MUSICAL LIFE JAZZ MKII REFERENCE TURNTABLE Price:$5,799
MUSICAL LIFE CONDUCTOR SE TONEARM Price:$6,800
Review by
James L. Darby
First we’d like to thank Tom VU of KT Audio Imports for working with us on this review. Tom also distributes Acoustic Signature tables, ZXY cartridges, Isophon speakers and a new tube amp company called LA Audio that we liked a lot at CES.
The first time we saw a Musical Life turntable was about four years ago at the Montréal show, which was probably the first time anyone in the US had seen one. The one on display wasn't hooked up, so we didn't get to hear it, and there was also no one in the room at the time that could tell us anything about it. That's not uncommon since vendors often share rooms, but intrigued we were, so I went about trying to procure a review.
I have to say that for several reasons I thought the table must have been made in China. First, that was about when we started seeing many new products from the Far East that most people had never heard of being offered in the US. Second, it had a highly polished, lacquered finish, which is often indicative of a product from China. Third, the price on the accompanying price card was substantially lower than similar tables that were proliferating the demo rooms. But perhaps most of all was the unusual brand name; “Musical Life” just seemed to be one of those names that was an inadequate translation of some Zen-type phrase where there was no parallel meaning in the English language. Googling the name back in the hotel room brought up nothing, which just loaned credence to the speculation.
After the show, I dug around a bit more and found out that my conjecture was wrong - way wrong. The table in question, as well as the rest of the Musical Life line was designed and manufactured in Germany, land of Frank Schroeder, Clear Audio, Acoustic Signature and a raft of others including my TW Acustic. It just makes sense that any turntable that has to compete with those brands couldn't be all that bad, right? Well, we ran into problems right away.To make a very long story short, it seems there was a problem with the distributor and a change was afoot, also not uncommon. However, that tabled the table for the time being. Months passed, years passed, till one day an e-mail appeared asking if we were still interested in a review of a Musical Life turntable. New distributor Tom VU of KT Audio Imports assured me that was on the case. Tom is a great guy so I took his word. He is putting a lot of time, money and effort into marketing, which seems to be a foreign concept to many distributors. I even got another e-mail from a stereo shop here in Florida that was interested in the line and wondered what we knew about it. Eventually, a beautiful Jazz MKII Reference turntable as well as a Musical Life ConductorSE tonearm found their way to the Stereomojo office. Everything arrived with no damage in a single box, though we have seen better packaging and packing. There was a single large cardboard box containing individually packaged components that were well labeled.
MANUAL DEXTERITY
Let's get a major issue out of the way right here at the top. The owner’s manual was in German, the whole German and nothing but the German. Since Ich spreche kein Deutsch, that was a problem. I really didn't need a manual to set up the turntable, but the arm was a different matter. The ConductorSE is a very sophisticated and complex tonearm which requires quite a bit of guidance to set up. Tom assured me that an English manual was in the works and he'd send me the manual for the table and the arm very soon. Time passed. No manuals, which meant no turntable/arm set up. Eventually, I was e-mailed two PDFs that were purported to be in English. Below is a snippet of the arm manual:
I don't mean to belabor the point nor am I belittling anyone's language skills (writing in English is challenging enough for me), but it's fair to point out this limitation and suggest if someone is trying to market a product in the US, it's probably worth finding or hiring someone to do an adequate translation. Much of the copy was also faded as you can see. Let's move on.
The man behind Musical Life is Michael Stolz who started the company way back in 1969, according to their website. There's precious little information on this site or anywhere else about the table, but here's what it says (I’ll leave out the “sics”):
"The constructional characteristics are similar to the Jazz MKII. Soundquality only became if possible with the Reference, around one perfect to reach and optics, all conceivable done. Noble woods furnierte trim was covered with piano lacquer. Not only an optical highlight, but also acoustically, by resonance decrease particularly effectively. In addition the wood trim is bolted firmly with a 20mm shale platform. This measure provides for mass and ain extremely solid soundstage. As 
the further measure the Jazz MKII Reference is equipped in series with the very complex , external motor control. The drive wins thus again clearly at peace, precision and dissolution. As tonearm are recommended, exactly, as with the small Jazz MKII those evaluate models of Jelco or Project. Is natural the Jazz MKII Reference a potent partner for our internal tonearms, like e.g. the Fortissimo MKII. Thus they have a combination, which is sounds and looks at the upper limit in this pricerange".
