The Hana Umami Blue Moving Coil Cartridge Review

We recently got our hands on a relatively new product, the Hana Umami Blue cartridge. I had the opportunity to do quite a bit of listening to it in my reference system, and the chance to compare it to a few other cartridges that we have in the reference system that I think are relevant to what a buyer might care about.

But first, let’s talk about who Hana is and how their cartridge line is laid out. The way I think about it is that Hana has some entry and mid-level moving coil cartridges that share related technology. These are the E series, the S series and the M series. They’re all available in low output, and, while no moving coil is high output, they are also offered in what stands for high output in the moving coil world. I assume most people will have a high-gain phono preamp if they’re into moving coils, and so I will concentrate on the low output versions (EL, SL, ML).

The key point I want to make is Hana has built a reputation for having really solid, musical cartridges at each price point. The cartridges start at $475 in the U.S. (E series). You work up to $750 for the S series (SL was awarded TAS Golden Ear), and then to $1200 for the M series. I have an ML in the reference system, so I use that for some of the comparisons. I think someone might reasonably want to decide if they’re interested in the Hana line “do I need to spend $2,500, which is what the Umami Blue costs, or is $1200 going to get me most of the way to happiness?” There also there’s no guarantee that when someone makes a more expensive cartridge, that it it’s better, so we will consider that question. The ML is very popular and some might consider an upgrade, if available.

Setup

Those of you who have extensive experience with phono cartridges will know that setup really matters. There are a lot of variables to how the stylus is positioned in the groove, and those include zenith angle and azimuth and overhang and vertical tracking angle and, of course, stylus force and gain and loading. That’s a lot of variables you’re playing with. When someone is reviewing a cartridge, to some degree you’re going to get feedback on the intrinsic qualities of the cartridge and to some degree, you’re also going to get some input on their setup.

For purposes of this review, compared the Hana Umami Blue to the Hana ML, and I set them both up using the Wally Tools protractor to set overhang. And then I used the Analog Magic suite of tools for zenith azimuth, vertical tracking angle, gain, loading, and stylus force. The Analog Magic tools allow you to measure the actual output of the cartridge and adjust your settings to minimize output errors. This stands in contrast to assuming that known physical parameters are going to lead to minimum distortion. If you prefer to use those physical measurements, Wally Tools has a superb suite of physical and optical tools that can help you get your set up right and really well dialed-in. Michael Fremer loves the Wally Tools.

My main point is that I I took care to set up both cartridges in a way that suited each cartridge. I put the cartridges in my Technics SL 1210 G, which is one of my reference turntables. I think it’s in a price class ($4299 US including arm) that is very appropriate for these kinds of cartridges. Also, as a reviewer, I happen to like the fact that it’s got a removable headshell because it’s a convenience that makes accurate comparisons or meaningful comparisons a little bit easier to do. I ran the Technics with the Korf ceramic headshell and the Stein Music Perfect Interface mat.

Sound Quality

The Umami Blue is the least expensive cartridge I’ve heard that does most of the things that the big high-end cartridges do. Maybe not to the same degree, but it’s on that same wavelength. And what I mean by that is the Umami Blue manages to put together a balance of the beloved analog qualities that those of us who are into vinyl really revere. Not to get too technical, I’m going to call that analog “yumminess”. There’s a certain naturalness to how analog can come through, you know it when you hear it, and that is well preserved by the Umami Blue.

That analog beauty was part A of what I really liked about the Umami Blue, but the magic comes in combining that with a high resolution, deep look into the music. That combination is, frankly, the reason people tend to spend money on fancy cartridges. Combining those two things at a $2,500 price point is, I think, an important achievement. And that is about the highest praise that I can give a cartridge.

Let’s do some comparisons because I also like the Hana ML. It’s a very nice cartridge. What I would say is that, in the big picture sense, the ML is a little more “analog”. The definition of instruments is a little bit more painted with a big brush. The focus is on the ensemble rather than on illuminating the individual performers.

In contrast, the Umami Blue paints with very distinct and detailed lines. It isn’t overetched, it just defines each performer to a greater degree. I think the Hana ML is more a classic analog cartridge and doesn’t go as far as some of the really high-end cartridges do to give you high resolution together with analog naturalness. (If analog naturalness isn’t retained, in some sense we’ve thrown the baby out with the bathwater.)

Now, let me give you some details. First of all, the bass definition with the Umami Blue is, in my mind, clearly better than with the Hana ML. I happen to like the bass balance of the Umami a little bit better, and that might be something that could be refined with even more testing on exact loadings, although I aimed for pretty much the same frequency response curve on each cartridge. Still, frequency response curves are only one tool.

The second thing I’ll talk about that I loved on the Umami blue is what I like to call instrumental separation, what some people call spotlighting. There may be 4 performers on stage or 100. With the reference of live sound, the thing we’re looking for (well, some of us are looking for though I think some people are actually not looking for this), is the sense that if you want to, you can focus on an individual performer and you can follow the musical line that they’re delivering. You can also pan back and listen to the entire band or the entire orchestra. But that ability to hear the performers distinctly is a truly glorious thing that makes repeated listenings fresh and interesting. I think you don’t usually get that until you’re at this level of cartridge.

If you combine that instrumental separation with the bigger and deeper soundstage of the Umami Blue and you really have something.

