Skyanalog Ref moving coil cartridge
You wouldn’t expect a hi-fi artisan to emerge from the farmlands of rural China, but that’s exactly where Skyanalog founder Jack Leung’s story begins. Growing up in the 1980s, in a place where electronic components were hard to come by, Jack’s fascination with sound and circuitry took root.
Jack’s academic path matched his drive; he earned a place at South China University of Technology to study Electronic Engineering, but his sights were already set on something greater: building his own audio brand. After nearly a decade in telecoms, he made the leap – first with Skyanalog, building tube amps for local enthusiasts, and later expanding into the world of vinyl, where his OEM work making cartridges for other brands began to turn heads. Today his company builds cartridges for over twenty brands and the company has been in business for over 25 years.
Skyanalog moving coil cartridges became a reality in 2019 when the G series was introduced, and now there are seven models in the range with the penultimate being the Skyanalog Ref under consideration here. This distinctive gold anodised MC has an aluminium body with threaded fixing points and an overall weight of 11.8 grams, which is pretty average for a cartridge of this type. The cantilever is a bit more special however and made of sapphire with a micro ridge diamond stylus at the end where the groove is traced. The electrical signal is created by square pure iron coils that produce 0.35mV for the phono stage to work with, which is low but not silly and pretty much any example that’s designed for moving coil cartridges will work with it.
The preferred input impedance is not specified, but internal impedance is 5 Ohms which indicates that the phono stage should be set at 50 Ohms or higher, however a typical 100 Ohm input should work well. Input impedance is less critical than the quality of turntable and arm and the way the cartridge is set up. I am told that the Ref is very sensitive to tracking angle, anti-skate, overhang and downforce, and that its best qualities really become obvious when everything is just so. Downforce is recommended between 1.7g and 2g with 1.8 grams considered optimum, that said others have discovered that it tracks well as low as 1.35g so experimentation is the order of the day. I note that the specs supplied with the cartridge are different to those shown on the Skyanalog site where it suggests a tracking force range of 1 to 1.6g.
Being a Rega Naia owner there is not much that can be tweaked when setting up a cartridge like this, overhang can be adjusted as can downforce but VTA is fixed in favour of a more rigid arm mounting. I started out and largely used the Ref at the recommended 1.8 grams and set it up using the alignment that Rega recommends, it sounded spectacular and even more so when I saw that it retails for under £2,700. That might sound a lot but it’s less than many high end MCs today and nearly a thousand pounds less the Rega Aphelion 2 that usually sits on this turntable.
The Skyanalog Ref is nearly twice the weight of an Aphelion 2 however so I borrowed a heavier tungsten counterweight from Rega (130g, £250) to fit the RB-Titanium arm in order to be able to use its spring downforce. I started out with the standard weight near the end of the stub and the spring set to zero and this worked on all but warped records which caused tracking issues. The heavier weight/spring downforce did not fix this however and I am told that this is because of Skyanalog’s Yan suspension system, they use a thinner tensioning wire between the back end of the cantilever and the cartridge body than is found in typical MC designs. It’s more like the wire found in MMs of yore which tracked as low as a gram but also required low mass arms which are something of a rarity today.
Installing the Ref is pretty straightforward because its relatively large body is easy to hold and all you need is a steady hand and some good reading glasses! The stylus is relatively easy to see from front and side so alignment is straightforward. I found that it needed more anti-skate bias than usual but that wasn’t hard to dial in.
Sound quality
With the Ref’s output plugged into a Grimm PW1 phono stage with impedance set at 100 Ohms I was immediately struck by its vivid and open sound, it presents oodles of detail thanks to extended and very clean high frequencies that it finds in an awful lot of vinyl grooves. I happened to put on an album that I had only previously heard via a streamer, the contrast was shocking to say the least, there was so much vibrancy and life in the recording that the digital failed to reveal, it really made the music considerably more engaging, and the vocal was absolutely stunning.
