Wood is not inherently damping. Quite the opposite. Why it is used in so many musical instruments. Notice no musical instruments made out of carbon fiber? Fiberglass? Composite materials like these ARE inherently damping.
"Nude" merely means the body doesn't extend around and cover as much of the mechanism. Other than that, no difference.
why are only MCs "nude"?
Because he is so handsome. Michelangelo did his best with what he had to work with.
Dear @millercarbon : Agree to disagree on the nude cartridge body designs because nude helps to low a normal developed cartridge body resonances and at the same time lower the cartridge weigth. Nude is an advantage over not nude designs. Have you first hand experiences about?
I remember the Ruby 2 LOMC cartridge ( I owned. ) and on the same times Cardas marketed exactly the same Ruby 2 ( made it by Benz Micro. ) with only one change: the Cardas wood cartridge body came with small holes around and guess what: every owner like it more than the original BM one.
I remember too what I did it ( tested. ) with my Allaerts MC2 Finish Gold where it performs with better quality levels in nude/naked version.
I own and owned the Colibri cartridge that if I remember was the first nude design and the Colibri performs really good ( specially the lowest output samples. ).
These record grooves by the way, they are at right angles to each other
which means each side is 45 degrees to vertical, which means Ralph is
wrong all the vibrational energy is not in the plane of the platter.
When I made this comment I was not referring to vibration of the stylus in the groove. I was referring to vibration from elsewhere- airborne, from the motor, etc.
What we are looking for with respect to the cartridge is that the cartridge body is held in locus so that the cantilever transfers the maximum energy to the coils within. If the cartridge body is able to move in anyway during that process it will be causing a coloration. Its only means of being held in locus is the tonearm. If it is able to move with respect to the arm, its a coloration. Therefore it must be coupled to the arm and the arm in turn must be competent so that it actually does its job.
FWIW I use LPs I recorded myself and also LPs that I mastered myself... I recommend doing the same for anyone who really wants to establish a reference.
I found this, makes my head spin, especially with short term memory issues.
Pink Triangle or Funk Firm...chief designer Authur Khoubessarian. He had many firsts in the analog realm. These days, he's not widely recognized. Surely not a "fringe company"
In locus sounds impressively Latin and gives an air of certainty, which is unfortunate since in this case that is the last thing we have. The phono cartridge is moving around like all get-out. It isn’t even "in locus" with respect to the head shell, which is the one thing it is most "in locus" with of them all.
To understand this it helps to understand, neither is the cartridge body. In fact, not one speck of any of it is "in locus" that is the whole point! The instant the stylus moves, the other end of the cantilever does not instantly move exactly 1:1. Quite the contrary.
What happens instead? A wave travels down the cantilever to the other end. Whereupon reaching the end it is reflected and travels right back down to the stylus. Don’t take my word for it either, watch the darn Ledermann video!
This same concept of vibration does not stop here. The whole cartridge body is vibrating. Upon reaching the head shell a lot of this energy reflects back into the cartridge, and all the way back down into the stylus. This is what we are trying so hard to avoid. This is where the Enabler comes in.
But it does not stop at the head shell either. The same process continues on down the arm tube to the bearings, base, plinth, and on and on. Each and every one of these interfaces is an opportunity for vibrational energy to either be absorbed and dissipated or reflected back down to the stylus.
The generator of course cannot distinguish one vibration from another. It sums them all together and away we go. This is what we hear when we play a record. Not some academic theoretical "in locus". A whole bunch of stuff vibrating around like mad. As far from in locus as you can get.
MC ignores that cartridge/tonearm compliance is a spec having any relevance, particularly if you have an Origin Live tonearm. Why focus on some vibrations and not others? Cognitive dissonance at its finest. So bizarre...cherry picking science.
and oddly, ex locus rant ignores the inconvenient truth of the video ( yes the referenced Lederman ) that Moving Coil designs including….wait for it the Koetsu Rosewood suffer from massive reflected energy.
The gushing for strain gauge has already started….Of course, i have heard both..they have virtues…and somehow….yet leave a lot on the table….
I think a much more interesting and salient point about the Peter video, and one as a customer, i plan to ask is; If you have built a moving iron cartridge with 56 db of channel separation, why not change the Hyperion spec ?
Btw Peter, holder or coholder of 11 IBM patents, has my highest esteem and respect. Hopefully his health is recovered fully!
As the Eagles sang “ every form of refuge ( design ) has it’s price.
