@knollbrent
👍 👌✔️
Michélle 🇿🇦 |
@teo_audio
"Micro-dynamics in proper scale with macro-dynamics for MC carts is generally a function of low moving mass combined with low output..."
That sounds like the ongoing ’mantra’ for MC cartridges, now doesn’t it?
Now there’s something else, than just coils and their windings at work...
MAGNETS.
The fewer the windings (to reduce moving mass) ok. BUT now to stay within reasonable output limits (~0.2mV), stronger / bigger magnets are called for, eh?
Talking strictly about MC right now.
(If an MM uses a tinier moving magnet to reduce moving mass, you add windings and, ok, get a bit more induction... ).
Back to MCs now and my thinking - dynamics - vs MM.
What do magnets have if their magnetic field is changed? Hysterresis - loops.
The more rapid the change the more Hysterresis (resistance to magnetic flux change in simplistic terms)
EVERY magnet has a hysterresis effect, the bigger/stronger the more notable, give or take.
This, my suspicion, is causing this ’micro-drag’ that makes MC’s presentation different to MM’s.
The only reasonable explanation I can come up with.
This what I call ’mirco-drag’ is what I’m hearing, I think.
And it doesn’t end there, as it will create ’micro-phase-shifts’ and thereby also affect timing.
This as all gets minutely dragged out of the original ’timing position’.
Correct me if I’m ’hanging too far out of the bus’ with this, and then kindly give a sensible good alternative explanation, please. 😏
The funny thing is, no one seems to mention magnets, ever it seems, as if it was only induction and coil windings being of any import.
Michélle 🇿🇦 |
Dynamics... is it *just* this?
I hear differences in timbre/tonality of practically all that's going on.
My Quintet Black and Cadenza Black sound good, but there's always something sort of 'engineered' about the sound, and even other items like PW Windfeld or its predecessor... whether using an SUT or straight into 100-200 ohm loading, this MC charcteristic remains.
As for CD, when comparing identical recordings to LP running an MC, it sounds so very much the same, good, practically indistinguishable - but just like ultra high tech engineered. Best I can put it.
Like a bit say the difference between a mechanical piano (perfect) and one played by a person, both perfect - yet one more filled with life, the other somehow a bit - sterile? 🤔
All this can't be said when I'm using any of my MM cartridges, and it has more to do with timbre and TIMING... , than higher/better resolution.
Michélle 🇿🇦
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@noromance
Afraid, I'd need a Father-Christmas to get one at their price!
£ 1879.00 and then some I'm sure... 😥
The heavy income days are over by now...
But thanks for bringing it up as some more exceptional alternative to either MM or MC.
Though judging by my two MF/I cartridges' susceptibility to electro-magnetic interference - I can only guess, even this item will have some tricks going, apart from superior dynamics, eh? 😉
Michélle 🇿🇦
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@chakster
All good points, yet I'm not talking about which is *better*, if you read my post again.
Though I get your point. I do.
If one is, according to my experience, more into high/ultra-high resolution, total possible detail etc. and leave aside... what? 🤔
A certain 'naturalness', a perceived 'artificialness', top MCs (and digital?) will 'kiss the sky'.
No doubt, very cerebral all that.
But as I mentioned 'goose-bumps' (goose-flesh in American English?) which is instantanious, non-intellectual, having nothing to do with that deeper 'relating to the intellect' but more with some simple primordial (basic and fundamental) reaction!
Such it has squad to do with any technical, electrical, physicist's analysis.
In a way quite uneducated, deeply enjoying e.g. some classical piece of music vs reading a musicological analysis into such a piece.
The latter (normally?) would not result in getting a goose-bumps reaction, but simply stimulating ones intellect if it sufficiently resonates being not perceived as 'boring'.
To me that's the difference here, getting an instantanious (unsolicited by intellect) goose-bumps reaction is giving me more joy of listening, than some cerebral sound analysis...
So... to say it again and as memory serves me, MCs and digital hardly, if at all, produce the former but rather the latter.
So, this made me reflect why the heck this was so?
It's sufficiently intriguing I find, bothering to ask.
Michélle 🇿🇦
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Ok, thanks for all those cartridge suggestions.
