My Teres Audio Certus 450 Turntable

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Now I will try to give you some preliminary listening experience that Chris Brady and I had in regards to my system, speakers, Turntable set-up, and my upgraded Denon 5910 DVD player and upgraded Lavry DA10 DAC.

Chris and I had to get the Teres Audio Certus 450 turntable set-up yesterday and to get The Teres Audio Reference Tonearm, and the Soundsmith Strain Gauge Cartridge aligned. My Certus 450 is the 3rd of these large turntables to be prepared; the new selling price of these turntables will be around $17,000 (plus $400 upgrade to the "Mystery Feet") without an arm and cartridge. I have the first Teres Audio Reference Tonearm that has been made with all of the latest changes and innovations and wiring; the new price of these tonearms will be around $4850. The Soundsmith Strain Gauge Cartridge, Soundsmith Strain Gauge 410 Phono Preamp with Rosewood outer wood in my configuration, and the extra top of the line stylus costs approximately $9,300.

The Teres Audio Certus Control box will be changed to a less expensive box in the future and according to Chris, I have the last of this design. These boxes have standardly used Still points under the box for the best performance.

Once we finally got everything set up, we started to fine tune the tonearm adjustments to match the best performance of the Strain Gauge Cartridge. We then went back and confirmed our listening observations.

Chris Brady of Teres Audio was quite impressed with the system. We replaced the Still points on the Teres Certus Control box with the "Mystery Feet" which he had had experience with improving his less expensive Verus control box and motor. Chris was absolutely amazed by what we were hearing and what I had speculated came true. When working with the "Mystery Feet instead of the still points on my Adona Rack (Granite/MDF platform system), both Chris and my mouths did this: We confirmed our listening experiences several times as we switched back and forth between the feet and fine tuned the settings. We were listening to some really well pressed and recorded LPs including the expensive Better Records Hot Stamper of Peter Gabriel's Security. After hearing the difference between the feet, Chris said that my $17,000 Certus 450 with the "Mystery Feet" now sounded better than the big brother, the Certus 460 with the soon to be asked selling price of $22,000 just for the turntable and that was without basically any break in for the Certus Control Box electronics or the Soundsmith Strain Gauge Cartridge and Soundsmith Strain Gauge 410 Phono Preamp. Chris also indicated that from these results, he would start offering these feet with the Certus Turntables with the approximately $400 difference in the price between the "Mystery Feet" and the Still Points.

Chris has a preference for the sound of Horn speaker designs. He has heard Dahlquist DQ-10 speakers before and knows how they normally sound. However, my speakers are a one of a kind, mirror imaged, totally rebuilt and upgraded pair with 2 soft dome Dynaudio Drivers (tweeter and upper midrange) along with an open backed Peerles lower midrange driver, and a proprietary woofer for each speaker cabinet. The system has been set up as a biwire system with 2 sets of binding posts, totally rewired with 12 Gauge Van den Hull Teflon Silver over Copper wire, an entirely new crossover system, re-stuffed and resealed woofer chamber, etc. Chris made the observation that my Dahlquist DQ-10 cabinets had the general flavor or sound of the DQ-10s but these were the 1st dome and cone driver speaker design that he had heard that had the characters and general sound of an extremely good horn speaker system. The speakers were delicate, but powerful, very dynamic (the DQ-10s were not known for this), extremely detailed, sweat sounding, extremely fast, extremely percussive, very good bass, excellent imaging and soundstage, depth, etc.

What we were hearing for the sound of the system was just extraordinary and all of the components (amps, Pre/Pro, Power conditioning) and upgrades, speakers, cables, power cords, tweaks, etc. were working together for what we were experiencing. For those reading this, the latest upgraded version of the Onkyo 885 Pre/Pro only arrived late on Friday and those parts need additional burn-in. As an example, the Peter Gabriel Security LP sounded wonderful, with tremendous air, presence, life, depth, "blackness", bell like qualities, detail, information, remarkably well controlled bass, percussive sound, emotion, etc.

For those that do not think that vinyl can put out much bass, you need to hear a properly set-up analog system with the right speakers, wires, power cords, etc. If you do not think that footers and tweaks can make a difference, you would be extremely mistaken as Chris and I heard the difference with the "Mystery Feet" believe it or not under the Control Box for the Turntable and we both recognized it at the same time within about three notes.

We did find that the special Herbie's Grungebuster dots under the Teres 450 feet had a very positive affect for audio performance of the turntable. However, the Herbie's Record Mat sucked the life out of the sound and that was removed from the system. This morning, I also listened to the set-up with the Herbie's Cone/Spike Grounding Base under the "Mystery Feet". They may have added a little body to the sound, but I think that I preferred the "Mystery Feet" alone under the Teres Certus Control Box. I will have to listen to this comparison some more to make the final assessment.

As to the sound of my upgraded Denon 5910 DVD player and the upgraded Lavry DA10 DAC, Chris was again very positively impressed. With the upgrades on these components, well recorded redbook CDs approach the sound of an SACD or a DVD-A disk. Chris felt that my digital system was most definitely a cut above, but we both thought that overall the turntable system sounded better.

Rich