Ralph, i would love to come cut a record with you ! My wife and I sponsor vinyl release now and then for a local artist, so except for cutting, i am no stranger to the process. I took a run at buying Berdan’s Skully….but…..
@tomic601 I think MC’s gushing over the strain gauge actually speaks more towards his personal musical priorities, which may or may not match others’ priorities. He seems to like his SQ very clean, fast, and with a sense of immediacy that not everyone may connect with - in fact, some may feel these sonics could become fatiguing. This SQ describes the Tektons (designed by a drummer) as well as the Herron phono stage which is the cleanest (almost SS-like) sounding tube phono stage I’ve ever owned.
Plenty of folks totally connect with these sonics but I did find some of Fremer’s (one of MC’s audio heros - did you know he once called MC on the phone???) comments interesting as Mike reflected on the virtues and possible compromises of the Strain Gauge in his Stereophile review:
That stop-and-start ability, that freedom from overhang that audiophiles often confuse with "warmth," are leapfroggings in performance over more usual cartridge designs—yet the SG-200’s delivery was so fast and clean that there was little time for harmonic development to unfold before it was off to the next aural event. So while the attack was extraordinary, the sustain was somewhat stingy. The SG-200 could sound somewhat cool and lacking in physicality, and while its top was crystalline and airy and its bottom tight, deep, and well textured, the mids were less than fully fleshed out, making the overall sound somewhat cool and slightly recessed.
The SG-200 is a perspective-changer, that’s for sure, and not because it adds gross colorations—though with that apparently rising high end, it definitely has a unique sonic character. Don’t expect unrelenting brightness, because it didn’t consistently sound like that. That particular quality seemed to be record-dependent, and not predictably so, for reasons perhaps Peter Ledermann can explain.
Admittedly the irony to what I've typed above is that I'm not sure MC has actually ever heard a Strain Gauge...not hearing a product admittedly has not stopped him from gushing over other products in the past.
yes, carbon fiber violins have incredible attack, not so much sustain.
The crux of what we are talking about is small sample size leading to outsize conclusions…
Yes, I own a Herron and currently in a bit of a nadir, just 5 other phono stages….One of them in MM mode absolutely destroys my much loved Herron. The Herron is superior in MC, cue those essential FET.
Reality; is tge Herron a Lamm, ARC or VAC at $10-$15k ? No. I would be curious to see what Keith could do w a $10k out the door budget. He is skilled engineer with ears and it seems based on my conversations w him, emotionally mature, ego in check.
How do i know that in my systems anyway that the Lamm, and ARC are superior ? by having the social and economic capital aka relationships w dealers…
Nothing like living with a well broken in reference grade phono for a week…
The Zesto falls squarely in my radar…
open mind, open ears, think one thing is only truth…. ha.
Vibration dissipation? The cartridge body should not vibrate at all. Any vibration of the cartridge body is distortion. The best way to keep a cartridge from vibrating is to fix it firmly to a very rigid structure with enough mass to get the resonance point of the cartridges suspension down to 10 Hz. Above 10 Hz the system is rigid. Below 10 Hz the tonearm is free to move. Adding another suspension between the cartridge and tonearm adds another resonance point which is going to be much higher than 10 Hz and it will not isolate the cartridge from anything occurring below that resonance point. It may well be within the audio band which will cause ringing. I can not imagine any circumstance where this would be beneficial. Nobody I know of makes a tonearm that bad.
^^This. If the cartridge is moving with the stylus it will have less output. But it isn't; its mass and that of the arm is magnitudes higher than the stylus and cantilever. At any given instant the arm is relatively still so in fact the stylus is moving in the groove with respect to the cartridge body.
The more the system deviates from this simple fact the more coloration it will have. Decouple the cartridge from the arm, even if that decoupling provides some damping, and you increase coloration. If you want to damp the arm the place to put that is probably on the top side of the headshell so while the cartridge is properly coupled to the arm, any excess vibration (which really shouldn't be there in theory; the better the arm the more it approaches this ideal) can be damped.
I recommend for anyone engaging in this sort of stuff if you really want to know what's going on, study the engineering of turntables, arms and cartridges and then build one that works. That is what I did; its how I can state with absolute certainty that the best turntable and pickup will have the platter rigidly coupled to the base of the arm and neither the bearings of the platter or arm will have any slop. Further, the plinth will be dead and massive so it can resist airborne vibration. The rigidity is there so if there is vibration transmitted to the turntable system from its platform or the like the pickup will be unable to transduce it. And finally of course the tonearm is also rigid and dead (arm tube is damped) so the cartridge, which is rigidly coupled to the arm, can do its job.
