Ortofon Cadenza Range loading range

Per Ortofon: Recommended load impedance - 50-500 Ohm

Try the other loads of 100 and 30. See which one you like. Lowering the load usually results in less high frequency energy

thanks for the reply. Do you think 300 Ohm is too high?

I had a Cadenza Red for a while and preferred it @ 100 ohms . 

That is not fine enough of a scale.
the motor is damped via the current flow on the coils and then it’s termination at the input of the preamp, this part is the adjustability of the damping. So it’s not just purely electrical.
In some cartridges, if not most to all moving coils with low internal impedance (Cadenza Red, 5 ohms), the perfect match will come in a range of less than maybe 10 ohms.

One might be changing the loading by 5 ohms at a time, when one gets to the ’knee’ of the effect curve.
In theory and from experience..looking at it’s internal impedance of 5 ohms, the correct loading might be closer to 100 ohms. possibly lower, generally. sometimes it’s close to the 10x multiple of the internal impedance of the cartridge, so closer to 50, and below 100.

then mess with your tracking (tracking changes first, in 0.05g increments) and arm height at that approx 50 ohm setting, as the changes in impedance loading will change the mechanical damping which will change your impression of sibilance, mistracking, and overall balance. Go slow, you are close at that point...

read this review, it talks about the loading and what I speak of.

https://www.needledoctor.com/Ortofon-Cadenza-Red-Phono-Cartridge

I have a Cadenza Black and load at 100 ohms.

30, 100 and 300 can you hear a difference between those three? i am just curious.

IME the phono stage plays a role in the loading too. I have a Quintet Black (same internal impedance as the Cadenza line), I tried loading the cart with 50 and 120 Ohms but that dampened the cart. a bit too much. The best I resolution I heard was at 47K (MM mode on the phono) but too little gain. The max  (least) I can do with my phono is 500 Ohm in MC mode and that's where I found it to sound the best.

I had a cadenza black for several years and loaded it at approximately 100 ohms - same as a koetsu or a Lyra. Assuming the red has the same internal impedance, I would think 300 is a bit too high unless you are trying to ‘liven up’ your system.

That being said, as with all things in perfectionist audio, let your own ears be your guide. No one who isn’t listening to the exact same gear in the exact same room can give you anything but general rules of thumb (except in cases where someone is doing something clearly incorrectly, which you are not).

I recently purchased the Cadenza Bronze and prefer loading at 66 ohms vs. 100 it was at when first installed. 50 ohms sounds good too. 

I run the Cadenza Bronze with a loading of 200 ohms, but I’m not sure I could hear the difference if it were 300 ohms instead.

When I ran Cadenzas and Kontrapunkts I liked it lower. 75-ish was nice. Even as low as 50 was fine. The Cadenza Red IMO could definitely use a bit of softening, so I'd stick to the range of 50 - 100.