Lyra Atlas Lambda Moving Coil Cartridge

Stereophile Class A Rated AND The Absolute Sound’s Golden Ear Award winner!

“The Lyra Atlas transmitted and released energy with alarming speed, leaving no residue to rattle around, repeat, cloud, or confuse the next musical instant. Images just ‘popped’ in space. Bass, taut and nimble, dug all the way down. The Atlas’s overall sound was positively effortless.”

 

“This is a stunning achievement, an explosively dynamic cartridge that boasts rock-solid imaging and a smooth treble. It also plumbs the nether regions with tremendous accuracy. Whether it is playing a Beethoven sonata or Miles Davis on ‘My Funny Valentine,’ there is nothing lightweight about its performance. The Atlas has game…not a cartridge that will leave you shrugging your shoulders, but, rather, gaping in amazement.”

Lyra‘s new flagship phono cartridge, the Atlas, features a revolutionary new asymmetric design. By literally misplacing the “barriers” to great sound that are present in every other cartridge today, the Lyra Atlas achieves a number of important performance benefits. Different-shaped structures on the left and right sides of the cartridge body suppress the formation of standing waves within, resulting in a significant reduction of resonance-induced colorations. Music comes through the Atlas with a greater purity and sense of purpose than standard-model MC cartridges are capable of producing.

The Atlas‘s asymmetric construction offsets the front magnet carrier and its associated mounting system so that it is no longer in line with the cantilever assembly. This opens up a direct, solid path between the cantilever assembly and tonearm headshell so that vibrations from the cantilever can be quickly drained away once they have been converted into electrical signals, again suppressing induced resonances.

The Atlas uses Lyra‘s “New Angle” technology, which mechanically pre-biases the signal coils so that they are perfectly aligned to the front and rear magnets when LP playback takes place. This equalizes out discrepancies in vertical and horizontal compliance, and enables the Atlas‘s coils to move with equal ease in all directions for optimal performance.

Lyra remains the only cartridge manufacturer to mount the cantilever assembly directly into the cartridge body, thereby achieving a totally seamless, rigid connection between the cantilever assembly and headshell. The effectiveness of this system has been enhanced as a result of the asymmetrical structure of the Atlas. Control over spurious resonance is further assisted by the use of a narrowed mounting area, which couples the Atlas more tightly to the headshell and facilitates the transfer of vibrational energy into the tonearm.

While the Atlas retains the yokeless dual magnet system, diamond-coated boron rod cantilever, and variable-radius line-contact stylus of the Titan, the rigidity of the double knife-edge cantilever assembly mounting structure has been increased, and the signal coil system is completely new. Rather than a square, the coil former is in the shape of an X, which allows each channel to operate with greater independence from the other. This gives better tracking, tighter channel matching, improved separation, and lower distortion due to crosstalk.

At the same time Lyra was able to increase both the performance and efficiency of the generator coils. The Atlas has 12% higher output voltage than the Titan, but accomplishes this while reducing the amount of wire in the coils by 22%. This reduction in mass further improves tracking performance, while the enhanced output and electrical characteristics allow phono stages to perform more efficiently.

As with the Titan and Olympos, the hand-made Atlas uses a body that is meticulously carved from a solid billet of titanium, through a process that involves both contact (for the exterior) and non-contact machining (for the interior body structures). By making most of the Atlas‘s body surfaces non-parallel (avoiding dimensions that are multiples of other dimensions), and adding a pre-stressed phase-interference resonance-controlling system, resonances have been further inhibited.

Features

Type: Medium weight, medium compliance, low-impedance moving coil cartridge

Stylus: Lyra-designed long-footprint variable-radius line-contact nude diamond (block dimensions 0.08w x 0.12d x 0.5h mm, profile dimensions 3um x 70um), slot-mounted

Cantilever system: Diamond-coated solid boron rod with short one-point wire suspension, directly mounted into cartridge body via high-pressure knife-edge system

Body: Machined asymmetrical titanium with synthetic composite gemstone

Coils: 2-layer deep, 6N high-purity copper, cross-shaped chemically-purified high-purity iron former, 4.2ohm self-impedance, 11uH inductance

Cartridge body: One-piece machining from solid titanium billet, with reduced-surface higher-pressure headshell contact area, predominately non-parallel and asymmetrical shaping, phase-interference resonance-controlling mechanism, and body threaded directly for mounting screws

Specifications

Output Voltage: 0.56 mV

Frequency Range: 10 Hz – 50 kHz

Channel Separation: >30 dB at 1 kHz

Compliance: Approx. 12 x 10-6 cm/dyne at 100 Hz

Cartridge Mounting Screws: 2.6 mm 0.45 pitch JIS standard

Distance from Mounting Holes to Stylus Tip: 9.5 mm

Recommended Tracking Force: 1.62 g – 1.72 g

Recommended Load: 104 ohm – 887 ohm 

Cartridge Weight: 11.6 g