If you deviate from this ideal there will be coloration plain and simple no ifs and or buts.
Some years back a friend of mine developed the Analog Survival Kit which was sold by Sumiko. It was basically a polymer wrap for the arm tube that allowed you to damp the arm tube of vibration. It worked because it did not interfere with the coupling between the arm and cartridge. You did have to be careful about effective mass and resulting mechanical resonance though.
One of the most challenging issues I had to face as a manufacturer was how to establish a reference. What was I hearing when I played any recording? How much of the coloration in my system was influencing what I thought I was hearing? That was tricky and the only way I could figure my way out of it was thru professional recording equipment, which I had to assume was competent since it made the recordings we listen to. So we got some mics and I had a musician play in front of them and we compared what we heard to the mic feed in the stereo. This taught us very quickly what was going on. Since I've been running a recording studio since the 1970s (Steve Tibbetts recorded 'Yr' in my first one) I've had access to master tapes which I've often used for reference.
My point here is you have to know what you are hearing. If there are colorations in your system of which you are unaware, its very common to introduce other colorations that might seem as if you are approaching a more neutral presentation. But IME synergies don't work; you're far better off if each bit of your system stands on its own merits and does not need the brightness or darkness of another component in order to work.
Mijostyn I want to get a degree in vibration from the school you went to. To be able to know proofs without testing or research could save a person alot of time. Miller carbon at least brings up the many variables , known and unknown , which are in play.
You need to talk to Lewm and / or read reviews on the RS lab tonearm. It breaks your wild quesses to dead. Is it the best? Who knows which cart system etc...
You might want to read tomic 601 posts. He refers to alot of the issues on this forum. Hasty generalization is one of them. You will have to know what that means, as he defines it quite eloquently. He also brings up, know your guru's taste in music reproduction. My own research has shown me most people have not had enough exposure and or interest in what real music sound like to even begin to evaluate a system. You can have 100 degrees in engineering, mechanics , physics and be tone deaf. The Ad copy guys can write anything. The engineers can tell the ad copy guys whatever.
So we are back to try the gizmo or make your own. Then you will know first hand if you like it or not. Then you will know ,in your system, if it get you closer to what YOU want. So even if that is not what real music sounds like who cares. If it makes you happy thats all that matters.
Ralph, Have you had any hands-on experience with the Rega P10? I am no Rega fanboy, but I find the approach taken in their flagship TT to be very interesting: Super low mass plinth made of materials that are not likely to store energy efficiently and of low enough mass also to further reduce energy storage, but with a rigid beam connecting the base of the tonearm mount to the bearing assembly. I'd like to hear it.
@tomwh thx. I do rebel against Van Morrison; No Guru, No Method, No Teacher. I do have a sensei. Every now and then i snatch the pebble….
i don’t think there is anything wrong with goal seeking around pleasure - my belief is the SET camp is hopelessly colored yet incredibly addictive audio tone color crack….
I think Ralph makes a very excellent, nuanced and hyper esoteric and yes ultimately expensive point. A steady diet of acoustic live music recorded w minimal devices in the chain in natural reverberant space while witnessing the event becomes the reference and a tool for discernment…
as close as many will get and Of note is Water Lilly, Vandersteen ( 2 discs ), any number of the D2D labels, Opus3, Wilson Audiophile, and Lederman : Direct Grace.
This allows discernment and the ability to hear where in the chain it all goes to @#$&*&$#@.
hard to do right ? Maybe..
I do plan a Cellist at next listening party. I have a Zoom6 mini recorder….. what will we hear ? i also have a cold cathode preamp on the way w variable bias ( thd ), so same listening panel can vote on the distortion flavor profile they like….
@boxer12 Hi Tim - The wizardry of Glen Croft in the UK - Croft RIAA - RS rare single chassis model chock ablock full of Nos tubes from Andy of Vintage Tube Services in Michigan…near you.
I am no Rega fanboy, but I find the approach taken in their flagship TT
to be very interesting: Super low mass plinth made of materials that
are not likely to store energy efficiently and of low enough mass also
to further reduce energy storage, but with a rigid beam connecting the
base of the tonearm mount to the bearing assembly. I'd like to hear it.
@lewm I'm not a fan of Rega either, but that plinth design sounds like what I'm talking about.
Hey grasshopper aka tomic601. If you can take the DHT tubes out of the SET and build a transformer coupled push/pull. Now you can rock and roll but still hear that wooden cello.