Dimensions: W470mmxD370mmxH140mm
Weight: 20Kg Speed: 33 1/3 and 45
external motor control unit and power supply
Those dimensions convert to 18.5" x 14.5" x 5.5". That's not really all that big, but when you pick it up you are surprised by its 45 pound heft; that's a lot of weight concentrated in a small package. The next thing you notice is the gorgeous piano - lacquered exotic wood. The heavy lacquer is said to be not just for beauty's sake, but also as a deterrent to resonance and vibration. This sample was a Makassar Ebony I think, though other finishes are available.
The material Mr. Stoltz uses to mass load the table is rather unique, it's slate! You know, the stuff fine pool tables use. Very organic and green. Here’s what Mr. Stoltz told me about the construction: “The base is made of slate, MDF and HDF. The top sid
e layer is HDF. Under the topside are two layers of MDF. Every layer is 16mm thick. The bottom layer is made of 20mm slate. The platter weights 2.5kg. The motor is isolated by an aluminum housing and some foam rubber and there is no contact to the base. The bearing is made of steel. We have a very high precisionprocess to make the bearing. The tolerance is less than 0.003mm”. When asked about arm compatibility he added, “Jazz Reerence (sic) will work with The every 9" or 10" tonearm on the market. We have all the mount armbase available”.
I also asked Michael a bottom line question: “Why should anyone buy this table instead of the many competitors on the market?”, to which he replied,“This
package has incredible value base on design and as well as be able to reproduce close to life sound. With all the option included in this table list price will be difficult for other factory to compete as well as sonically”. We also inquired of Mr. Vu and Mr. Stoltz if there was a package discount price, but did not get and answer.
The Jazz MKII Reference comes in four exotic woods (not that green): Makassar Ebony, Zebrano, Olive or in Rosewood finish. The platter is made of 25 mm acrylic. There is a separate outboard electronic controller that offers 33 1/3 and 45-RPM operation as well as speed adjustments for both of them. The website describes the controller like this:
“Our new generation of the turntable drive is immediately available. This concerns an extremely exactly working frequency generator, to the control of our internal Syncronmotors. A very strong power pack supplies the circuit with cleanest supply voltage. In the expenditure to part an efficient Class A final stage works. This final stage it is in such a manner distortion-poor that it so some audio amplifier those Shame redness in the face to float might. This controlling strikes of everything that was in our laboratory. But you convince yourselves”.
I think we can draw from that paragraph that the controller employs some strong AC filters since clean power is important for electronic motors. A standard thin rubber belt transfers rotation from the motor to the platter. The motor seems to have plenty of torque and spins up quickly. The torque is sufficient to keep the platter spinning while using a standard cleaning brush such as carbon fiber. Simple metal spikes, three in number, were provided for feet. There is also a nice selection of tools for assembling.
Optional record clamp shown
MAGNETIC PERSONALITY
While the Jazz MKII Reference table is toward the middle of the Musical Life rather extensive turntable lineup of five different models, including one monster that weighs nearly 300 pounds. The ConductorSE is the top of the three-tonearm selections. Amazingly, there are eight, count them EIGHT, different types of wood available for the arm tube. Needless to say, each would offer a different character to the sound of the arm and therefore the music.
Magnets are one of the hottest things in the audio industryright now, especially in turntable and tone arm design. Continuum Audio Labs, Clearaudio, Transrotor, EAT, Pro-Ject and Hanss are just a few brands that employ magnetic suspensions in their tables. Arms that use magnets are Graham, ClearAudio and Dynavector and of course Frank Schroeder's famous arms which, he says, were the first to use a magnetic suspension.
Why are we talking about magnetic tonearm suspensions? Because the Conductor SE has a rather unique one. You don't really install, insert or mount the arm itself. Once you have a fixed the tonearm base, you simply bring the rear of the arm wand close to the bracket and a small but powerful magnetized ball bearing reaches out and magnetically grabs it! Another similar magnet directly below the gap captures the bottom of the tonearm to keep it from twisting a rotating, but the bottom magnet structure does not touch the arm itself, you can see the visible gap. Therefore, the only contact the arm makes with the surrounding support is between the rounded surfaces of two tiny ball bearings. Pretty ingenious.
From a design and even color perspective, you may surmise that the Musical Life looks a lot like Frank Schroeder's, but Frank uses a string to suspend the arm from the top and two other magnets to keep the arm in position and allow for adjustments. Similar concept, different execution.
