Irrelevant. Beyond irrelevant. MC or MM is irrelevant. Arm is irrelevant. Turntable does not matter either. The one thing that does matter is cartridge output. MC or MM, either way cartridge output must be compatible with your phono stage. If you use a very low output cartridge with a phono stage that does not have enough gain, results will be poor no matter what arm you mount it on. Likewise if you use a very high output MM cart on a phono stage designed for low output MC and you overload the input then again poor results.
Ultimately though I said "beyond" irrelevant. That is because all of this, true as it certainly is, nevertheless is beside the point. The one match that really matters is how the sound the cartridge puts out matches with how you want it to sound. How it sounds vs how you want it to sound. Only match that ever matters.
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Phono stage / cart type and output compatible is not a question, what more interesting is mechanical, physical site of matching. |
In theory everything explained herePractically it’s subjective, we have different systems and you have no idea who is a person who will answer your question (and his/her experience with different tonearms/cartridges). |
Leap of faith, like choosing a speaker you haven't heard before.
I've mentioned this before- If it doesn't blow up/start a fire everything else is subjective in audiophoolery.
Proper phonostage, clean LP and basic alignment parameters are enough for me. |
Practically it’s subjective, we have different systems and you have no idea who is a person who will answer your question (and his/her experience with different tonearms/cartridges). Of course it’s subjective, I don’t try to reach some dogma or universal solution. The question is theoretical, no intention to solve an issue or make a decision here. Other people experience in this matter that exactly what interesting. |
our experiences say.
even though it's compliance match. that's only one part of whole puzzle.
Mc is a different animal. due to low gain. noise. vibration. isolation. inherant resonant.. much more expensive and effort to get it optimized. it will just sound fake detail, digital.or even anemic. otherwise. Alot of people think and say this unoptmised Version is an improvement of MM, better speed. Bass. slap. but annoying.. but why bother play with turntable if it's sounds worse than cd.? might as well get an R2R dac and get it over with.
But a well executed Mc is wonderful. just very rare in our case.
my bud just called in morning and rant .. why he used triplaner and Lyra titani it sounded like crap. blah blah.. the best one he tried is pushma and delos. and so on. still discussing about how way easier to get MM system sounds great with just a vintage Sony direct drive. this fella had tried Alot of things in Mc.. alot.. of high end tt and cart has pass through his hand.. so we are not simply parroting. he paid real school fees
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When the second of my B&O RX2 turntables gave it up, after a fair amount of research, I ordered a Mofi Studiodeck because I knew I would need complete adjustability to mount the Soundsmith SMMC1 B&O cartridge on another turntable. In that price range, the Studiodeck seemed to fit the bill. Only after the turntable shipped did I learn about potential compliance issues, and that the total 1.5 grams of my Soundsmith high compliance cartridge and adapter were an impending catastrophic mismatch for the heavy arm on the Mofi Studiodeck. Certainly just waiting to happen is some horrible sonic way. I read forum threads I did not understand about resonant frequencies, analogies to car suspensions on trucks, or vice versa, and debates about physics and formulas, without figuring out how the mismatch was supposed to manifest in the sound I would hear.
I closely followed the cartridge alignment instructions on the Soundsmith website, paying particular attention to anti-skate (had to remove some of the weight from the thread) and azimuth, and tinkered with VTA with some albums suggested on these forums so that the highs were not sibilant and base not flabby. I have yet to hear any ill effects of the guaranteed mismatch. In fact, I would not have believed that a change in turntables could have made such a difference, particularly in surface noise. I am listening to albums I had pretty much given up on.
There might be sonic gremlins that my system is not resolving enough to uncover. If that's the case, fine. Meanwhile, I'll let the Ohm Walsh 4's and REL subs kick some Talking Heads throughout the house.
Steve |
Practically it’s subjective, we have different systems and you have no idea who is a person who will answer your question (and his/her experience with different tonearms/cartridges).
Of course it’s subjective, I don’t try to reach some dogma or universal solution. The question is theoretical, no intention to solve an issue or make a decision here. Other people experience in this matter that exactly what interesting.
