NAS & Heed Orbit

Hi all,

It had to be tried - been hankering after throwing a bit of hard-earned at the NAS, so today have dipped one toe in the spending pool by getting hold of a Heed Orbit psu.

I've not long plugged it in so in a couple of hours I'll let you know how it's going. In the meantime, a couple of photos...





Initial impressions are not unfavourable

 

Ok, now it's been spinning for a few hours...

This little device has quite a subtle effect on the performance of the Spacedeck, but a very noticable one nonetheless; its influence on the sound would be obvious in a blind test, I've little doubt.

For those who know NAS turntables, they will be aware of the very natural yet 'creamy' sound they display and their unforced yet still toe-tapping portrayal of music . The Orbit has sucked away a certain amount of the richness from the sound, yet still managed to maintain the variety of its colour chart. A standard Space's pitch stability and coherence can be taken as read, in fact I'd say it's possibly one of the most 'un-wavering' record players I've ever heard. Where an LP12 or a Gyro (both of which I've owned) will show a slight lightening and darkening of pitch on a hard-struck piano note, the NAS hardly budges at all. The Orbit seems to have reinforced this quality even further.

Bass is better - it has less influence on the overall sound in that it 'blooms' less and I'm sure it goes deeper, even with my little ProAcs. Leading edges of notes, be they vocal, instrumental or percussive are now not all the same - the attack of each sound is relevant to that sound, and not a 'one fits all' type of transient. Alison Krauss's accent is more obvious in her singing...and when she sings across a phrase rather than taking a breath, you can feel that she's getting short of breath at the end of the next (any other wind player/singer will know what I mean!).

Out of all the positive effects the Orbit has had, the 2 biggest by far are 1. The noise floor has dropped even further - I thought at one stage whilst the stylus was in the lead in groove that the amp's source select wasn't on 'phono' so low is the background noise. 2. I'm not a believer in 'imaging' or any other such criteria (it's well down my list tbh) but the air around instruments has increased quite dramatically - single instruments have less influence on those around them. Quiet background detail is better - no doubt brought about by the lower background 'hash'.

Negative points? There's a slight loss of euphony in the sound, and the turntable feels as though it has, musically, slowed very slightly, but overall I'm chuffed with this addition...

...and at 225 quid who can argue?

 

Ditto, that's exactly what I thought! I play records more than I did before.




Spacedeck, RB250 (OL), DNM Reson, Graham Slee V Era Gold, Heed Audio Orbit, M-F Audio Pre, Bryston 4BSST (for sale), Tannoy Ardens

 

glad its working well for you. sounds like good vfm.

 

How long have you had your Orbit? Gromit's was the first account I've read of one partnered with an NAS deck, and I've been pretty curious about their compatibility together. I used an Orbit with tremendous success when I had a Planar 3, but I've since moved on to a Xerxes.

Best, Dex

 

Had it about a month. It does clean the sound up in a subtle way. Also, it's nice to be able to turn a NAS deck off (Heed recommend that you power off after listening)- and 45rpm switching at the touch of a button is an added bonus.

All in all, a subtle, but very worthwhile upgrade IMO. Not sure how much better a Wave Mechanic (double the price) is. But it's probably overkill on a deck the price of a Spacedeck.

The only disconcerting thing about the Orbit is if you accidentally knock it or pick it up while a record is playing , the sound goes all wonky and trippy :JPS:

 

Well, I suppose the same could be said for your tonearm!

But seriously, where do you have the Orbit located in your setup? Any pics to share?

Best, Dex

 

I use a Heed with my Radius 5, the best £225.00 I have spent in a long time.


KxF

 

A friend of mine uses the project box and just put the heavy kit on the space deck. Thats worth doing too I reckon . Better than the hyperspace and costs less too. You get more, bass, size and groove- the extra mass obviously helps the inertia drive, the motor seems to love it, everything locks in nicely.

 

Update as of yesterday...

Been living with this little box for a couple of days now, and overall it has made the turntable's sound a mite clearer, especially in the bass. However, after some prolonged listening into the wee hours of this morning I'd started to feel something was missing. Where I'd said that the NAS has begun to sound 'slower' it was partially correct but I now feel it's sounding laboured and overly-mechanical - something which the Spacedeck most certainly isn't.