On the back of the arm is a heavy brass counterweight that has no scribes or numbers to help you balance things, you just gingerly slide it back and forth until the arm is properly balanced. The tiny setscrew keeps it in place. Another silver appendage is there to adjust azimuth. There is a pretty standard d silky smooth hydraulic arm lifter that is a true necessity.
Some other features of the Conductor SE
Magnetic antiskating
Different lengths 9 ", 10 ", 12 "
Effective mass 10-25 g Finewire C37 Cryo pick-up arm wire with Bullet Plugs
Continuous wiring up to the RCA connectors
Operationally, because of the minimal contact area, which is about as close as you can get to an arm floating in free space, the arm is a bit squiggly when the finger cueing bar is resting on a finger. Unless your hands are as unshakable as a brain surgeon's, you'll want to use the lever, at least at first. My hands don't shake a lot (yet), so after a little experience, arm wrangling was a little less intimidating. The fact that my reference cartridge is The Voice by SoundSmith that tracks at a mere 1g made the balance extra precarious, so your behemoth that scrapes along the grooves at 2.5g will be less jiggy.
VTA Is adjustable via a small screw on the side. You are supposed to be able to adjust it on the fly, but I was a little too afraid of trying that with my $2,000 reference cartridge with the thin ruby cantilever at risk. One of the qualities of the SoundSmith cartridge is its wide VTA Window that makes adjustment all but unnecessary for all but the thickest 200 gram LPs, so once I got the VTA set it pretty much stayed there.
Let me confess here that the best way to review this combo would have been to mount one of my arms on the table and evaluate that, and then mount the conductor arm on one of my tables
for separate evaluations, then perhaps review the Musical Life combo as a unit. That would've been my preference, but I only had limited time with the review samples and there were some mismatches among arm mounts, so that didn't happen. Perhaps I can get shot at the arm with perhaps another model table. We'll see. In the meantime, here are my thoughts on the Musical Life combo.
I have a pretty good library of test LPs from Cardas, Shure and various others, but I usually use the Cardas as I did here. After a couple of micro adjustments, the combo tracked like a bloodhound. The first thing you notice is the almost total lack of surface and groove noise. The almost frictionless arm allowed the feather light cartridge and diamond to respond very quickly and accurately as it also later than under the guidance of the stereo groove walls. That's translated into very dynamic contrasts on LPs like Hugh Masekela’s “Hope” reissue by Analog Productions. Just slide on said 4 of the 2 LP set and you’ll 
hear “The Coal Train” that has some of the biggest, fattest, fastest, hair-raising dynamics and transients of any LP I know. Breaking the rule of “Great sound, lousy music”, the jazz tinged African music is pretty hot, too.
At some point early in the evaluation, I executed the old finger tap on the plinth while the needle is resting on a record that is not turning and with the volume turned up to normal listening levels. It's actually pretty common to get a response that makes you fear for your woofers. In this case, the thump was barely audible even with a moderately sharp rap. Any harder and I might've dislodged the poor little diamond from its groove, and we can't have that. There is only one table I've tested that did better with this test and that is the Hanss T30 that is the subject of a soon-to-be published review. For the next two weeks or so, I pulled out LPs of every genre, style and decade of the stereo era, not particularly listening analytically, but just for enjoyment while making a little note here and there when something particularly significant happened. Sometimes I just want to see how things feel. It became increasingly apparent that the level of musicality was very high. There was never a significant sense that we were listening to mechanical device or a device at all. The sound over all was very organic, never steely or academic. All instruments especially in the string sections were very well wrought with very tangible awareness of the instruments wooden bodies and cavities and strings. Certainly one of the best in recent memories. If there was anything lacking, it was that last measure of weight and authority in the low end in the bass section. Same thing with jazz with close mic'd acoustic bass. Electric bass and synth fared better but still a bit more vague than I like to hear in a $12,000 front end.
At first I thought the ultimate bass shortfall may be attributable to the arm, but the more I listen I realized that the character of the bass all the way down at the same lovely woody quality and it seemed like it was trying valiantly to show its stuff on the very bottom as well, so my thought is that if this arm were on one of musical life's bigger and better tables, the arm would fare much better. I could be wrong, but I don't think so.
Brass, whether solo or in mass, also had a very organic, pesticide free quality. Sometimes brass can become so cold and tinny sounding like toy instruments, but it wasn't the case here. It was full, redolent and burnished the way brass should be. Piano was fast and articulate, again big and three-dimensional with an exceptional sense of the 90% lumber of which it consists. It seems like there really is something to the Makassar Ebenholz (makassar ebony) arm tube. Definitely makes me wonder what the other seven choices sound like!
