Denon 110 cartridge review (sort of)

afg

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Its early morning right now and sleep has deserted me since the last couple of hours thanks to the amazing music and sound of the LPs I heard last night ('On Every Street' Dire Straits, 'I Robot' Alan Parsons, 'Hotel California' Eagles) which keeps reverberating in my mind. So I thought that, since I have nothing better to do, I might as well bore my friends here with my thoughts on one of the reason for this great sound - the Denon 110 High Output Moving Coil (HOMC) cartridge.

My journey in vinyl began about 5 years back when I bought the NAD 533 turntable (a Rega P2 clone). The trigger for this purchase was hearing Alan Parsons 'Eye in the Sky' playing on the NAD TT at a dealers showroom and I was hooked- it was love at first sound. At that time I had no LPs of my own so there was a chance that the TT would become a white elephant. Fast forward 5 years since then and I have a modest collection of about 50 LPs - some of them lent to me by my cousin who had a great collection of some classic (including a couple of direct to disc Sheffield LPs, one 45 RPM direct to disc LP and a lot of Japanese (JVC) mastered records).

These last 5 years have been spent with the stock Goldring Elektra cartridge with a stylus change sometime during this time. The stock cartridge was decent for its price producing a warm sound with good mids. But it had tracking problems particularly on the direct to disc LPs which are very dynamic. There was also inner groove distortion on some records which I now know was due to tracking failure of the conical stylus. This used to drive me crazy. Checking the VTF, anti-skate, cartridge alignment and so on became an obsession which deprived me of some of the listening pleasure. I therefore finally took the plunge and bought the Denon last November.

The Denon is about a $130-140 cartridge (before shipping costs), so it is not too expensive. It has an output of, I believe, about 2 MV. The output is sufficient to be connected to MM inputs in my NAD PP2 phonostage. I did a lot of research before buying this cartridge as I wanted to be sure it is compatible with the turntable and its arm (a Rega P2 arm).

Installing the cartridge was, for me, a big project. The first problem which I knew I would encounter was the VTA as the cartridge is tall which warranted a VTA adjustment on the turntable. The NAD, however, has no facility for adjusting the VTA. Fortunately, I had bought the Incognito VTA adjuster some years back as I had foreseen such a situation arising. The first project I had to undertake, therefore, was to install the VTA adjuster on the turntable. This entailed carefully removing the arm from the board, screwing the adjuster to the arm, reinstalling the arm and raising it by 4 mm which is the height required for this cartridge. Being an absolute rookie and with no experience in such aspects, it was a daunting proposition. But I mustered up my courage and proceeded with the installation. Things, thankfully, turned out perfectly. The VTA seems right with the arm being parallel to the platter (I can lower the arm a bit so that the tail is slightly lower than the cartridge but I don't want to take a chance). The next step was to remove the old cartridge and put in the new one. This was a delicate and scary procedure to me as the tonearm wires are extremely thin and the soldering to the connectors extremely fragile. Once that was done, the rest was simple- setting the cartridge alignment using the protractor I downloaded from vinylengine (a great forum) for Rega arms, setting the VTF and checking the anti-skate and resonance using the HiFi News Test Record. I was delighted as the cartridge passed all the distortion and resonance test tracks except for the last torture test track where there was distortion on both the channels. Installation finally complete, phew.

Since the last 4-5 months, the cartridge must have run-in for about 50 hours or so. Not much as I listen mostly during weekends. So it needs to loosen up a bit more. But, never mind. The sound, in one word, is gorgeous. The characteristics of the cartridge, to my mind, are as below:

Soundstage: The first thing I noticed yesterday was the soundstage which had opened up considerably and I was truly taken aback. Boy, what a soundstage. It was humongous. It went quite beyond the sides of the speakers and the walls behind the speakers just melted away. The speakers dissapeared too sonically. The soundstage maybe not be very realistic but it is very very enjoyable nonetheless. I have read about this characteristic of this cartridge but I had the pleasure of experiencing it for the first time yesterday. The sound is 3D and enveloping. Unbelievable. Imaging is tight and precise.

