Hi Raul: The Audioquest is a very, very old design that has little to do with the Lyra cartridges of today. The mechanical concepts are different, the magnetic concepts are different, the suspension concepts are different, the stylus design is different...
The Akiva's weight, compliance, key dimensions etc. were designed to optimally match the Linn Ekos tonearm. And unlike our "Lyra" branded designs, it had a plastic body. However, the core design of the Akiva (including the cantilever and suspension sections) is not so different from other cartridges that I designed around that period, such as the Argo and Titan.
I repeat that to track the 1812 has never been my goal - not even remotely - so for me personally this entire thread is a non-issue. The only major statement that I dispute is that extreme tracking ability is the key parameter that should be used in general to distinguish OK cartridges from not OK cartridges. This is like claiming that the ability to take a certain corner at 455mph at one particular race track in the entire world is what distinguishes an excellent motorcar from a so-so one, even though the legal limit for public roads in every country is 60mph or 80mph.
But Raul, if the Akiva is the cartridge that pushes your buttons, I am happy for you. Enjoy, and perhaps consider picking up a spare (prices of low-hour Akivas have dropped somewhat now that the Kandid has replaced it as Linn's top model).
Regarding tonearm resonance and tracking performance, a tonearm acts as a high-pass mechanical filter to relieve the cartridge of reproducing low frequencies that are below the tonearm resonant frequency. The resonant frequency is normally placed between 8-12 Hz because this filters out pressing defects such as warp wow components while leaving the music mostly intact. If the resonant frequency is set higher than 12Hz, the tonearm will start to respond to bass signals rather than the cartridge, which is good for tracking, but may attenuate what the cartridge reproduces of the LP's lowermost frequencies.
Hi Dover:
>have you tried a FR64S on your Final Audio TT?
Certainly. It's not bad, although outclassed by modern tonearms such as the Graham Phantom Supreme, and vintage arms such as the Technics EPA100MkII (caveat - my EPA-100 has been completely rebuilt with ceramic ball-bearings rather than the original rubies, and rewired with flying-lead signal outputs instead of the original 5-pin connector).
>I do not get any upper midrange coloration in my system.
In my applications, adding constrained-layer damping to the armtube made it considerably more neutral to my ears, and made the dynamics more linear.
>I use static balance only with this arm which opened the soundstage and improved resolution considerably compared with the use of dynamic balance when using a LOMC.
After trying dynamic, static, and combining the two, I found that a combination worked best.
I have a spare FR-64S that I am planning to rebuild with an alternative armtube of different geometry and more sophisticated construction. The FR64S is a nice tonearm for experimentation.
BTW, Dover, are you aware of the original Kitamura generation Final Audio Labs, or are you only familiar with the brand post-Takai?
kind regards, jonathan carr |
Hi Raul:
>If a tonearm always is important the main actress is the cartridge and in specific: the cartridge self tracking abilities.
That doesn't describe my experiences. I can take the same cartridge and install it in different tonearms, and get different tracking performance. In fact, I can take the same cartridge, install it in the same tonearm, change the effective tonearm mass (through the judicious application of blu-tak), and get different tracking performance.
The match (or mis-match) between tonearm mass and cartridge not only affects the fundamental resonant frequency, it also changes the tracking performance.
While it isn't possible to reduce the effective mass of a tonearm, it certainly is possible to increase it. I suggest that users experiment with the effective mass of their tonearms before concluding that a cartridge's tracking limits are what they assume they are.
Hi Boofer:
>other one said that the industry in the last 20 or 30 years has been concentrating on sound and neglecting tracking ability.
While the quote isn't completely correct, there is some truth to it. Back in the late 1970s and early 1980s, practically the entire Japanese analog industry plunged in the direction of tracking ability above all, and preferably at lighter and lighter vertical tracking forces. Very low-mass tonearms became all the rage, and cartridges were designed for ever-lower mass (employing plastic bodies and the then-new samarium cobalt magnet compounds) and ever-softer suspensions. Efforts to make more compliant cartridge suspensions included, deleting the tie-wire that normally prevents the signal generator from being pulled for and aft by the LP groove, making the suspension from multi-stranded non-springy metals rather than springy metals, and in extreme cases, making the suspensions from non-metal fibers and plastics.
