Connoisseur Definitions 3.0 preamplifier - is it still among the best?

I've no idea but you might ask Roy Gregory as it appears from this article that he has a Lyra Connoisseur preamp in his ensemble...

http://www.theaudiobeat.com/blog/roys_room.htm

Can be a fruitless and exasperating task looking for anything that might be universally acknowledged as "one of the best" in this pastime, as it all comes down to one's own taste.

If you're happy with what you're hearing then why move on? I'd guess it's still very competent when compared to what's available now.

IMHO, you're the only one who can satisfactorily answer your question - but it should be interesting to find your answer!

I am curious as to in what way that preamp brought you closer to the music than other preamps?

what was it about the preamp at the time that caught your ear?

Well i doubt that a lot of people are very familiar with the sound , it was kind of a niche expensive product .
What does the rest of the system consist of? as the whole chain has to act as one .
If i want to try something new i always buy a reasonably known brand second hand , a 2 3 or 4 year old product
if i dont like it (anymore) i resell it, there is a cat legend on the market by the way (phono included), i doubt it gets that much better than that , proof is always in the personal listening .
A older product can still sound terrific

Roysen said:

Well, as most audiophiles I don't actually get transported to the performance when playing music. No matter how good our systems are the illusion they create is pretty far from that. That also means there are a potential for improvement. So if a better preamplifier can get me closer to that illusion, I see no reason not to upgrade.

gr hj

The Connoisseur preamplifier is more of a collectors item than a true referance of today even though it sounds very good.

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Hi Roysen,

I have spoken with Roy Gregory about this personally. He was meeting up with a major dealer whom i have known for many years, and i stopped by. All of us were discussing various audio topics, and when i began inquiring about preamps, he mentioned a few that remained in his mind as true greats. The Lyra was one of them...the ARC Ref 3 was another...this would have been nearly 5 years ago.

I dont think even then that the Lyra was 'current'. i think certain products remain 'special' (and generally unsurpassed) even if they have been surpassed technically in certain areas. Personally speaking, I have heard a few digital components that have surpassed my Zanden DAC in terms of resolution, detail, clarity, noise floor, etc. But the Zanden has a 'magic' that i enjoy more than any other digital i have heard...so for now i am keeping it. In fact, after 5 years and loads of listening to DCS, Emm, Wadia, ARC, Krell, Esoteric, Meridian digital, et al...i can think of only one component to which i would upgrade.

It does not mean that there aren't 'better' components that clearly do hi-res, are cleaner, more detailed...there are...but i still would not replace my Zanden with any of them because of the 'magic' that Zanden does so well...so for me, an older product remains [largely] unsurpassed besides the one, if only for this aspect of Zanden which I prize so highly. i wont describe the 'magic' as thats not the point of this thread. Rather its that older does not mean surpassed by newer imho. I have not heard the Lyra so unfortunately am of 0 help on that specific score. I just remain convinced newer eventually will mean better, but it can take some time before it does. (BTW, i refer to the Stahl-Tek Vekian Opus when i speak of my now fav digital.)

Well roysen you seem well informed and i doubt very much you wouldnt get sublime sound from the Q7 even with the connaisseur 3.0.
Why anyone would want to bi amp a 94 db efficient speaker driven by a dartzeel 450 watts amp cq boulder 3050 is a mysterie to me.
I dont know the impedance graphic of the q 7 but i dont think that would be very much out of line .
I would go even further and suggest that amplifiers of such strenghts sound best as they have something to set their teeth in , meaning a certain speakerload .
My krell evo 400 s show their real strenghts when the gunshots are fired in HEAT for example on loud volume , ultra fast /dynamic transientresponse

somewhere else i read someone is using a 150 watt tube amp or even a 30 watt to drive a 80 db efficient speaker and here is the other extreme

Roysen said:

Does anyone have any opinions about this?

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hi Roysen,

a few years back i heard the Connoissrur Definitions 4. 'something' phono and line stage at CES a couple of times. fantastic sounding and for my money still among the 'top-of-heap' products out there. and build quality do die for. and....i understand that the 3.0 is a bit better than what i heard. as i recall, the 3.0 was only sold in Japan and not exported.

so my expectation is that your CD 3.0 is likely competitive with everything still. and an end game product for sure.

might the tip-top Vitus or Yipsolon maybe be a smidge better? maybe.

performance at the cutting edge does move forward, but not typically in big leaps.

I had the Lyra Connoisseur phono stage in my system when it was a prototype. Petr Mares had built it, and Alan Perkins sent it to me to audition. Hand-wired with solid silver wire, it was a beautiful triumph of audio design. The sound was the finest I ever heard from LPs in my system, besting the Krell KPA phono stage by a good margin. The sound was unbelievably pure and there was an extra degree of clarity that was remarkable. It was simply too expensive for me at the time, or I never would have let it go back.