Though if I left the impression of needing any more than the 6 MM/I cartridges I already own, this was not intended. Sorry.
According to Russian psychology (at least) as I now learned, goose-bumps an be caused by most anything, even a good motion? 😝
Never mind an experience of well presented analogue music.
So what we have here, is a phenomena strictly experienced by myself, if it’s suggested?
Interesting.
If that’s the case, it doesn’t explain really anything, other than having asked the wrong question, no? 🤔
Stuff happens, no harm done.
Thanks again for all the kind feedback.
Michélle 🇿🇦
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@chakster
Thank you dear man, always find your posts of greater interest, even if by some sensibilities - also my own - you can come across a bit 'strong' flavoured at times, eh?
And many thanks also for sharing this TAS article!
As for me, now never mind the underlying technicalities (I'm still nosy...) , it explains my ongoing preference for MMs in particular. Even though I have tried *so very many times* to 'love' MC's sound presentations - to no avail as yet.
I'll bear in mind your cartridge suggestions (alas, SA is a *notoriously bad* country for ordering and RECEIVING goods these days!).
Once my currently owned MMs give up the ghost 👻, who knows?
You're a ⛲ of experience and derived knowledge.
Michélle 🇿🇦
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@lohanimal
Yes, I hear you.
I’m right now running my Empire S1000 ZE/X-ERD, .2 x .7 mil original stylus.
Sounds like you point out, also when compared to my 2 Ortfon MCs (Cadenza Black and Quintet S Black).
But my OP was really about WHAT IT WAS exactly that produces this difference...
There surely is a Physical/EEngineering explanation - and not JUST: "one moves a coil and the other a magnet". Hah! 😝
If a slab of chocolate tastes different to some other (say Cadbury vs Lindt) it has a REASON!
Not just: ha, I like this one better, no?
Michélle 🇿🇦 |
Thanks for all the various feedback(s).
Haemorrhoids from listening to MM cartridge(s), eh?!? 🤔
Well, listening to my CD playback right now, I could get mixed up, sound wise, with listening to my Cadenza Black.
Meaning also, if you fancy CD per se, a good LOMC will take your fancy. OK ✔️
What I do not agree with is, that this sound presentation is closer to near field LIFE listening. Not ever in my life music listening would that have applied. Exept, when e.g. a modern ballet, by say Stravinsky's music, was played during the life ballet performance ON A SOUND SYSTEM!
Life music, even in the best theatre/concert hall(s) is 'blessed' by it very own form of 'distortion' actually the flavour of the very hall's specific acoustics.
This is my experience, and to a very much greater degree when we listen to Rock music life, with all the amplified instruments!
Long story short, it is my experience that CD/LOMC is more cerebral, deeply detailed, and MM/MI etc. is more emotional, life like, which is more likely to give be Goosebumps.
Why the MM (mostly) technology can get that right is still open to my full understanding.
If I play music on my LG (digital decoder fed) OLED TV, it fine like 'elevator music' but never ever would it give me some emotional prickle.
Maybe not the best comparison, but it is definately closer to CD playback and hardly close to anything like more beautiful life music 'distortion' 🙏
Michélle 🇿🇦 |
Thanks for all new thoughtful responses.
I can relate to the differences I hear, mostly to do with 'higher naturalness' of timbre.
Meaning MMs appears more matched to my hearing (timbre-memory of natural instruments) then even very good CD/LOMC.
Maybe sitting in a music hall/theatre the sound also is not all that 'immediate' than it is 'heared' (and recorded) by microphone(s).
Is it this 'beyond natural' listened-to microphonic-immediacy, reproduced by both CD/LOMC true to the recording, making the difference to the MM's reproduction?
Also, the more 'sensitive' the reproduction equipment, the more this difference would be apparent, wouldn't it?
So, possibly the mentioned 'slower' impulse-speed of MM cartridges might simply compensate for these near field microphone positions, most always preferred to avoid too much 'hall information', too much reverb etc.
This is just my unscientific best guess of what might be at work... 🤔
There always can be just - too much of a good thing - one might call it 'over-definition'... creating a less 'natural' presentation of timbre.
