Recently purchased a meter long pair of RCA-terminated Albedo Metamorphosis Signature interconnects, to swap in place of Auditorium-23 interconnects. 100 hours burn-in on machine then trial.
How do they sound? Unfortunately, though sounds better than Auditorium-23, hard to assess because something else going on with system. The bass is bloated, treble softened, not the same through both speakers. For perhaps 5 months or so, the Ypsilon phono stage makes a fairly loud white noise (as if someone blowing into a microphone) for a couple seconds when it is first turned on and warms up, which is much louder than it used to be. I am thinking one of the valves is bad or going.
The Ypsilon has x4 Siemens C3g valves in it; two in the first gain stage that are matched for lowest noise and microphonics, and two in the second gain stage matched for equal gain and transconductance.
At first I thought I would need to replace the set and asked Oz, the importer here in the UK, if he could arrange such. He says that the Ypsilon folks told him that those Siemens valves are rated for 10,000 hours (implying that it couldn't be the problem).
We then tried my Phasemation PP-2000 MC cartridge on a different turntable here on my system, no improvement, then that cartridge and different turntable/arm with a different phono stage on my system, better but not up to what my phono stage should do when working correctly. My dealer took the PP-2000 home and tried it in place of his PP-500 on his own system. He said it works fine, gets deeper into the realness of the treble than his PP-500 so suspects the cartridge is fine.
My dealer has a friend with a valve tester and is testing the Ypsilon Siemens valves (and my amplifier valves) today. We'll see if one is definitely bad (I hear they can be bad and still test good?). If definitely bad, I will get back in contact with Oz to see what Ypsilon says (if rated for 10,000 hours, and nowhere near that, does one being bad mean there is something wrong in the circuit that feeds that valve?). If all measure well, do I replace the valves anyway or should I find a way of checking the external passive crossovers? Engineers invited to weigh in.
