Audio Note UK IO Limited field-coil cartridge system Review

AN-1S six-wire tonearm

The blue and red plug with yellow ring are the negative and positive power wires.

Playing the Half-Speed Mastered Extended Range Recording version of the Barbra Streisand Greatest Hits Volume 2 LP, via the M6, the IO Ltd laid bare the electrifying dynamics and magnetism in Streisand’s voice and all the emotions contained within in her trademark sostenutos, like the supremely empathetic and comforting “Evergreen,” the lamenting and wailing in “Prisoner,” and the reminiscing of a romance in the timeless “The Way We Were.” The IO Ltd uncovered considerably more tonal body and ambience cues from the record than even the Top Wing Suzaku with its coreless straight-flux generator. It was not as spectacular as the Suzaku, and instead delivered a fuller and at the same time less flamboyant tone. The Extended Range Recording is an ear opener. Contrasting that was the sound of the Xs Phono and Xs Preamp, which imparted the solid-state transients sans the edginess of lesser designs. The Pass Labs revealed high drama and definition in the recording to its own credit, delivering the LP via the IO Ltd with altogether a different suite of tonal palette and contrasting dynamics, revealing of Streisand’s tonal sophistication atop lifelike dynamic swings.

Play some fanatically recorded and mastered classical organ music through the Xs twins and you’d think the composers and conductors are in some perpetual conspiracy to bust some bass pipes and scramble your brain, such as the recently released 45 RPM Proprius Cantate Domino LP box set. Predominantly worshipful and yet full of concert-worthy ambience capture, flowing melodies and beauty of tone, the pipe organ on this album is contemplative and yet majestic, whispery at times and yet always in the spotlight. Combined with an inspirationally played and recorded trumpet and a perfectly balanced choir and soprano, this album not only satiates our audio senses sonically as well as it does our musical sensibilities, it also continuously creates the illusion of putting you inside the cathedral. Playing the pipe organ, after all, is a Sound Lab specialty. One is hard pressed to put a price on that. Via the Xs, the IO Ltd retrieved modulations of the groove at the most powerful level I’ve heard from this disk, far and above the limited dynamics exhibited by lesser cartridges, and the sense of wonder at the performance level achieved by this cartridge traversing the groove is phenomenal.

If your preference is to have minimal physical exertion, then the use of a music server is par for the course, and of course you will be sitting for hours listening to music. Vinyl playback is au contraire and best avoided. There are exceptions, and jarring ones no less. Eighty-minutes-plus long pieces, such as the Beethoven Missa Solemnis, or the Mahler Symphony No. 3, or the Richard Strauss tone poem Also Sprach Zarathustra, make digital playback the preferred experience and even that is very often subject to my vinyl aspirations.

Speaking of the Straus tone poem, its complex and massive orchestration, swift momentum changes and replete rolling of the tympani coerces one to repeat playing of it via the IO Ltd. For there simply was no cartridge system that I know of so obliging in flaunting its dynamic contrasting muscles, and the tone poem is endowed with such demonstration-class lines throughout. On top of all that, no conductors other than Karajan recorded four readings in his lifetime for the most thoroughly authoritative understanding and reading of it, all to our benefit. To my ears, the conductor’s last recording of, it in 1984 and in digital, is the most consummate in rendition and pristine in sonics. Do get the 2019 Japanese SHMCD remastered edition UCCS9138 as well. But in the hands of the M6, the IO Ltd provided perhaps the most steadfast testimonial not only for the case of the 1980s Deustche Grammophon digital recordings on vinyl, but for all the vinyl as well.

As assured by the direct-drive turntable, the IO Ltd via the M6 presented the highest degree to date of differentiating depiction of instrument groups, where mass strings were revealed as sculpted in uniformity with a fleeting beauty, the brasses never more opulent and yet controlled and expressive, as only the Berliners could do during that era. I have never heard permanent magnets do this, but the IO Ltd and another field-coil device, the Voxativ AC-X field-coil full-range driver in the upcoming PureAudioProject Quintet15 review, constantly recreated the ethereality as only the charged stators of the Sound Lab could equal.