Timbre: Probably not great but quite good- much better than most of the CDs I have. Voices and instruments sound rich and organic. Drums, particulary, sound very very natural especially compared to CDs. Have you'll noticed the sound of Tom-Toms on vinly? They sound so true and organic. This quality is compeletly missing on CDs. I don't know why. You have to hear it to believe it. None of the CDs I have heard can recreate the sound of tom-toms correcly. Chokes and symbols have that slightly more thick metallic, but yet airy, sound to them compared to a CD (I really don't know how to express this quality in words). CDs to me somehow sound so plasticky overall, if you know what I mean. This differece is more stark with the Denon. Attack and decay is also much butter. Hear some 45 RPM direct to disc LPs and you will realise what dynamics means. I have never heard such dynamics on CDs.

Details: Very detailed. Again, by details I don't only mean high frequency extention and clarity which is very good on the Denon given that it is a MC cartridge. I mean details across the frequency spectrum - from the bass to the mids and highs. It feels that the cartridge is really digging deep into the grooves to extract all the music. Excellent. However, on some bright recordings the cartrige can sound very bright but never harsh or fatiguing. On some tracks, like in I Robot, the music is both bright and warm, which is close to how music sounds live.

Tracking Ability. Very good, no complaints here thanks to the elliptical stylus. But I have to ensure that the stylus is clean and the TT is absolutely level if it has to play the 45s properly.

So in a nutshell, great cartridge for the money (to be honest I have not heard many cartridges except for the Clearaudio at an acquaintance's place). I am waiting for it to run-in fully (about 100 hours) to see its full potential.
 
Its early morning right now and sleep has deserted me since the last couple of hours thanks to the amazing music and sound of the LPs I heard last night ('On Every Street' Dire Straits, 'I Robot' Alan Parsons, 'Hotel California' Eagles) which keeps reverberating in my mind. So I thought that, since I have nothing better to do, I might as well bore my friends here with my thoughts on one of the reason for this great sound - the Denon 110 High Output Moving Coil (HOMC) cartridge.

My journey in vinyl began about 5 years back when I bought the NAD 533 turntable (a Rega P2 clone). The trigger for this purchase was hearing Alan Parsons 'Eye in the Sky' playing on the NAD TT at a dealers showroom and I was hooked- it was love at first sound. At that time I had no LPs of my own so there was a chance that the TT would become a white elephant. Fast forward 5 years since then and I have a modest collection of about 50 LPs - some of them lent to me by my cousin who had a great collection of some classic (including a couple of direct to disc Sheffield LPs, one 45 RPM direct to disc LP and a lot of Japanese (JVC) mastered records).

These last 5 years have been spent with the stock Goldring Elektra cartridge with a stylus change sometime during this time. The stock cartridge was decent for its price producing a warm sound with good mids. But it had tracking problems particularly on the direct to disc LPs which are very dynamic. There was also inner groove distortion on some records which I now know was due to tracking failure of the conical stylus. This used to drive me crazy. Checking the VTF, anti-skate, cartridge alignment and so on became an obsession which deprived me of some of the listening pleasure. I therefore finally took the plunge and bought the Denon last November.

The Denon is about a $130-140 cartridge (before shipping costs), so it is not too expensive. It has an output of, I believe, about 2 MV. The output is sufficient to be connected to MM inputs in my NAD PP2 phonostage. I did a lot of research before buying this cartridge as I wanted to be sure it is compatible with the turntable and its arm (a Rega P2 arm).

Installing the cartridge was, for me, a big project. The first problem which I knew I would encounter was the VTA as the cartridge is tall which warranted a VTA adjustment on the turntable. The NAD, however, has no facility for adjusting the VTA. Fortunately, I had bought the Incognito VTA adjuster some years back as I had foreseen such a situation arising. The first project I had to undertake, therefore, was to install the VTA adjuster on the turntable. This entailed carefully removing the arm from the board, screwing the adjuster to the arm, reinstalling the arm and raising it by 4 mm which is the height required for this cartridge. Being an absolute rookie and with no experience in such aspects, it was a daunting proposition. But I mustered up my courage and proceeded with the installation. Things, thankfully, turned out perfectly. The VTA seems right with the arm being parallel to the platter (I can lower the arm a bit so that the tail is slightly lower than the cartridge but I don't want to take a chance). The next step was to remove the old cartridge and put in the new one. This was a delicate and scary procedure to me as the tonearm wires are extremely thin and the soldering to the connectors extremely fragile. Once that was done, the rest was simple- setting the cartridge alignment using the protractor I downloaded from vinylengine (a great forum) for Rega arms, setting the VTF and checking the anti-skate and resonance using the HiFi News Test Record. I was delighted as the cartridge passed all the distortion and resonance test tracks except for the last torture test track where there was distortion on both the channels. Installation finally complete, phew.

