Look, it’s not that hard to rate cameras, really. Mostly, it all comes down to personal favorites and professional standards: I might be quirky enough to prefer Alpas over Nikons, or Hasselblads over Rollei SLRs, but there’s no really effective way to tell the difference between camera brands simply by comparing the photographs you took on your summer vacation. The guitar on the right channel was buried and not distinctly presented as it was through the two Ortofons and the piano’s transients were slightly blunted but the instrument’s woody warmth shone through and I like the way it presented the saxophone’s reedy tone. The VM-95 body is an example of Audio-Technica’s dual-magnet design and in the 95E is partnered with a bonded elliptical stylus that is mounted on an aluminium pipe-style cantilever. This borrows from the special EX version of the AT-95 that comes fitted as standard to the company’s LP5 turntable ( HFC 405). The body has been designed to reduce resonance and feels a whole lot more substantial than the original AT-95E.

The Ortofon 2M Red, on the other hand, sounds noticeably more open and detailed, but it did never sound as pleasant as the AT95E. Mechanically, the LP120 is an amazing piece of kit for the price when it comes to perceived build quality and weight. As an electronics engineer who used to design consumer electronics for a living, I just can’t wrap my head around how they manage to sell this for such a low price.I was almost right. Only that this time, it surpassed my expectations. The bass actually gave a little punch- definitely not the type that you feel in your guts but it was there and if it wasn’t, you would notice and miss it sorely. So while it was great, it did much better than the midrange. For example, here’s one issue: Human beings have two “brains,” one in the “gut” (or viscera) and the other in our skulls. And we “hear" through both, though only the skull-brain is directly attached to our ears. (Mostly, our viscera are more responsive to the bass regions.)

Its transients are somewhat softer and less distinct than the ones drawn by the 2M Bronze’s Fine Line stylus but overall it threads the needle between the Grado’s warmth and the 2M Bronze’s detail. That’s why it works so well in so many settings. It’s also priced attractively for what it offers. In a direct comparison with the Bronze, I’d take the Bronze for less money but I can easily hear why others might prefer the BPS’s warmer, more relaxed presentation. First of all thanks to everyone who participated. More did than we initially expected. This is a learning experience for sure. Future such surveys will feature “normalized” files so levels will be equal. I’ll be far more careful about clipped files too.The AT-LP120 just get an enormous amount of love in the turntable community. And there must be a reason for that. The Auto Leveling routine is contained only in the Batch Editor which is found under the Filter Menu. It allows you to make .wav files sound very similar in loudness across a number of files. It performs this function by calculating a combination of the RMS and Peak values of each of the files and normalizing them while accounting for both parameters and assuring that none of the .wav files overload. This functionality is quite different in functionality from the Gain Normalize feature in which a single file is normalized in gain with respect to its own peak value...." Very cumbersome. The special headshell slid out of the jig and because i couldn't leave on the stylus guard, it fell to the floor and that was the end of the cantilever.