CartridgeCompatability:Arm/Amp Most Important?



I'm trying to select a cartridge to match my system.

In your experience, is the tonearm-cartridge interface more important, or does the cartridge-phono stage have greater effect on compatibility?

Or is this another of the gray areas that only experience can assess? I'd rather not buy eleven cartridges, to the tune of $40,000 (that I don't have)before finding a strong and satisfying combination.

Technics SP10 MkIIa table, Acos Lustre STA-801 arm, Aurum Acoustics phono stage in Aurum CDP integrated preamp.

Thanks in advance for your thoughts.

Best,
David
cdk84

Showing 1 response by dan_ed

Notice in all of those references linked above that none of them tell you any thing about what will happen in the frequency ranges you can actually hear. That is not to say that the resonant frequency matching should be ignored, but it certainly tells us very little about how the particular arm/cart combo will sound like.

For example, there will always be vibrations in the arm and how these vibrations are ultimately handled has a great deal to do with the bearings and other parts of the arm. How well the arm/cart, and don't discount how important the base this is all mounted to is, deal with these vibrations will be heard while you play a record even though the RF calculation says you have an ideal match.

Then we get to the phono stage and the cartridge interaction. Perhaps you have heard people talk about fast and slow cartridges, as well as phono stages. A.k.a, slew rate. This is a reference to how quickly a component can produce a very low note and then transition to a very high note. A slow cartridge with a fast phono stage can sound rich, syrupy, etc. A fast cartridge with a slow phono stage can sound harsh, edgy, a little distorted.

That is the unfortunate thing, it is all important in the end.