Well, I have tried more than 60 cartridges and probably over 10 different tonearm. I have no problem to use my cartridges correctly according to their compliance and my tonearm mass, I can fine-tune everything with different heardhells as it can add or deduct mass (or heavy mounting screws for tonearms with non removable headshell). Hi-Fi News Analog TEST LP is the only tool to measure vertical and lateral resonance (online calculators always off). I think it's nice to have 3 tonearms (light mass, mid mass, and very heavy). |
There is no need whatsoever to match turntable and cartridge. Matching tonearms and cartridges is worth doing and requires experimentation, which is why some of us crazies own so many tonearms. Where the tonearm(s) use a detachable headshell, having a lot of different headshells, constructed of different materials and of different weights, is also handy for getting the most out of a cartridge. This is not purely about achieving some magical resonant frequency, in fact that is a very secondary consideration in my experience.
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Both Lewm and Chakster have valid points. Moving magnet, iron or coil is not an issue with tonearm matching. It is purely an issue of cartridge compliance and the effective mass of the tonearm. There is significant variability in both parameters so in reality the only way you can really know what is going on is to use a test record like the one chakster recommends. Having said this moving magnet cartridges tend towards higher compliance and lighter tonearms. The lowest compliance cartridges are moving coil. Moving irons have a foot in both puddles. Having seen some interesting test results I am favoring lighter tonearms and more compliant cartridges as they follow undulations (low frequency) in the vinyl surface better. Looking at an oscilloscope they produce less low frequency rubbish. Heavy arms can not move fast enough (more inertia) transferring the undulations to the cantilever. It is sort of like your woofer flapping at low frequencies. It is not making any sound but you can hear it in the higher frequencies due to Doppler distortion. It is hard to make a big car handle like a sports car for the same reasons. |
Matching of any cart applies to the phono stage with a few compliance outliers. Then you only have to pick an arm and find what works best. |
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If I decide to go MC low I will buy a SUT. Other words, you think that combo of MM phono stage with SUT is better choice than dedicated MC phono stage alone or you just like your MM stage a lot? |
@surfmuz you want very simple answers, but it’s impossible to say what is better, each MC phono stage is different, they are not the same. When someone will tell you that SUT is always better - this statement is false. For example you can read about Aurorasound Vida and if you read carefully you will understand this is unique design (like no othe MC phono stage). Then you can read about current-mode MC phono stage from 47Labs and this is another unique design. You know about tube phono stages too, they are way different from Solid State ... .. so on and on ... Do not expect simple answers! |
You want to use a cartridge in a tonearm that resonates at the right frequencies when mounted in the arm so you don not want to use a high compliance cartridge in a high mass arm just like a low compliance cartridge does not work in a low mass arm. The other important factor is gain and cartridge output you need enough gain to match the cartridge otherwise you will introduce noise especially with low or very low output moving coils. A perfect match would be when you arm and cartridge do not distort or mistrack over any loud passages nor do they hum or make noise over the entire record surface.
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When designing a cartridge, the moving coil (MC) principle has a greater ultimate potential than moving magnet (MM) does. But as moving coils are difficult to manufacture and very sensitive to imperfections, all the good ones are expensive. Cheap moving coils sound terrible, so in the budget territory moving magnets rule. When building the best possible turntable from parts, there is a strict hierarchy to observe. The most important parts are the turntable mechanics and the motor, then follows the arm and finally the cartridge. It can easily be demonstrated that a modest MM cartridge mounted on a high quality arm outperforms the most expensive MC cartridge mounted on a lower quality arm. This is because the arm is more important than the cartridge. Observing this hierarchy, it is wise to always optimise your turntable mechanics, motor, arm and even the furniture on which the turntable stands before considering replacing your high quality MM cartridge with an MC. Another reason to use a high quality MM cartridge is that it allows quick and inexpensive stylus replacements and therefore has a dramatically lower cost per hour of music played. Unlike most MC owners, you don’t need to worry about the condition of your stylus. And if a stylus should happen to be damaged, the party can continue within a minute. |
With audio there's always something to consider. If you're using a name brand like Pro-Ject or Rega turntable; probably no issues. But you also must consider your stylus type. For some carts like the Ortofon 2M Black or MC Black with Nude Shibata stylus you'll need to make sure your tonearm has multiple adjustments to set proper adjustment of alignment, antiskating, azimuth and tracking force. https://www.ortofon.com/media/151039/ortofon2m-seriesbrochure_2020.pdf |
Mijo, What I was trying to say is that there is more to matching cartridges with tonearms than just concern about compliance and effective mass, and therefore the resonant frequency calculation. I have found that some cartridges just come more alive in some tonearms (or in some headshells, where the tonearm has a detachable headshell). Sometimes the best match for pure SQ is not the best match for resonant frequency. I think this is in part because the values we plug into the equation for resonant frequency are often inaccurate. For example, somewhere up the thread, someone mentioned that he calculated an Fr of 10 or 11Hz. Then when he determined Fr using the HFNRR test LP, the result was 7Hz. That actually suggests a big discrepancy between the assumed values of M and C and their actual values.