As icing on the cake, add to that the stability of the positioning of instruments in that sound stage seemed more locked in with the Umami Blue. Of course, if you’ve got a mixing guy who’s moving things around, that won’t be the case. But I’m talking about on well-recorded items where a jazz quartet or an orchestra is presented accurately. The Umami Blue does a very nice job of rendering width and depth and having that be a stable kind of event.

A final quality I want to mention, because it’s turning out to be a big thing in my experience in terms of musical enjoyment is something I’m going to call dynamic naturalness. You want the cartridge to give you dynamic snap and pop, but you want it to sound natural or real or realistic, not like it’s an artifact of transient overshoot. This cartridge does a very good job of putting together poppy, fun, really enjoyable dynamics while having them sound like you would actually hear them if you were in a club or another performance venue.

Now For Something Completely Different

Part two of my comparisons starts with the reality that I did not have an Umami Red ($3950) on hand, so I’m sorry, but I really can’t give you that comparison. Andre Jennings has the Umami Blue cartridge as well, and he will be doing a review in The Absolute Sound magazine, and I hope he makes that comparison there.

I do have a cartridge that’s effectively in between the Umami Blue and the Umami Red in price. And I think that provides an interesting comparison, and honestly, if you can, a comparison that you ought to make. That comparison is with the DS Audio 003 cartridge.

Now, those of you who’ve been reading what we are working on will know that DS Audio makes optical cartridges. They’re not shining a light on the record. Rather, the way that the movement of the stylus and cantilever is sensed is with an optical device rather than with an electromagnetic device. So is a different technology than moving coil.

I will say that DS Audio products are part of a system. You have to use their preamp (or one made by EMM Labs) as well as using the cartridge because the adjustments that need to be made to the cartridge aren’t the same as with a moving magnet or moving coil cartridge. For price comparisons, this means that while the DS 003 cartridge itself is $2500 (same as the Umami Blue), with the DS you also have to buy a $3500 pre-preamp. Even if you are starting from scratch that will probably affect the economics, because you could easily use, say, the Phonomena III + Linear Supply with the Umami and spend only $2200. Still, the DS 003 and the Umami Blue are in the same ballpark, all in.

The DS Audio 003 has a level of clarity and transparency that I personally like quite a bit.

I think it’s very realistic, but it crosses a boundary in my mind where it is so clear and so clean that some people, not yours truly, but some people, feel like we’ve lost some of the analog naturalness that I mentioned at the beginning. There is something of a continuum between the Hana ML, the Hana Umami Blue and the DS 003 where you have rising clarity but lose, perhaps, some of the analog feel that delights many listeners.

Personally, I think that’s a little bit of confusion between analog naturalness on the one hand and blur and noise and some other artifacts that can happen in analog reproduction on the other. What’s really great about analog, which is wide bandwidth, frequency response well above 20khz, and the lack of digital artifacts like pre-ringing or high-frequency filter errors, is what we really want. But some people may use analog distortion artifacts as a kind of “tell” that they are really in the analog world. I view that as a sacrifice, but for some people it is reassuring and becomes desirable.

I think what the DS 003 gets you down to the analog goodness stuff with little of the blur factor. But what is interesting about the Umami Blue, and what I found quite exciting about it is that it challenges my view about the DS 003. That’s because the Umami gives you a huge amount of transparency while feeling just one click more analog. It is as if you had a knob that went from one to ten, and the Umami Blue is one click more analog-like and one click less resolved. For those who are unaccustomed to the sound of the DS Audio cartridges, this actually might be the better place to find home.

And you save at least $1,000, probably more, going with the Umami Blue. So, I thought it was nicely positioned in the pantheon of cartridges that are in the lower few thousands of dollars. I mean, if you’re paying attention, you know that you can spend $8000 or $9000 on a moving coil cartridge and even more on phono preamps. So, from that perspective, the Umami Blue offers great value.

This cartridge offers a balanced delivery of all of the good factors we want in a phono cartridge at a reasonable price. Exactly what Hana is known for. To my ears, this cartridge really nailed it.

Appendix: The Reference System

Some commenters have asked for a little more information on the reference systems that I’m using.

I already told you about the turntable rig used with the Hana cartridges. I used the Musical Surroundings Phonomena III phono preamp with their linear power supply.

That’s what Musical Surroundings, the US importer of the Hana cartridges recommends, and we like to follow the recommendations of the importer. I quite enjoyed the Phonomena III. The gain and the loading are very easy to set, and there are very small steps in the adjustments that you can make, which I thought was very nice.

Also on hand, we have a J Sikora Initial Max turntable with their Kevlar Unipivot tone arm.

That’s where I have the DS Audio cartridge that I referred to. And the DS Audio cartridge has to be run into a special preamp. So I used the matching DS Audio 003 preamp.

I used primarily AudioQuest cabling, both for interconnects and for speakers. I used Shunyata Venom AC cables and Venom power director. And we ran the phono preamps into an Audio Research Reference 6 preamp. And we went from the Ref 6 preamp into PS Audio BHK 600 mono-block amplifiers.

And I had the BHK 600s driving Magico A5 speakers. I use the dCS Lina DAC and Master Clock as a point of comparison, streaming Tidal and Qobuz.

.Acoustic treatment uses Vicoustic panels.