I think people make this way to hard. When the cello plays at your house you will probably FEEL HEAR a beautiful wooden string instrument. Nice full body no electronic sound no harness. You probably will not be listening for black background or air around instrument, Soundstage etc... You will be able to hear the tone, attack, has much as a cello can do, decay etc...
I guess the moral of the story is when it is all said and done weather in is high mass or low mass this profile or that , rigid or flexible etc... How does it sound when it hit my ears. So if the graph does not support my findings then I will have to support my ears. Can not hear without my ears but I can listen without looking at the graph.
The sad part is this thread did not even get to graphs . Just wild ass guesses posing as the truth. So grasshopper I will leave you with this quote I read way back then. " I do not know what I am more upset about judgmental people or my judgment of judgmental people???"
Sadly, the opportunity to hear live musicians playing music is dramatically reduced in the Washington DC area, and I imagine it is reduced in most American cities of note. Thanks to the pandemic for that. We used to attend concerts or clubs for live music once or twice a month. I’d guess we’ve done it 2-3 times in the past 18 months. Two of our favorite jazz clubs have shut down permanently.
tom and tomic, your exchange reminds me of a long article on rational thought and discourse that appeared in the New Yorker in the last 3 weeks.
These days, he's not widely recognized. Surely not a "fringe company"
Making a Claim about the Proprietor of the Company or their History in the HiFi Industry is something I did not refer to. I am very up to date on the Companies Products and the History of the Proprietor.
I did make a statement about the Companies Position in the Market Fringe Company - Not Part of the Mainstream - Peripheral - At the Extreme, I think I am reasonably accurate with this assessment.
I have no objection to how or where a person spends their hard earned cash, my storage boxes are full of unused items from such spending.
In saying that though, Long-Term buried and very difficult to find Rothwell Attenuators, once found, proved to be a very valuable reintroduction recently, especially the -15db.
@lewm , I saw Tower of Power at the Hampton Beach Casino three weeks ago. As good as ever but not the best sound system. Not a situation you would want to use as a standard but their current singer has the largest lungs I have ever heard. Guy can belt out a tune for sure. Saw Wilco 2 weeks ago. Jeff Tweedy is a piece of work. Better sound system but but still not suitable to use as a standard to evaluate Hi Fi sound. @atmasphere , Was that you talking or someone else? I certainly could not have said it better. It seems to have gone in one eye and out the other. Can you please tell me what tomwh is talking about? The only thing I care to add is that mass does not provide isolation from low frequency disruptions like foot falls and environmental rumble. It will diminish higher frequency pollution. To get rid of low frequency noise you take the rigid platter, tonearm, cartridge sub chassis and hang it from springs tuned to a very low frequency or place it on something like a MinusK platform. @tomwh , you are entitled to believe whatever you want, whatever that is.
Years ago I built my own cartridge isolator and yes it makes a difference. I have abandoned it as I use better cartridges now. The whole idea of f=ma or whatever science formula using to prove a point doesn’t exactly jive as the vibration of the damping needed isn’t close enough to the dampening maximum provided by the isolator. It’s like a mouse pushing on the side of a building, sure it’s pushing but can you measure it? I won’t even try a new isolator as I feel it’s immaterial to my current cartridge choices.
@tomic601 , I believe I said TOP was not to be used as a standard. No large venue system can be used as a standard. You have no reference. Acoustic instruments are tops, Jazz is great. Bands with individually amplified instruments can also be used. The Dave Holland Band is a great example. Everyone is amplified except the drums. They use the same set up recording that they use on stage. I've seen them three times and their records sound exactly like they do live. Dave's bass has a lot of character and he takes frequent solos. Great for evaluating bass performance down to 40 Hz or so. In Boston we have the Regatta Bar and Skuller's, smaller venue bars seat maybe 100 people at the most. Don't forget classical music either. String quartets are great for evaluating imaging. @lewm , I think you may be on to something.
@tomic601 , Do "Prime Directive" or "Not for Nothing" If you like them you can go in either direction. Back 30 years ago his music could get....difficult. He was with Miles from 1968 thru 1970. The Quintet is my favorite. It features Robbin Eubanks on trombone and Chris Potter on sax. These two play off each other brilliantly. @mr_m , If you are talking about either of the two records above I beg to disagree. Both are nicely crafted studio recordings with no over tubs or fake sh-t. They are just like you hear them in person.
With the cartridge we want some combination of materials structured so as to hold the cartridge firmly in a fixed relationship to the head shell, and yet at the same time have just enough flexibility on a micro level to dissipate cartridge vibration and not reflect it all right back down into the stylus.