It's easy to by-pass the Orbit by connecting the TT's modded mains lead to the female end of the Orbit's mains cable and drive the motor 'straight from the wall'. Doing so has injected the life and emotion back into the music. Best way I can (hopefully) describe it is that with the Orbit in place, music is a stream of vertical 'chunks' with no sense of flow - as though the musicians are phrasing poorly (or rather not even trying). Without the Orbit the horizontal flow has returned - there's proper momentum, where phrases begin and end according to the music. The Orbit's made the NAS sound tired - again something which it most certainly isn't. Dare I say it, the Orbit has injected a dose of 'hifi' into the equation - better clarity and separation (which is why in an A/B demo it would sound impressive) but it's not as much fun. It had killed the one thing which the Spacedeck does so well - that it just sounds real

Definitely worth trying though, just not my cup of tea.

Pete & Les at Walrus hadn't tried an Orbit on a NAS yet so were a bit in the dark as to its effect - very much of the 'suck it and see' and if I didn't like it I could return it, going back to square one. The other alternative is to get the heavy kit or go for the Spacearm. With trade in on my old arm each upgrade would cost approx the same. The heavy kit comes out at 360 quid - addmitedly the Hyper has a great deal more tricks up its sleeve (as has been said - better bearing, massier overall contruction etc) but the cost to change to a Hyper would be out of my price range...more's the pity. If it's possible to get 50% there with the heavy bits then it'd be money well spent.

 

Have you tried the Morch DP-6? I've heard it's good, too.

 

Yup - I've heard it's quite an arm, but possibly just a little out of my price range unfortunately (the Space is just about my limit).

 

Would be interested to hear how you get on with the heavy platter and spacearm, should you get them

 

I've heard the hyperspace (not spacedeck though) with a wavemech on it but I don't know how it compares directly to the project and heed. From what people tell me it is a bit better but I should hope so at that price. Sounded musical enough on the hyper but the phono stage I heard it with wasn't that exciting (not sure what it was, built in to some pre or other, tube job with an arcrylic top, I've heard more musical stages).
I still reckon the project SE is a better bet, it saves you a lot of cash and does a really really good job. I'd still be interested in a direct comparison though, see if the wave mech is worth the extra cash

 

I tried the ProJect SpeedBox SE with my NAS Mentor (used to be the model above the Hyperspace) and I was surprised when it gave no improvement whatsoever. I went on to try it at both 33.3 and 45 rpm at several times of day to check against mains quality, I then returned it to the 'enthusiastic' dealer! I came to the conclusion that my NAS with it's super heavy platter already had excellent speed stability and that my mains is reliable enough not to need the ProJect's assistance, the very minor sound differences that it made were not an improvement, but my memory can not recall enough detail for a review.
I would still like to try the Wave Mechanic though!

The biggest upgrade that I made to my NAS was to replace it's old 9" Mentor unipivot with the new version of the 9" Space unipivot, this massively improved the treble detail, soundstaging and bass weight from my vinyl. It should be noted that when it was a current model the Mentor arm was nearly top of the range and the Space is now bottom of the range!

The new 'Ace-' variants of the NAS arms benefit from an improved pivot which is clearly magic! In typical fashion Tom Fletcher just quietly improved the arms without relaunching or renaming them, (only the Americans regularly use the 'Ace' prefix) so the performance improvements are little known! The only thing to lookout for with the NAS arms is cartridge matching as they have quite a high effective mass, they will not suit cartridges that work well on lightweight designs or vice-versa!

 

Not only that, but the new pivot is retro fittable to the older aluminium arm tube models (£70 or so) and made a noticable difference to mine.

Do you have any gen on what the effective mass actually is?

 

I know that Tom could not fit the new pivot to my old Mentor, and that the new Space has a Carbon fibre armtube...
But, regarding effective mass: Tom told me that the Mentor had 13.5g effective mass and I found an obscure website that quoted the effective mass of the AceSpace as 12.5g. I have found that modern Ortofons track well in the NAS arms, but with the Mentor arm I had a nightmare with the DynaVector 17D2 MkII and a Clearaudio Sigma Gold.