I’ve been thinking about upgrading my phono stage for as long as I can remember. It was the one remaining component left to upgrade after the turntable, tonearm and cartridge and now I’ve finally done it. Wow! What a huge difference.

I originally bought my Music Fidelity X-LP phono stage when I purchased my Unison Research Simply Four which was sold ages ago. The guy in the shop said “phono stages are basically all the same” and that it wouldn’t really matter which one I bought. Also, I didn’t have the £500 in my pocket for the Unison Research valve phono stage!

Anyway, to cut a long story short, changed Unison amp for Decware Select Zen amp, built loudspeakers…sound got better but still a bit thin sometimes. Upgraded turntable to excellent Origin Live Ultra, got Origin Live Silver tonearm, new cartridge, new speaker cable, Vertex AQ Jaya mains filter and eventually built new Decware HDT speakers.

Each time I upgraded these components the sound became more detailed and more refined. When I got to the Origin Live Silver tonearm, the Vertex AQ Jaya filter and especially the HDT speakers things were getting extremely good and new experiences like spaces around instruments, a defined soundstage (including the first signs of depth) and tonal details really started to make themselves known.

But still the sound could be thin with vinyl, especially some bad pressings like Living Color “Time’s Up”, and The Pixies albums. I had high hopes for alleviating this problem with a new phono stage.

So, I spent a lot of time researching this component. I considered Graham Slee’s Era Gold, the Trichord Dino, the new (and well reviewed) Pure Sound P10, the Moon LP3, various Pro-Ject stages, Tom Evans and quite a few others. After reading lots of opinions, though, I discovered that the Era Gold and the Dino wouldn’t necessarily bring a lot of “body” to the music, the Moon was a bit of an unknown, others were less flexible and the Pure Sound P10, while raved about, is Moving Magnet only.

One phono stage kept coming up in my mind, the Lehmann Black Cube, especially in its Special Edition version with the add-on power supply. I kept reading great reviews which really talked about qualities like soundstage and especially its “full bodied” tone and wide bandwidth. Other bonus points for the Lehmann were that I could buy the Black Cube and then get the power supply later, making it a more achievable purchase and also that it has a number of user-definable settings such as the cartridge loading, custom loading (by inserting resistors), low pass filter and gain settings.

Wow, this is a long introduction! I will try to speed things up a bit. I purchased the Black Cube, and pretty soon after added the power supply to turn it into the Special Edition version.

The result was actually far more than I was expecting, from a phono stage upgrade. Having got used to fairly subtle improvements in sound from changing various components the Lehmann Black Cube SE made the music gel in a very impressive manner. Not that it wasn’t pretty coherent already!

The soundstage was very much more defined with instruments clearly positioned now. Yes, the Decware HDT speakers did this very well but now there was more depth front to back, too. Also, even more attention grabbing is that before, certain instruments and voices had a wonderful sense of their own space. Now, with the Lehmann in place, everything imparted its own space. Every single element of the recording now breathed, reverberated, sang in a space and position within the soundstage.

You might think that this definition and pulling apart of each instrument would have a negative effect on the overall sense of musical coherency but I was delighted to find that it actually pulled everything together, I was really getting into each track and enjoying the music on a new level.

Another amazing aspect was that, while seemingly tightening up the sound over all frequencies, my previously unlistenable recordings became listenable! High frequency sounds which, I guess had been more blurred, focused into well defined elements and the result was no more splashiness and painful (for my tinnitus) sound.

To the same degree, the bass reached down deeper but stayed tight and together, with many interesting new textures emerging from the depths. The speakers help of course, being single drivers, they’re so tight and fast that you really get some explosive dynamics.

Music from Calexico, Spoon, Menomena, David Byrne, Buena Vista Social Club and Ladyhawk really revealed just how startling the togetherness and sense of space had now become. Finally I feel that I have achieved the system I’ve dreamed of for years! I’m not suggesting the Lehmann Black Cube SE made that all happen, of course it was just the last part of the puzzle, but it’s pretty much impossible for me to clearly define which component brings which aspects to the audio reproduction. All I can say is the music now sounds…musical! Highly detailed, with an expansive yet focused soundstage, tight and fast, full of the subtleties of tone which really make it all sound so enjoyable.

I’ve written so much I feel I cannot go into why “there’s no going back now” in this post, so I will write that next!

I am not a very materialistic person, I don’t particularly care for gadgets and currently I’m trying to cut down on the amount of things I own because simplicity reduces stress for me (even though I don’t collect a wide vaiety of “stuff” anyway). But, when I do buy something, I try and always buy the best that I can afford.

Occasionally things I’ve bought have really changed my life and that of my family. Seeing as I’m not terribly good, or open, in writing about my personal life, I thought I’d run through these inanimate-yet-important objects.

Large format printer

It doesn’t sound like a life changing product, does it? Yet, moving from a good quality Epson A4 printer to a good quality Epson A3+ printer (R1800) made a huge difference to my professional life.

Before, I had had to print and tape together sheets of paper to create larger mockups such as folders, packaging. Buying the printer suddenly enabled me to easily create proofs and mockups of large items, it allowed me to print A3 with bleed. It was not an expensive printer and has since paid for itself over and over in usefulness.

Apple Mac

Yes, predictable I guess, but I have to say that sitting in front of a Mac at Art College enormously changed my life. Until then, I studied film and, although I worked in the film industry for a few years, the seeds of my design career had already been sown.

