessary…. One of the emails last week even made me to laugh and the person asked do send him to hell as he is a classical music listener. At the same time the people do not ask proper questions in proper formats, which would make extending the recommendations interesting. They just want somebody stick their damn noses into something.

Anyhow, in case of Ortofone Jubilee I think I do need to raise my voice and extend an official recommendation. Here is comes…

I would like to state a strong OPPOSITION to a recommendation for people buying Ortofone Jubilee cartridges. This my disapproval of Ortofone Jubilee does not derive from the Ortofone Jubilees sonic performance – if you read the thread then you will see that I am pleased with Jubilee’s sound. However I feel the current production of Ortofone Jubilee is defective (search my site with word “Compliance Noise”). I do not insist that the Compliance Noise is something that is hugely auditable during playback but it shell not be there in new cartridge. I do not know what Ortofone does with it and according to the US Ortofone distributor no one complained about it, even though he himself verified the problem with the cartridge that I returned to him. This kind of proves my view that the majority of people in audio are deaf Morons but it does not help to Ortofone to fix the problem.

So, if you are in Ortofone realm then complain, vocally and persistency, as it is the Ortofone problem and with your voice they will continue to do whatever they what instead of whatever is necessary.

Somewhere in the thread there was mentioning of the London Reference cartridge. The Positive Feedback this month published a review of the needle.

http://www.positive-feedback.com/Issue48/london_reference.htm

The review is idiotic in my view, but no different than the people who have a need to write those products reviews. However, since there is no information about cartridge widely available I think it would be worth to read it for whomever care. Also, the London cartridge distributor with whom I spoke on the phone and who sounded like a Moron in my view looks like not longer a distributor and he when back to sell car and graveyard lots. Hey, without him the needle even might to sound better, who knows…

Paul S wrote:

Adrian, I have not heard this specific cartridge, but the "alive" thing Levi went on and on about certainly rang a Decca bell for me.

Paul S wrote:

Looking at the photograph of the cartridge, there are some screw heads visible.  On a Decca I remember, the screw on the side of the thing was some kind of adjustment screw.  Is that also the case with this new cartridge?

Paul S wrote:

Somehow, I did not realize until reading Levi's review that this cartridge puts out 5 mV!  I have to admit, I like the idea of eliminating another transformer, along with its connections.  One could theoretically hard-wire that cartridge straight to the network.

Stitch wrote:

It would be much easier to name some useful reviews instead to rant about written BS which became standard today.

Romy the Cat wrote:

In contrary to any other equipment I feel that cartridges are well benefited in comparative reviewing… The Cat

Romy the Cat wrote:

... People have no concept how much I do not care what you people consider to purchase or willing to use...They just want somebody stick their damn noses into something.  .... that the majority of people in audio are deaf Morons ... The Cat

Romy the Cat wrote:

Are you in need of a professional help? Are you divorced? Are you pissed because you are out of work? Are you drunk and wasted? Are you arrogant son off a bitch? Are you on drags?