Michélle 🇿🇦
PS: Burmestet 961 are quit bass strong to 35Hz, by 8" side firing, light membrane, glass-fibre woofers, very detailed carbon-fibre weave 5¼" mid-woofers (AUDAX HM130CO), and Air Motion Transformer (JET1 ATM) tweeters.
Hearing position is near field and seated with ears between mids and woofer levels i.e. below tweeter height.
ATMs have more lateral and vertical dispersion than do dome-tweeters.
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As for preferred instruments I much like solo cello and violincello passages and it maybe just also the MM bass performance that tickles my spine (and fancy).
@rauliruegas
That 'box' you noted behind the right hand speaker is the side wall of a quite narrow 1' wide only, nine drawer maple wood cabinet.
Since the woofers are side (inside) firing I have not noticed any issue with this arrangement.
What you do not see in my system pictures is the 20' ceiling height, at the roof ridge, and comprised of a 'open' thatch construction with numerous gum-pole beams to support it all.
This, in my experience, and compared to previous domiciles, has a much better outcome on room acoustics.
However even in the lesser acoustic environments my MM cartridges always showed this now at length discussed difference to CD/LOMC presentation.
Michélle 🇿🇦
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Burmester 961 bass reflex port is in rear of the speaker, 20" off the ground, also not straight but curved, about 30° down inside the speaker and covered with 3mm damping felt layer around outer-side (inside the speaker enclosure).
Side firing 8" woofers at centre point, are 27" off the ground.
This, as I understand it, is to reduce floor reflections...
Michélle 🇿🇦
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@chakster and all
Very dedicated responses, oh yes!
Also the sharing of set-ups for perspective.
Thank you!
My system is by far more 'stream-lined', far less dedicated, far less high-end, and more to my current room (and finacial) abilities.
So, only one tt, one tonearm - and all SS from the ML 326S preamp included phono boards, (mostly surface mounted devices including op-amps for 40dB and 60dB options, all via internal jumpers, and lowest loading std. 49k ohm, also by tiny jumpers - no viable 100k, more open, loading) to the X350.5 power amp. Amen!
Living in South Africa, and 'suffering the 25th year of 'liberation' and now Covid changes - typical African corruption - the local currency has gone to hell in a hand-basket.) Amen!
In short I had to learn to do with what I have, aquired some time back in better days, when mail, postal services were actually still functioning, and deliveries not being stolen or 'lost' as it's simply called.
It's all kindly called 'The New Dispensation' and all the world so much happier for it. Amen!
It will give you some idea, why other than desperate measures, prevent one from purchasing anything other than what's locally still available - and any hi-fi highend kind things are by now 'scarce as chicken teeth'. Amen!
Why choose to live here?!
That's too long a story to relate, truly - or why chose people to live in the USSR at the time?
Maybe less complicated, in general.
Ok, back on subject now.
I most resently mounted my Ortofon M20FL super, and in better days also had purched the E super insert (all NOS from Germany).
I'd just followed some positive AGONE block comments on the endlessly long 'Who needs MCs when we have MMs' by Raul...
Though I wasn't aware at the time, of the 40cu compliance, more like Jello (or Wackelpeter in German :) despite the borderline compatibility with my SME V t-arm, working really great and yet again, sounding noticeably more 'real' than the more 'hyped-up' MC presentations - in my system.
In closing, maybe it is simply a case of synergy and equipment set-up, as e.g. apparently the ML326S phono-boards where based on the much older reference ML35 phone-pre, add-on unit...
I surmise this to be so, as some time past, I had a chance to test and compare this stand-alone unit. It sounded absolutely the same when compared to my build-in phono-boards.
So I'm currently enjoying once again the magic sound of an MI cartridge, the M20 E super, at a VTF of 1 gramm! (on a medium effective mass t-arm, 10-11g) and anti-scate force of 0.5 pond, no less!
This is like the funky 70s - just with better gear, eh? 😅 👏
Michélle 🇿🇦
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@inna
So much one could say on this subject... 😏
But many thanks for your enthusiastic response! 😊
Michélle 🇿🇦
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@lewm
Yes, I should have included IM and MI types in the post's heading.
No argument there. ✔️
Michélle 🇿🇦
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