But how about human voices? Do
they sound like sequoias? Nope. I almost want to describe the quality as a tube character; it's similar but not the same. A good tube will add just a hint of a goldish sound as if the voice orinstrument has a core of liquid 24 karat with a little brown sugar or cinnamon thrown in. You can almost taste it in a really good system. Besid
es, I was already using a 300 B. tube amp, so that character was already there in spades. And what I'm describing is subtle, not overbearing or over anything, just a quality that you more feel in your soul than hear with your ears, though it is audible if you really focus. Vocals were beautiful.
Any time I detect even the smallest perceived flaw or weakness, I tend to explore it, some would say I even attack it, either way I started to pull out the base big guns. They don't get much bigger than 32 and 64-foot organ pipes! I grin my evil grin...The Four Antiphonal Organs of the Cathedral of Freiburg, E. Power Biggs; Columbia m33514. It starts out with a fanfare by Handel. Right away we are reminded of how well this combo reproduces ambience and reverb; there is about 6 seconds of it in this cathedral. Turn the sucker up! After all, in the WhisperXD by Legacy Audio, I have eight 15-inch woofers per side to indulge. Two things spring to mind right away: the room is shaking and there is no distortion or feedback coming from the table. No doubt it's helped by my Stillpoints rack, but still... glorious power that permeates the skin. Oh yeah, baby! Now who would ever think that George Frederick would ever make you say, “Oh yeah, baby”?
I threw three or four more pipe organs at the Musical Life before I pulled out... ta-da... Stanley Clarke! “I Want to Play for You”, says the album title, which is fine by me. How
about a little “School Days”, Stanley?
Crap! This is a live version, so I quickly retrieve album “School Days” and queue up the title cut. Much better audio quality version in the studio. Here come da funk!
Stanley's playing double stops (two strings at a time), pluckin' and snappin' like a Southern man preparing a live chicken for dinner. Very hard for a turntable to track well, but there's lots of speed and definition and we can plainly hear the seperate pitches of the two strings simultaneouly. Who knew German turntable makers knew how to boogie. Stanley eventually goes subsonic and the Jazz MKII Reference goes right with him. In between cuts, since there are no grill covers, I could see that the big 15 inchers aren't trying to explode out of their baskets as they can sometimes do with sub harmonic noise when playing vinyl. That's a good sign.
So, do the Musical Life mates pass the bass test? Yes, but with a slight qualification. After hours and hours of listening and evaluating, I still think the ConductorSE is a little too rich for the Jazz MKII Reference ’s blood. There is no doubt that the Jazz MKII Reference is a very fine instrument and worthy of many fine tonearms, just perhaps not this technological wonder of an arm. I just wish I could have mounted it on my TW Acustic Raven One. That would be very interesting.
Here are some other products by Musical Life:
Michael Stolz is obviously a very talented and innovative designer. At a price of over $12,000 for the combo, not including cartridge, he finds himself in competition with many, many turntables and arms. The Jazz MKII Reference is finely built and features sumptuous choices of exotic woods with 6 six labor intensive coats of lacquer. It uses slate to mass load the table and to reduce resonance and vibration that seems to work very well.
Stereomojo places much emphasis on value as you know. At its $5,800 price, we can’t honestly say that it sets any new standards among its peers. I was not tempted to replace the Raven One which goes for less. Tom Vu has a number of dealers while TW Acustic does not, so if you have a Musical Life dealer nearby (I know Lou Fink of Underground Audio in Florida carries them), you should pay them a visit, especially if having an experienced dealer set the table and arm up for you. A note about Lou Fink: He is what a true High-End dealer should be. He comes to your home and sets up everything for you, using sophisticated test equipment and his talented ears. Then he comes back a few months later to make sure everything is still working perfectly. And he’s honest and does not BS his clients. Nor does he have the typical hi-end attitude
.
On the other hand, the Musical Life Conductor SE is certainly one of the most innovative arms on the market. It competes with Schroeder arms, but it still takes almost three years get a Schroeder delivered. I wish I could have done a direct comparison to my Graham Phantom (soon to version 2) but perhaps we can make that happen soon.
Still, the arm competes sonically with the world’s best and may well be worth it nearly $7k price.
In both cases however, it is simply imperative that Musical Life provide a good owner’s manual with readable English and accompanying pictures.
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