Some of the new suspension efforts resulted in heightened failure rates in the field, but more importantly, after a few years of high compliance cartridges and low-mass tonearms, an increasing number of reviewers and audiophiles began saying that the new design direction sounded worse; that the "tracking above all" movement was forgetting about the sound quality.
Some of the analog engineers seemed to think so too, and while most Japanese cartridge manufacturers did not revert to SPU compliance levels (many Japanese audiophiles did), medium-mass tonearms and medium-mass medium compliance cartridges of more solid materials became more popular.
It is as though the pendulum started at one extreme (SPU, DL-103 etc.), shifted to the opposite extreme (Denon DL-1000a, Highphonic MC-A6 etc.), and settled somewhere in the middle.
The takeaway message is probably that a well-balanced approach tends to work better than anything too extreme (smile).
hth, jonathan carr |
Bifwynne: There are three different versions of the Telarc 1812 that I am aware of, and they are cut differently. The original version was cut by Stan Ricker and has "SR" engraved in the deadwax (groove leadout area). The second version, cut by Bruce Leek, can be identified by a "BL" engraved in the deadwax. It is less hot than the "SR" version. Bruce Leek cut one more version, which doesn't have any initials engraved in the deadwax. This the hottest of all (grin).
In contrast, the hottest any abnormal LP will max out at is about 100µm. By "abnormal", I mean a really extreme 12-inch dance single, probably 45rpm.
According to Stan, the "SR" version of the Telarc 1812 has a maximum groove level of 455µm - 4.5 times the level of any other "extreme" LP. I don't know how much hotter the unsigned version is.
I am surprised that Raul managed to get the Akiva (which I designed) to play cleanly through whichever pressing of the Telarc 1812 cannons that he has. Since I know how far the Telarc 1812 is outside of any normal (or even extreme) LP, it has never been my goal to track it.
The "New Angle" generation of Lyras - Delos, Kleos, Atlas, and now Etna, have a more linear suspension system than the two-generations-older Akiva - and with more equal compliance in the horizontal and vertical directions. That said, for a Kleos, I would consider 60µm tracking ability to be barely passable, 70µm normal, 80µm better than normal, anything higher would be unusually good.
Keep in mind that, in addition to all of the normal setup requirements like perfect leveling, optimum anti-skating, ambient temperature, relative humidity etc., the tonearm effective mass will alter the tracking ability, so expect that you will need to put in some trial-and-error work on your tonearm before achieving the maximum tracking ability that your Kleos is capable of.
The tracking limits of a cartridge also depend on age - it increases as the suspension limbers up through usage, but as the stylus wears, it starts to fall again. And if anything happens to the impair the flexibility of the suspension (the reason could be as simple as excess dirt build-up in the cantilever and coil area), tracking will be worse.
hth, jonathan carr |
Stringreen: To increase the tracking ability on difficult passages. Since skating forces are dependent on tonearm geometry (they are not constant across the LP) as well as instantaneous groove modulation (the heavier the groove modulation, the bigger the skating force), unless you use an electronic servo-controlled tonearm, there will be no single, optimal setting.
And since normally there is no single, optimal setting, you will need to find the "best" setting empirically.
I agree that for normal listening rather than circus stunts, to error on the side of less anti-skating rather than more, usually gives better sound.
hth, jonathan carr |
Hi Raul:
>I'm " absolutely sure that the Titan i or the Atlas or the Ortofon Anna or any other today cartridge would/could ( ? ) performs at way better quality if the cartridge tracking abilities ( by design ) were better were improved.
Been there, done that. It is quite easy to improve the tracking performance, for example by designing a wire suspension with a longer-than-normal free length. This has the side-effect of lessening the intensity of the loads on the tonearm, which can seem to be a benefit if the tonearm has a resonance-prone mechanical structure, and can improve the tracking of a tonearm with lower-grade bearings or imperfectly adjusted/unevenly worn bearings.
But doing so means that the suspension's fulcrum point will shift position, depending on what the frequency being reproduced is. This won't necessarily sound bad, and some cartridges are designed like this. But it certainly isn't accurate.
OTOH, you are free to prefer whatever you like.