I continued to play with the Mac, learning applications like Photoshop and Quark, until I landed myself a web design job based on the work I’d produced on that computer. Since then I’ve stayed faithful to the Mac, always preferring the simpler interface, intuitiveness and resultant speed of working. The Mac has since allowed me to pursue a full blown career in graphic design and now stock image creation, too.

Flat screen TV (and DVD/HD recorder)

It’s amazing how this recent purchase has been much more than I expected. We have resisted buying an LCD TV for a long time as it was not an essential purchase but I was getting more and more fed up with our hand-me-down Sony CRT which was huge considering the screen size, had geometry problems, real problems with sharpness in the left and right quarters of the screen and also refused to stay on the screen format you chose.

So, my good friend bought a new TV and when I went over there I was very impressed. I discussed with my wife that we might buy one for ourselves for Christmas. And then Amazon announced a one week only offer on the TV so we jumped.

It’s only a 32″ screen, we don’t need any more. But it’s such a huge improvement in a number of areas.

Firstly, no geometry problems (obviously). The picture is actually straight! Secondly, you can actually access the rear of the television to plug things in - not like our old TV where it was so big it literally went right against the wall. Thirdly, sharpness of image is absolutely wonderful to behold. With games you can finally read small text instead of just guessing. And, not only does it stay on the format you choose but when it’s set to “auto” and you’re watching broadcasts, it switches very quickly to the correct format and stays there.

So, rather than just address one issue, this TV has improved a large number of aspects in one fell swoop and has been a very worthwhile purchase.

As an aside, the DVD/HD recorder we bought about a year ago also had the same kind of effect, improving so many things it was a huge step forward.

Maxon Cinema 4D

Yes, I’m not saying Photoshop changed my life (though I’m sure it did by getting me into design) but instead I’ve singled out Cinema 4D by Maxon. It’s a superb 3D modeling and rendering application which, in the last year, has enabled me to become a serious stock image artist.

The beauty of it is that Cinema 4D is a joy to use and is wonderfully simple. Everything you create is part of an object “tree” which you can see in a side panel, allowing quick and easy manipulation of everything in your scene from models to lights and textures to special effects.

I used Cinema 4D for client work but last year started to use it to realise all kinds of ideas I had for stock, and it has proved to be a fantastic tool to bring these ideas to life. Another reason it’s been so life-changing is that stock is starting to become an alternative income for me and I hope, if I can spend more time on it, stock images may give me the flexibility to change my career a bit and go back to my old design job.

Tonearm, mains conditioner, phono amplifier, record player, speakers…

Yep, I couldn’t talk about life changing purchases without mentioning the audio equipment which recently has been bringing me so much pleasure. Not much point in me going on and on about it here as I do so many hi-fi posts but, suffice to say, I’ve really got the bug in a big way.

My interest in pursuing realistic audio reproduction only enhances my love of music, I think. I certainly wouldn’t say I’ve become blinded by the technology to the point of forgetting the music - there’s so much exciting new music out there every week, the hardest part is deciding what to get!

The music I listen to has become such an integral part of my life that it’s not so much life changing as providing a soundtrack to my life, helping if I feel stressed or down, motivating me to work or just making things better.

It’s taken me ages to get to the point of writing this Decware HDT self build project up. I ordered the parts almost two years ago! Since then it took me a year to motivate myself to get round to building the speakers and then I had a few problems with other things (like the amp) which prevented me from doing the writeup. But, now, it’s all done, apart from the veneer, the photos are taken and the speakers are wonderful. So here goes…

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Just a quick post to update anyone who is interested (which I seriously doubt) about the progress of the Decware HDT writeup and any new stuff.

What happened was the new HDT speakers sound absolutely stunning, without wanting to give too much away, but there’s been an ongoing problem with thinness of sound which I’ve had ever since my Parker Audio speakers.

I’ve spent the last few years trying to rectify the problem whilst also improving the system as a whole—in fact building the Decware HDTs was supposed to alleviate the problem, with their single driver which should have produced a lovely smooth midband. I also purchased a new phono stage which was supposed to address the problem, too, but it did not.

Becoming suspicious of where the problem now actually lay I decided to measure the frequency sweep output from the phono stage, the amp and the speakers. On doing this I discovered a potential problem with the amplifier which really surprised me—I had assumed it was giving a flat response, as you would. Instead it seems to give a big increase above 2KHz forming a “hill” all the way up to 15-20 KHz.

So the HDT speaker writeup is on hold until I get the amp problem sorted. Obviously I don’t want to continue writing any reviews with a potentially flawed component at the heart of the sound.

By the way, the phono stage I bought is the Lehmann Black Cube, a really well reviewed phono amplifier with some useful loadings you can set with DIP switches on the bottom, plus an upgrade path with a new power supply. I’ll do a write up of this, of course, once the amp is sorted.

On another note, I’ve swapped my freedom for financial security and it is really depressing. No longer can I decide how to use my time, we can’t go out for any spur-of-the-moment trips to places. I have to be in my office each day working with the same brand. I’ve sunk to a new low but, hey, at least we can pay the mortgage.

This “component” is something I’ve been planning to buy for some time as the starting point for investing in good foundations for my hi-fi.

I’ve long understood the idea that cables and stands do make a lot of difference to the audio and have had a stand, turntable shelf and half-decent cables for years now.

But so many people were writing about Vertex AQ’s products and how good they are, that I became more and more interested. They sell three main types of product; equipment supports, mains filters and cables. The suggestion is that these items are as fundamental to the system as your components are.

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