It must be held rigidly, but yet also in a way that facilitates some vibration to dissipate into the more massive arm, while damping cartridge vibration, and all of this at the same time as not reflecting vibration right back down into the stylus.
It’s one or the other, your 2 stated goals are mutually exclusive. Either it is firmly fixed or it is not.
In an ideal world the cartridge body would have infinite mass so all movement would be the stylus/cantilever. Since that is impossible we have a variety of designs that approximate this by holding the body as rigidly as we can so the body does not move in response to the stylus/cantilever movement.
inserting some material between the cartridge and the head shell allowing the cartridge to vibrate in response will definitely affect this relationship so it will definitely affect the output of the cartridge. Declaring this change to be universally better is sort of silly if you think about it.
If this device is the panacea some of you declare then why don’t the cartridge designers build this into their devices? If their goal is the best sound they can get why ignore this very simple and inexpensive "enhancement. ?
The simple answer is the device may compensate for some design flaws in lesser arms/tables and may change things in a way that some find to be better. While it may be a universal truth that it changes things, it is not a universal truth that it makes things better
In my experience anybody spouting universal truths like below can generally be ignored.
Speakers and other components sound much better on springs. In all cases this is because
Sadly The Cartridge Man aka Len Gregory passed away nearly a year ago! So his products are no longer available. I’ve auditioned the Soundsmith Strain Gauge 210 and yes it is very detailed and revealing, but the Koetsu Rosewood Signature that I use is also in a similar realm, so until it is time to renew I’ll stick with it, only then may I push the boat out and buy a Strain Gauge - as here in the UK it is considerably more expensive than in the US
string quartet in the mastering room….what an idea….
w both high speed tape and a really good ADC ( Wadia 17 ), imagine that….
Or direct to disc.
The simple answer is the device may compensate for some design flaws in
lesser arms/tables and may change things in a way that some find to be
better. While it may be a universal truth that it changes things, it is
not a universal truth that it makes things better
+1 exactly and eloquently stated. I was trying to beat about the bush so as not to insult anyone's system, but this is the nub of it.
I once had the experience of hearing a modestly skilled sax player perform in my listening room, standing between my pair of Sound Lab 845PX speakers. Now THAT was a real lesson in comparing live sound to reproduced sound in my system. I was actually quite pleased with the degree to which my system could sound "live" next to the real thing. But single instruments in free space are easiest to replicate. I don't pretend my system could do as well with a full orchestra, if that was possible to demo in my listening space. One thing that always strikes me when I get to hear musicians live and unamplified is the dynamics. Live music is first of all more dynamic than most of us can achieve at home, or at least that is the biggest challenge to replicate. All that audiophile stuff about imaging and depth is nice to think about, and establishing those two senses is a worthy goal in stereo, but in real life one cannot always place the musicians in space with eyes closed, either side to side or front to back. What one can sense is the startling undistorted SPLs effortlessly achieved by live musicians.
With all due respect to fans of TOP (I am not one), I am thinking that a casino PA system is not likely to enchant me. But for all I know, the named venue is set up like a real concert hall.
the majority of our live experiences today are amplified. individual acoustic guitars with pickups, upright bass with pickups, mics, guitar amps with speakers, stage located speakers (musician monitors and front facing), wall of sound, ceiling hung speakers, ....
The many times we saw him, Tony Bennet demonstrated filling Radio City Music Hall a capella with no mic, all the way to the upper decks, but he sure sounded better using a mic and the house system.
the space's acoustics; which seat's you get; sound system engineer's skills; some are awesome, some truly suck, big medium or small.
lps, the recording space, the equipment and engineer's skills and all the subsequent decisions by all the people at every stage are paramount to enjoyable or superior playback.
IOW, it's hit or miss, live or recorded, and I could care less about the difference between .... and .... just gimme something really enjoyable.
I've walked out of many live performances, refused to go to certain venue, .... knowing it SUCKS compared to what I enjoy at home.
the footpath upward if not well worn is at least visible, especially if one were to be introspective and look backwards…. Yes Ralph, i agree. D2D. Such is your and other greats history; Direct Grace, M and K Real Time, Sheffield Labs, Chasing the Dragon, Water Lilly…
for those seeking unified field theory of a Tower of Power and reference grade recording, seek out the excellent Sheffield Labs Thelma Houston release. For the discerning get both the D2D and Treasury ( made from RtR realtime copy )…..
I believe a robust comparison, level matched is instrumental in educating the ear/brain…
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