>In the other side the Telarc 1812 is a very good tool to be sure about the VTA/SRA
For the Telarc 1812, yes. But since this value may or may not be applicable to the other LPs in your collection, "to be sure" may not be the best words to use.
>and LOMC load impedance set up
Ah, interesting. Can you teach me about LOMC load impedance setup? Why do you load a cartridge, what causes the need to load a cartridge, how do you determine when a load is too high for a given cartridge, how do you determine when a load is too low, what do you hear when the loading is right, what do you hear when the loading is wrong, that sort of hint would be welcome.
>The main audio system enemy are: distortions in all its forms.
Agreed, but what you are suggesting is just as likely to cause distortion as reduce it (and this is not the first time that you have done so). Trading one form of distortion for another, or increasing distortions in the name of reducing them is not my idea of progress.
kind regards, jonathan |
Hi Raul: Thanks for the copious (grin) amount of writing. Your posts were sort of useful, in the sense that they reveal where your assumptions are not grounded in reality.
It seems that you believe that tracking distortion is essentially linear - that a cartridge that can successfully track very heavily modulated groove passages will have lower distortion on less heavily cut groove passages than a cartridge with lower tracking limits.
This is an erroneous assumption. Tracking ability is not linear, the transition between tracking and mistracking is usually quite abrupt. The result is that a cartridge that has higher tracking limits can nonetheless have higher tracking distortion on normally modulated groove passages than a cartridge with lower ultimate tracking limits.
Let me provide some numbers to illustrate this. Shortly after the Lyra Delos was introduced, in 2010 the German magazine Stereoplay conducted a multi-way review and measurement test of 5 different cartridges. These were: Benz Micro Wood SL, Ortofon Cadenza Blue, Ortofon Cadenza Red, Kuzma KC2 (made by ZYX), and Lyra Delos.
The measurements were of output voltage, coil impedance and inductance, tracking ability, distortion, low-frequency resonance (in a 13-gram tonearm), cartridge weight, and compliance.
For the purposes of this discussion, we can ignore everything except tracking ability and distortion.
If Raul's view is correct, there should be a direct correlation between tracking ability and distortion.
Let's see what Stereoplay's measurements actually say.
Benz Micro Wood SL: Tracking abilities: 100um, distortion: 0.067%
Ortofon Cadenza Blue: Tracking abilities: 80um, distortion: 0.075%
Ortofon Cadenza Red: Tracking abilities: 100um, distortion: 0.09%
Kuzma KC2: Tracking abilities: 70um, distortion: 0.06%
Lyra Delos: Tracking abilities: 80um, distortion: 0.058%
And we don't see any such correlation between tracking ability and distortion. The Kuzma KC2 has the lowest tracking limits of the group, but shows the second-smallest distortion performance after the Delos (which itself has lower tracking limits then the Cadenza Red or Benz Micro Wood SL).
If we look at the two models from the same manufacturer, the cheaper Ortofon Cadenza Red has better tracking ability than the dearer Blue, but the overall distortion reverts to the order of the pricing. And if anyone claims that higher tracking would normally result in lower distortion, but happened to be canceled out by other factors in the individual cartridge designs, well, that is also a valid observation, because it tells us that the relation between tracking ability and distortion is weak enough to be buried (or reversed) by other design factors.
In another test years earlier, Stereoplay compared the Helikon SL to the standard-output Helikon, two models which obviously had much in common with each other.
Lyra Helikon SL: Tracking abilities: 70um, distortion: 0.09%
Lyra Helikon: Tracking abilities: 80um, distortion: 0.10%
Despite showing lower tracking limits, the Helikon SL shows less distortion, while the better-tracking standard-output Helikon has higher distortion. Admittedly the differences are small, but again we don't see a correlation between improved tracking ability and reduced distortion.
hth, jonathan carr |
Hi all: I am now out of the office, participating in European audio shows for the next two weeks to introduce my latest "Etna" cartridge design. Besides, I believe that I have already written enough on this particular topic (and backed up my position with measurements supplied by neutral, independent organizations).
Given the notable absence of any worthwhile rebuttals so far, I will now bow out of this thread.
kind regards, jonathan carr |