Lee

And again a supposedly great listening room with a tapered ceiling , a tapered ceiling or tapered sidewalls does something very positive to a room acousticwise i think
This is the room where i have heard extraordinairy sound it had tapered sidewalls /tapered front wall, the best sound was when the speakers were placed in the short side of the room, the avalon ascendants sounded marvelous there ,1 of my favourites ,the wilsons were very nice too, you have to scroll down until you see the alexandria on the ayre aproxx half way the page , i am sorry its not on topic , on 3/4 down you see indras placed in the short side
http://mijnhifi.nl/NieuwsPagina.aspx [/url]

Peter said:

I've no idea but you might ask Roy Gregory as it appears from this article that he has a Lyra Connoisseur preamp in his ensemble...

http://www.theaudiobeat.com/blog/roys_room.htm

Can be a fruitless and exasperating task looking for anything that might be universally acknowledged as "one of the best" in this pastime, as it all comes down to one's own taste.

Click to expand...

RBFC said:

I had the Lyra Connoisseur phono stage in my system when it was a prototype. Petr Mares had built it, and Alan Perkins sent it to me to audition. Hand-wired with solid silver wire, it was a beautiful triumph of audio design. The sound was the finest I ever heard from LPs in my system, besting the Krell KPA phono stage by a good margin. The sound was unbelievably pure and there was an extra degree of clarity that was remarkable. It was simply too expensive for me at the time, or I never would have let it go back.

Lee

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How does the KPA sound in comparison to the KPE Reference?

From all I've been told, the KPE is a step up. I never got the chance to compare, so that's just hearsay. The KPA was very good, so if the KPE is even better, wow!

Lee

Hi Roysen:

>When it was released it was an all-out assault on what could be done to make a preamplifier sound as good as possible.

True. OTOH, once a design has been put into production, the designer doesn't stop having new ideas. The 3.0 represented an extreme expression of one possible approach to preamplifier design. The 4.x family represented a somewhat different approach to preamplifier design, which in my opinion is no less valid than the 3.0's.

>Up until today it must be Lyra Connoisseur's most ambitious product development.

If you include chassis build and power supply extravagance, yes. But machined-from-solid chasses and giant power supplies are not the only path to convincing sound quality.

>This preamplifier is very rare and only made for the Japanese and maybe also the American markets.

The 3.0 was built using a more fragile method of air-dielectric construction than the earlier 2.x, or the later 4.x and 5.0. We brought one of the final prototypes of the 3.0 to the US for an audio show, but that experience made it clear that shipping the 3.0 overseas would likely result in a high rate of breakage and failure (DOA). For the same reason, the 3.0 was only sold in Japan, and it was only delivered to dealers by car and hand. No freight companies were used to deliver 3.0s, even within Japan.

AFAIR, the preamps that Roy Gregory (and Chris Thomas) used as their references were first the earlier 4.0, and then the later 4-2 and 4-2SE.

Regarding sonic differences, the 3.0 was a very bold and dynamic-sounding preamp that also had quite good resolution for its time. The 4.0 was not quite as dynamic-sounding as the 3.0, but even the early versions had better timbal and spatial resolution than the 3.0. The 4-2 was not sold in Japan, but a simplified version of the design was sold in Japan as the 4.0 Advance. The 4-2 had considerably better timbal and spatial resolution than the 4.0, and dynamic resolution was improved as well (although in terms of dynamic "clout" the 3.0 still retained some advantages). The 4-2SE was likewise not sold in Japan, and no corresponding Japanese version was ever made (not even in simplified form). To my ears, this surpasses the 3.0 in nearly every way, including dynamic range and transient impact.

Over the past year, I have been quietly working on a new version, which may or may not be released as a product (I may choose to provide the boards only for rebuilds and upgrades to existing 4.x preamps).

>I think the Connoisseur preamplifiers might have been designed by three different designers from three different companies.

No, there have only been two designers. At first it was Petr Mares, and then starting from the 2.5 (which was not released as a product), Jonathan Carr (me) became involved in the design process.

I first met Petr in 1987 or 1988, and when I visited his home, he had a prototype of an air-dielectric phono stage, which he was using with a Well-Tempered turntable and one of my cartridge designs. I thought that the sound was amazing, and I felt that I had to make more people know about Petr's work. I begged Petr to sell me that prototype, to which he graciously agreed, and I brought it back to Japan as carry-on luggage (pre 9-11 days, you know). I played Petr's prototype for my friend Stig Bjorge, who was the owner of an audio company called ScanTech, and he concurred that it was very special. So I wrote back to Petr and encouraged him to put the phono stage prototype into production, which he did. Petr formed a company called Connoisseur (no Definitions yet) to do so, and ScanTech started importing these into Japan and distributing them.,

At first they achieved a cult-following, but gradually they become known to a wider audience, and ScanTech needed more phono preamps. But the 1.0 was totally air-dielectric - it didn't even have normal circuit boards. Petr used blank copper-clad board material, which he would score into copper squares and strips, punch holes at strategic locations for turret lugs, and build into a 3-D maze-like structure, to which he soldered the transistors, resistors, capacitors et al. Around the same time Petr got married, so he found it increasingly difficult to allocate the time to build the preamps that we were asking for.

More after I take a breather! jonathan