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I stuck with turntable make and went from Rega MM to MC Apheta II on my RP8 ... I guess those cartridges are designed for my TT so I could easily hear the difference (Phono stage was MM/MC).
Reviews of others are great but I just wanted it to work well straight of the cuff. |
@lewm , that is exactly what I was saying in my last post! In my own experience every set up has to be "tuned" to work it's best particularly with bass and dynamics. I never use the calculation. I only use a test record during set up and I add mass to push the resonance frequency down as far as I can without making the set up unstable.
I would not know about different head shells because it has been a very long time since I used a tonearm that has a removable one. So, I would have to defer to you on that one. I also have never been able to AB tonearms in a way that I can say one sounds better or different than another. My sense is that all well designed arms with solid bearing designs set to the same resonance frequency with the same cartridge sound pretty much the same, like nothing. If an arm is adding or subtracting anything to the sound of the cartridge then in a perfect world it is not a good arm. It is not a perfect world and there are certain distortions added during vinyl playback that have to be minimized such as warp wow, miss tracking and low frequency rubbish. Until recently I did not realize how bad the low frequency rubbish problem was. I saw a series of oscilloscope traces of arm /cartridge combinations all set to the same resonance frequency. The lower the moment of inertia the less low frequency rubbish which lowered other types of distortion dramatically. The lowest was a carriage driven tangential tracker (very short arm) and it was hypothesized that this was the reason these arms sounded better.
There is no such thing as a flat record. There are low frequency undulations in the vinyl's surface that will deflect the cantilever of high mass set-ups creating a voltage. Lighter combinations definitely create less voltage as the arm is following the undulations better. This is the reason short arms are preferred. It was enough to talk me out of longer arms permanently. It might also be the reason in the end that the Reed 5T might sound better than the Schroder LT as it is a lot shorter.
Ducati, those are assumptions that many people including many recording engineers disagree with. Many prefer MM and MI types saying that they sound more like the master tape. They also require less gain creating a much better signal to noise ratio. Current mode phono stages might change this. The price of moving coil cartridges is driven solely by the market not by the "complexity" of manufacture. This makes MM cartridges a far superior value.
I am of the opinion that the simpler the phono stage the better. I think it is best to keep circuitry, switches and contacts to an absolute minimum. A tonearm should have single wires from cartridge to phono stage plug. Loading should be done with the appropriate resistor soldered in. One gain stage is better than two and so forth. Complexity is dangerous and expensive. No reason for it except that's what the market wants. If it is more expensive it must sound better, right? |
@chakster , you come up with some of the strangest web sites! Did you look at that 47 Labs reference turntable? Darn, that would make Rube Goldberg jealous. That tonearm is the ugliest piece of work I have ever seen! No reflection on you. The audio market is bigger than ever and there are people who will sell some strange things. |
@mijostyn I’m talking about “current mode” MC phono stage which I own and it’s excellent for low impedance MC carts, read why.
I don’t care about his turntable or tonearm.
47 Labs made some strange things indeed, but his phono stage called PhonoCube is great and this design is perfect. I never tried his amp, but it’s same style of design, many positive reviews.
Anyway, 45Labs PhonoCube is very special current-injection phono stage for low impedance MC.
Another link is 6moons, why do you think it’s strange website? Or do you mean Aurorasound brand website?
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