$22,500

Gadzooks! Hailing from Tokyo, this upgraded version of the original optical Grand Master cartridge, the brainchild of Tetsuakio Aoyagi, the president of DS Audio, is not merely an upgrade. It truly merits that overused term “game-changer” because it changes the analog game in profound ways. It is richer, faster, and more palpable than its predecessor, offering a lifelike presentation of fine recordings and lifting merely mundane ones to the level of pleasurable listening. The level of micro-detail that it excavates from the grooves is uncanny, rendering the most minute bowing on a cello fully audible. The construction of the cartridge’s stylus and cantilever, which transmit the groove modulations to an optical generator, is similar to that of the nifty Swiss X-quisite cartridge but goes one level further. The Extreme, you could even say, was made by extremists. It sports a 0.22mm one-piece diamond cantilever that employs no adhesive, a process that is supposed to allow it to detect the vibration of the needle tip more accurately. Listening to it will surely turn almost any analog lover into an adherent of no adhesion, for the results are immediately audible. Bass reproduction is stygian and the treble effortless. Add in a far more stable soundstage in which the position of various instruments can easily and rapidly be identified, and you have one of the, if not the, best cartridges extant. (Forthcoming)