Energy is a clear strongpoint with the Ref but this is achieved by its combination of finesse, speed and muscularity of bass. It’s a particularly entertaining cartridge with all manner of music, from the fast, fluent yet mellow shadings of Nils Frahm’s All Melody to the sense of life in the Keith Jarrett trio’s rendition of God Bless the Child. The latter is a live recording and you know all about it thanks to the way the Ref defines the space in the room with its broadband high resolution and gets into the power and dynamics of the playing from piano, bass and drums.
You don’t usually get this level of massively open, clean and powerful sound with an MC at this price, I wouldn’t be surprised if it could hold its own against competitors at close to twice the money. It seems to be able to open up almost anything the record player can spin, including MYT’s self titled debut which usually sounds a bit thick and shut-in. The character of the recording is still apparent but the Ref doesn’t allow this to get in the way of the music in the way that some cartridges can. It is a little fussy about the state of the vinyl and pristine is the preferred condition if you want to avoid clicks and pops, but that’s the price you pay for very high resolution.
With my Tom Evans Groove+ SRX MkII phono stage set to its lowest impedance (112 Ohms) the thrills did not abate, this is a particularly nimble preamplifier and when combined with the speed and dynamics offered by the Skyanalog Ref the sound was frequently visceral. It has a physical presence in the room that made voices and instruments alike sound like they were right in front of me. Detail resolution was also pretty spectacular with the Ref digging down into the groove and scooping out the smallest sounds to add to the fundamentals and giving the whole presentation a sense of vivid reality.
I got on a bit of a Dylan tip after watching a biopic (A Complete Unknown) and got a real kick from Visions of Johanna (Blonde on Blonde), the raw sound of the guitars and keyboard and simple drums is a bit thin but that doesn’t detract from the brilliance of the song and its performance. There’s an awful lot going on and the Ref delivers it all in a totally coherent form. I also got a real buzz out of Hendrix’s Band of Gypsys playing the Power of Love, this is an ancient pressing and its condition was not disguised but that did not obscure the soul and ferocity of the performance. It’s hardly the greatest recording either but there’s no disguising the intensity and brilliance of the music.
With a Michell Apollo/Muse phono stage the Ref delivered a lot of drive with plenty of power again and excellent imaging, vocals once again proving to be particularly well rendered in terms of depth and presence. This stage also picked out the quality of high notes, cymbals really shimmer and quiet notes are pulled out of the mix very nicely. Timing was also very strong, the Ref’s inherent immediacy proving very engaging with a wide variety of LPs, this seems to be an area where the Michell stage is itself very good so the pairing was highly entertaining.
Out of interest I tried running the Ref with 1.5 grams of downforce to see if that changed things, which it did, opening up the soundstage and slightly changing the tonal emphasis in favour of the midband. Overall however the 1.8g setting delivered the greatest musical engagement alongside three dimensional stereo of considerable solidity, and with Brinkmann’s vinyl release by Reema, phenomenal bass. By this point I had some big Perlisten S7T LE speakers on the end of the system and this clearly helped the low end, but it was the Skyanalog Ref that picked up the signal at source.
Conclusion
When you realise that just a few companies build moving coils for many of the boutique brands, the job is after all quite a specialised one, it makes sense that the original equipment manufacturer (OEM) will have a competitive advantage. That is the case with Skyanalog, by selling the cartridges that they make in house a tier of margin is removed and end users get a better deal.
But this wouldn’t be of interest if the Ref were not an extremely revealing, even handed and capable cartridge, and it is, with bells on. The dislike of warps being its only apparent limitation and one that can be overcome by the purchase of a warp flattening device or one of the DIY ideas to be found online. I only had a problem with two records out of about 50, so it’s hardly a deal breaker.
Overall, I am highly impressed by the Skyanalog Ref, it is too heavy for my turntable and I was not able to tweak its set up in the way that is said to be beneficial yet it delivered some of the best results I have heard from vinyl in quite some time. From here it looks like a genuine bargain.