Since the last 4-5 months, the cartridge must have run-in for about 50 hours or so. Not much as I listen mostly during weekends. So it needs to loosen up a bit more. But, never mind. The sound, in one word, is gorgeous. The characteristics of the cartridge, to my mind, are as below:

Soundstage: The first thing I noticed yesterday was the soundstage which had opened up considerably and I was truly taken aback. Boy, what a soundstage. It was humongous. It went quite beyond the sides of the speakers and the walls behind the speakers just melted away. The speakers dissapeared too sonically. The soundstage maybe not be very realistic but it is very very enjoyable nonetheless. I have read about this characteristic of this cartridge but I had the pleasure of experiencing it for the first time yesterday. The sound is 3D and enveloping. Unbelievable. Imaging is tight and precise.

Timbre: Probably not great but quite good- much better than most of the CDs I have. Voices and instruments sound rich and organic. Drums, particulary, sound very very natural especially compared to CDs. Have you'll noticed the sound of Tom-Toms on vinly? They sound so true and organic. This quality is compeletly missing on CDs. I don't know why. You have to hear it to believe it. None of the CDs I have heard can recreate the sound of tom-toms correcly. Chokes and symbols have that slightly more thick metallic, but yet airy, sound to them compared to a CD (I really don't know how to express this quality in words). CDs to me somehow sound so plasticky overall, if you know what I mean. This differece is more stark with the Denon. Attack and decay is also much butter. Hear some 45 RPM direct to disc LPs and you will realise what dynamics means. I have never heard such dynamics on CDs.

Details: Very detailed. Again, by details I don't only mean high frequency extention and clarity which is very good on the Denon given that it is a MC cartridge. I mean details across the frequency spectrum - from the bass to the mids and highs. It feels that the cartridge is really digging deep into the grooves to extract all the music. Excellent. However, on some bright recordings the cartrige can sound very bright but never harsh or fatiguing. On some tracks, like in I Robot, the music is both bright and warm, which is close to how music sounds live.

Tracking Ability. Very good, no complaints here thanks to the elliptical stylus. But I have to ensure that the stylus is clean and the TT is absolutely level if it has to play the 45s properly.

So in a nutshell, great cartridge for the money (to be honest I have not heard many cartridges except for the Clearaudio at an acquaintance's place). I am waiting for it to run-in fully (about 100 hours) to see its full potential.

Very nice review! also, good relection of records to do the review with! May I ask where you got the 'On Every Street" record? I am looking and looking but never managed to see it, even once!
 
good job afg. Even I am in the same situation - even small fixes seem daunting challenges. I wish I could fix things like some pros here do. Good to hear that you are enjoying now. Did you explore other denon carts as well - like 160?
 
AFG, the Cayin A88T is an absolutely excellent integrated amp. Wise choice when you picked that one up. Looks nice as well!

I enjoyed reading your review so thanks for that. Have fun rediscovering your vinyl collection :)
 
afg,
Excellent review. I am also thinking of going for denon mc, preferably DL 103.
Enjoy your vinyls
Regards
Vasu
 
Thanks all of you.

Anm, I did a lot of research and also looked at the 160. From what I read, the 110 is 90% of what the 160 does but is cheaper. Also, what I read was that that at 47kohm loading (which my phono preamp is fixed at), the 160 sounds brighter than the 110 and the loading needs to be changed to probaby between 1k-8kohms. I cannot do that so therefore went with 110.

Malvai, if my memory serves me right, I bought the 'On Every Street' LP from the US when I had gone for work-I think it was from one of the LP shops either in New York or LA. It is a used one but plays well.

I was trying to attach some images of the Denon and the TT but it asks for a URL address. I don't have a URL. How do I attach images out here?
 
Hi Afg,
very nice review. Thnaks for sharing it with us. I am also in the process of discovering the potential of my new TT. What is the distance between your speakers and what is your room size?
Thanks.
 
I was trying to attach some images of the Denon and the TT but it asks for a URL address. I don't have a URL. How do I attach images out here?
You can register on imageshack. Upload photo there and give view command, copy that url and paste it in your post (insert image icon).
 
Hi Afg,
very nice review. Thnaks for sharing it with us. I am also in the process of discovering the potential of my new TT. What is the distance between your speakers and what is your room size?
Thanks.

Distance between the speakers is 8 ft and about 2 feet away from the rear wall. Room size is about 350 sqft.
 
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