Field coil dava cartridge

Thanks for taking the time. Taken by itself, the meaning of “flow” as you use it is not “self evident”. Now you’ve defined it, I get it. Harry Pearson coined the term “continuousness”, which I think is similar in definition if not identical.

By the way, Bonzo, it would be helpful on your blog if you would define the terms you use to describe sound quality, because obviously the analysis is totally subjective, so one needs to know as much as is possible what is in your mind when you use a particular term.  For one example, what is "flow"?  If you publish a glossary of adjectives and then stick to your own definitions when writing up a system, eventually the reader can build a better conception of how one system differs from another.

Bonzo, your zeal for traveling all over Europe to audition these very eccentric systems and then to try to describe what you heard is commendable and makes fun reading, if I’ve even heard of the gear in the first place. In the photos, where did you hear Maggies backed up against glass doors? Even with the makeshift baffle that can’t be good. Anyway, now I feel normal compared to some of those guys. Which is therapeutic.

If you took all the conflicting, but earnestly put forth generalizations from learned persons, in this thread and put them in a closed container and shook the container up, you'd have one heck of an explosion.

Mijo, I guess it is my fault for not having fully explained my reasoning.  When you see those impressive flat lines on the B&K print-outs that used to be supplied in the box with new cartridges, as far as I know they have to have been created using an input adherent to a compensation curve a la RIAA and then the output of the cartridge has to have been filtered according to the converse of the (RIAA) curve, in order to generate that nearly flat line between 20Hz and 20kHz.  So what you are looking at is the sum result of whatever errors there were in the encoding of the test LP, in the cartridge's response to the input, and in the final decoding.  The graph does not really tell you what the cartridge per se does to the input signal. When you're talking about differences of 0.5db (voltage db), those distinctions assume some importance. And then of course you don't get that flat response at your listening position even if your own phono corrector is perfect.  Which is one reason why we don't all love the same cartridges.  Imperfections are different for different systems, not to mention the bias that we carry in our heads, the magic balance each of us thinks is most real.  My two systems definitely sound different, but not too different. Both of them are consciously put together to give me a close approximation of reality which endeavor brought them close together sonically, but they get there in different ways.  Once I had reached that point in their development, I became much less willing to tweak them or experiment with new equipment, although every once in a while I do that, as you know.

Dover, once again I don’t want to go off on a tangent or to steal this thread, but when I said “within 0.5 db”, to me that means within plus or minus 0.5 db in relation to 0db. That’s what I mean when I say that. I recognize there is a possibility for what I said to have been misinterpreted. I don’t doubt there are cartridges that claim such a response accuracy. I’m only questioning the reality.

Seriously, Mijo, do you think there exists a cartridge that is within 0.5db between 100 and 12khz, in actual practice in a home system? I don’t.

I wouldn't take WBF too seriously, except to say that some of those guys actually do own the megabuck gear that they discuss, which does count for something.  But beware of subconscious bias, which is inevitable and only human.

You might want to read the discussion of the DaVa cartridge on the thread titled “worlds best cartridge”. Mike Levign (sp?) who comments on that cartridge is the one guy who certainly has heard it and continues to hear it in his home system. He loves it.