Analog to digital conversion is multitudes more straightforward than the decoding part, and it took engineers seventeen years from the inception of the digital audio compact disc to the dawn of DSD technology to digitally reproduce what has always been in the grooves. The most advanced DSD techniques will now closely resemble the sound of the record of 1960s vintage. And the IO Ltd just pulled the analog format away again.

The sonic assertiveness of the IO Ltd was such that a reckoning of what was likely a step or two closer to the master tape performance surfaced with either the M6 or the Xs. It was as if a seemingly straight and unbridled transmission of melodrama passed directly from the IO Ltd’s field-coil to the stators of the Sound Lab electrostatic panel speakers, both externally charged, thus rendering a listening experience both pure and unique.

Peter Qvortrup is of the opinion that his IO Ltd is the most natural sounding cartridge in existence. Natural means a lot of things and, albeit, differently at the same time, and it would be an entirely different review had the 45-watt 211 SET Jinro been here. To me, a piano reproduced at the most faithful level is intense when in person. Its tonal palate forming coherently and concisely, as in real life, being carried into the listening space, marking the passage of time when our mind is one with the notes. From the field-coil to the charged stators is the energy, exuberant in transmission, pure and expansive, fit for the cleansing of wariness in the elevation of elation. But it’s an entirely different matter altogether if natural to you means the most realistic canon blast. It’s not about capturing a giga-pixel image of a wheatfield but rather being transported to the locale under the most ideal viewing conditions. Of course, you’ll be reading more about this IO cartridge system’s interaction with the PureAudioProject Quintet15 Voxativ AC-X field-coil open-baffle speaker system soon.

Peter would also opine that his DAC 3 and up sound just as good as vinyl. True as it may be, it’s never about either vinyl or digital but both. It’s the inundating routine of life we are combatting using the arts and the more format variety the merrier.

With the help of the M6/AN-9L SUT and the twin Xs, the IO Ltd surpassed the Esoteric and the Bricasti Design in tonal solidity and separation, regardless of the resolutions of the digital file decoded by the digital players. Despite the multiple handoffs in the analog playback chain beginning with the cartridge to the tonearm, the turntable, the power supply for the turntable, the phono cable, and the phono preamplifier, the format’s superiority is thus mind boggling.

Audio Note UK accomplishes the herculean feat of producing not only complete systems and individual components of the widest range of prices I’ve ever seen, as well as also producing some of the highest performance models in the industry in each product category, but the London-based company also boasts one of the largest stockpiles of parts inventory from capacitors to tubes for long-term customer servicing needs. Its product offerings are on such massive scale, one could immerse into the world of AN-UK exclusively and continue on a lifetime of unique, unparalleled fun, discovery and music enjoyment. The pull of the prospect of an AN-UK-only reviewing regimen is hauntingly real.

The IO Ltd just widened the distinction between the analog world and the DSD realm. The race is on again.

Copy editor: Dan Rubin

Review System:

PS Audio DirectStream Power Plant 20 AC regenerator

Acoustic Sciences Corporation TubeTraps
Audience AV frontROW RCA cables
Audio Reference Technology Analysts EVO RCA
Audio Reference Technology Analysts SE interconnects, power cables
Audio Reference Technology Super SE interconnects, power cables
Stage III Concepts Ckahron XLR interconnects

Audio Note IO Ltd field-coil cartridge system
Audio Note UK AN-1S six-wire tonearm for IO Ltd
Clearaudio Master Innovation turntable
Technics SP-10 MK2A turntable
Audio Desk Systeme Ultrasonic Vinyl Cleaner

Bricasti Design M20 Preamplifier
PureAudioProect Quintet15 Voxativ AC-X open-baffle field-coil speaker system
First Watt SIT-1 monoblocks
First Watt SIT-2 stereo amplifier

Pass Laboratories Xs Phono
Pass Laboratories Xs Preamp
Pass Laboratories XA200.8 pure class A monoblocks
Bricasti Design M28 class A/AB monoblocks
Sound Lab Majestic 645 electrostatic panels