First Impressions and Review of ClearAudio N1 Moving Magnet Cartridge

Introduction

 ClearAudio, for those not familiar, is a German company specialising in turntables, cartridges and related things analogue. They're known for offering consistently high quality, excellent engineering and close tolerance builds at a high-end pricepoint.  The ClearAudio N1 is an entirely new direction for them in that it takes the qualities we expect from ClearAudio, and offers them in a market-defying, moving-magnet cartridge that retails for only £99! 

 

Unboxing

 The N1 cartridge arrives in a small, double-layered cardboard packaging, with a large foam insert completely isolating the cartridge from external evils.    Also included is a hex key, and M2.5x8mm mounting bolts. I did swap the bolts out for aluminium ones however, as is my standard practice with heavier cartridges.  Upon taking off the outer sleeve of the packaging, there's a business card with a pair of QR codes, one taking you directly to the online manual, the other taking you to the online shop.  The manual is well written, covers all the bases, and contains all the standard setup info that comes with a cartridge.  Credit to ClearAudio for the formatting of the doc, it was as easy to read on a mobile phone as it was on a tablet or desktop. 

     

Physical Characteristics and Weight

It appears strongly that ClearAudio built upon the successes of their other moving-magnet offerings whilst taking a new direction in the design of the N1.  The aluminium body is solid, well-damped, and nicely finished. The only note I'll make regarding the body is to quickly check the blind tapped holes for the cartridge mounting bolts as one of mine had a tiny bit of tapping debris, which was easily removed.

     The cartridge is somewhat weighty - it happens to be the heaviest of the cartridges I own. Just about 12.6g according to my scales. The body, again, is nicely finished, cleanly marked with logo(s) and is shaped to offer good visibility of the stylus end, whilst offering parallel sides amongst the contours which make alignment much simplified over others which have more convoluted shapes. Additionally, a large stylus guard is included which clips onto the body by means of the two slots, one running down either side of the body, offering excellent protection and a convenient hold point whilst mounting the cartridge.  

    

Stylus Characteristics

Looking at the stylus, there's a highly polished elliptical with a tapered aluminium cantilever.  Carefully removing the stylus to check out the replacement process yielded a very standard-looking AudioTechnica-style stylus interface, meaning that the stylus is an easy on-and-off. The shape of the stylus surround mates perfectly to the contours of the body, ensuring absolute alignment upon insertion - a nice touch and emblematic of how well thought out the cartridge is as a package. 

    

    

Installation and Setup

I've a few turntables here, with tonearms ranging from a Jelco SA50, to a Jelco SA250, to an OriginLive modded RB250, and on to a 315mm effective length bespoke wooden arm.  I have the OriginLive arm on a ClearAudio concept turntable as it happens, so this seemed a natural starting point for testing.  I set the cartridge up using a Lofgren "A" alignment, exactly 2.2 grams of tracking force (2.18 for the insanely pedantic) and set the anti-skate initially to about 1.75g (ish) as reading on the scale on the RB250. This arm seems to consistently want about 1/3 of a gram less anti-skate than tracking weight, and as such, this seemed the ideal starting point.  As it happened, the cartridge was slightly shorter in overall height than a particularly tall one I'd been experimenting with, as such I installed a 2mm thick spacer above the cartridge and mounted it with my preferred aluminium hardware. I dialed in the tonearm height to have the top of the cartridge perfectly parallel to the record surface, and checked the azimuth as a matter of practice.  I've a few LP's which I'll not call sacrificial, but I tend to default to them whilst breaking in a new cartridge just in case there are any tracking or other issues which crop up, so as to protect my other pristine copies of the same discs. I started with a 2nd release of the Eagles Hotel California, moved on to Animals by Pink Floyd, then a bit of jazz with Cannonball Adderly.  Though completely new and lacking any break-in at all, the cartridge immediately presented a clean, tight sound. It sounded controlled and competent, not getting ruffled by much.

