Robyatt/VPI/Miyajima/DNM Design/Finley Audio

Robin Wyatt (left) with VPI’s Matt Weisfeld (right)

Robin Wyatt’s Robyatt room wins my early, best sound of show. Playing recordings I thought I knew well, as well as those I’d never heard, his exacting, tonally true, vivid, physical, natural and extremely transparent system left my jaw on the floor and other’s mouths agape.

My usual spiel re: Billie Holiday: “Forget her later period Verve pressings, you want the Columbia Masterworks reissued Billie, when she’s young and her is life ahead of her, her style joyful.”

Spinning the Analogue Productions mono reissue of Holiday’s Body and Soul, Wyatt’s Miyajima Labs/VPI Industries/Finley Audio-based rig revealed an intimacy, clarity, and wholeness, yes, a depth of soul and life-yearning sensitivity I’d not heard before from this well-loved LP.

Senses realigned, brain fully scrambled and resorted.

Wyatt’s system repeated these feats on a Japanese copy of Bob Dorough’s Devil May Care, and another LP I know like I know my Shindos, Don Cherry and Ed Blackwell’s ECM classic, El Corazon.

What made up this super rig you ask? Old tech, newly reanimated.

Sources included VPI HW40 RA Direct Drive turntable ($18,250, above) with a custom Wyatt slate/Baltic ply plinth, Thai-Scandinavian Engineering Bird of Prey tonearm (including J Wand and Straight Wand, SME or fixed base) ($10,750), Bird tonearm ($8750), headshell of aluminum/brass ($375), Miyajima Labs Infinity Mono Phono cartridge ($3475), Miyajima Labs Destiny Stereo Phono cartridge ($7600), headshell washers ($43/3).

Amplification consisted of Miyajima Labs Wo-1 preamp ($21,500, above), Miyajima Labs MC-2 head amp ($7850), Miyajima Labs MC-1 head amp ($6950), Miyajima Labs OTL amplifier ($17,000, below), driving Miyajima Labs Prominent OB Field-Coil, open-baffle speakers ($25,500/pair), with DNM Design and Finley cabling.

Is this an expensive system? Definitely. Is it a transportive music-and-audio reproduction device of last word, practically Biblical Charlton Heston/Moses-parts-the-Red Sea proportions? Undoubtedly. Magical.

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