6 Hours In And First Measurements

After 6 hours, I used my Ultimate Analog Test LP, ran through all the usual tests, and fine-tuned the anti-skate further, dialling that right in. Basic testing using the test LP and REW on a laptop, through an external interface, showed specs quite a bit better than published.  I recorded channel balance of .8dB (vastly better than the "<2dB" on the spec sheet, and despite only being partially into a break-in cycle, I had 23-24dB of channel separation - again an improvement over the 20dB published spec. This was a hugely refreshing change from so many carts that never actually live up to published spec, to see an entry-level cart punching well above its weight. 

   

    

First Real Listen And Cartridge Bedding-in

A few more hours of play on various discs yielded a real opening up of the cartridge.  The imaging focused and tightened, the soundstage broadened and deepened, gaining some real holographic quality to the placement and movement of instruments - this was already miles beyond anything one has the right to expect of a £99 cartridge. I honestly had to stop for a moment and take that in again-  a £99 cartridge, nowhere near fully broken in, was already hugely musical, offering weight, depth, pinpoint imaging, and wonderful detail resolution on music ranging from Miles Davis to Tool.  The weight and scale of Tool, in particular the wonderfully mastered Fear Innoculum discs, was well recreated with the whole atmospheric experience of their tracks beautifully articulated above the seismic percussion of Danny Carey. 

    After about 12 hours, having some real confidence now in the behaviour of the cartridge, I moved on to the Spiritchaser disc by Dead Can Dance. The multitude of textures, tonalities, and sonic signatures of the various instruments were all there and all very musical.  The reproduction felt smooth and effortless, whilst having great resolution. The tribal sounding drums, mixed percussion and female vocals on a few tracks all came through with real tangibility, again, at a level far, far above what could be rightfully asked of a cartridge at this price point. 

    One of the earlier articles I'd read about the ClearAudio N1 was that it'd be specced on the company's new Compass turntable. SRP as I've seen it is £1099.  I wasn't entirely sure what to think of offering up a turntable retailing on the high side of £1000, whilst having a cartridge on it which retails for <£100, but there was obvious wisdom in the move. The cartridge boxes so far above its weight that it'd be absolutely at home in this range. I'll state now that it's going to raise hell for the other manufacturers of MM cartridges in the range under £350 and under. I'll suggest that it's going to be easily putting the vast majority of that market segment to shame, whilst really raising the bar as to what the end user can purchase for a great listening experience for short money. 

   

On Par With Rivals At 3X Pricepoint

I'm now 20 hours into the break-in cycle with it. I've listened to everything from Nina Simone, to Lana Del Rey,  Blind Faith to Tool,  Dead Can Dance to Black Sabbath and George Michael to Dave Brubeck. I cannot convey enough just how good this cartridge is for the money, or for 2-3x the money. I've several MM's/MI's here from Nagaoka, Goldring, AudioTechnica, Ortofon and GoldNote. From a pure musicality standpoint and the aspect of a high fidelity, non-fatiguing experience, the N1 is at LEAST on par with, if not exceeding what's on offer from the other MM's at 2-3x the price.  It starts to encroach uncomfortably into the realm where I hold the Pickering XV15's...with scale, dynamics, resolution and detail retrieval that it has no right offering. 

   

Summary

In short, I'm massively impressed with the N1.  I strongly suggest anyone looking at an MM cartridge, even if they've their eyes on something more "reassuringly expensive" to the tune of 200-300£ give a serious audition to the N1 before dismissing it because of pricing. Part of me wonders if ClearAudio would have actually done themselves a favour to price the cart at £200-250 so that those unfamiliar might initially take it more seriously; instead, they've done all of us--the end users--a huge favour by making it wonderfully affordable whilst being fun, musical, dynamic and thoroughly enjoyable. 

    I'll post a follow-up to this initial review once the cartridge has 50-60 hours of full break-in. If it continues on its current trajectory of improvement with use, the ClearAudio N1 is very much going to be something special indeed.