What is the “World’s Best Cartridge”?

Mijo, as I think you know, my amplifiers are essentially older MA2s with huge EI type power transformers that make them very heavy. I think you’ll be getting toroidal power transformers on your new MA2s. Much lighter.

@lewm To be clear this is the M-240, of which exactly 6 chassis sets were made. It used a lot of MA-2 parts. You built yours up in bits didn't you?

If you have a genius idea how the input stage CCS could affect bias on only one of 4 output tubes (7241s), I am all ears.

@lewm It can't but I imagine you knew that.

@lewm I have to say I'm amazed that you have had the continuing patience to deal with the 7241 power tubes! We don't modify any of our amplifiers to use that tube since most people don't have the patience to deal with them.

you well know that the remaining members at WBF are all buddies of Steve or worse, Ron. They all follow the same guru and believe the same old BS that the guru pushes. Horns rule, and gear that is non-resolving and as bright as the sun is looked up to, probably because these folks have lost their high frequency hearing years ago!

@daveyf I'm active over there; AFAIK I'm not on the inside there but no-one messes with me, which isn't to say we always agree. I've heard the story about inside buddies or something like that about that site before but I really don't know what that means. I've been on there nearly from its inception. I'm assuming your post above is a bit hyperbolic.

@mikelavigne Audiogon does not have an 'ignore' button, so you have to do that manually. In this case your enjoyment of this thread would likely be improved if certain individuals were put on 'ignore'. I hope I'm not one of those 😉

OTOH with short phono cables it’s all execution. whatever sounds best. possibly all things being equal balanced might be superior technically......but......of course.....all things are pretty much never equal. you have to listen to pick the winner. the LFD execution is crazy stuff. if LFD used XLR i suppose it might be even better..

You get the same benefit with short cables as you do long cables. The idea that balanced really only benefits you when the cables are long is a common myth. The advantages are several as I showed above, and these become more important when the signal strength is lower. Of course the LFD cable would work better balanced, as well as any balanced cable if built correctly.

@intactaudio is correct in his post just above. It really sounds to me as if all the balanced gear you've heard doesn't support the balanced standard; if that is the case then the results will be highly variable.

If you really want to do single-ended connections a 50Ohm coax is really the only way to do it properly without cable interactions, but to do so you need appropriate driver and receiver circuitry.

The funny thing is other than the balanced input on the phono preamp, running a proper balanced connection from the cartridge is actually easier than running single-ended. The arm wiring doesn't change; its all about the tonearm cable being built properly. You know that weird ground wire that other single-ended sources don't seem to need? That' s because its a balanced system being run single-ended and you have to do something with the ground, which isn't connected to the cartridge- that's the ground wire. When running balanced that is the shield connection (pin 1 of the XLR), which is a continuation of the shielding the arm tube provides, and its not able to intermodulate noise into the signal since ground is ignored by the receiver (in this case the phono input, which could be an SUT with a balanced connection).

So when running balanced the only tricky bit is that just like any phono cable, its best to keep the cable capacitance low so as to keep the electrical resonance as high as possible. With LOMC cartridges, this resonance is typically in the MHz region.

The hardest part about all this is something called the Veblen Effect. Literally people think that because they are paying more that there is more value. This isn't always the case! Veblen causes people to want to spend more on a cable, thinking that they will get greater performance/SQ. Its important to know that can sometimes be illusory.

as far as balanced cables the only way to go with analog signals, that is a silly thing to say. who has heard all the non balanced choices?

@mikelavigne 

😁

You don't need to hear all the single-ended cables to know why balanced is better. You do have to understand something about balanced line operation though, that there is a standard which must be observed to obtain the benefit.

The benefit is neutrality; the cable won't have an artifact. By artifact I mean 'sound'.

As single-ended cables evolve and improve they begin to approach the neutrality of balanced operation. But since there's no standard for single-ended operation, results are all over the map.

Since the advent of hifi, commercial recordings have all embraced balanced operation. Its how Mercury was able to park their recording truck behind Northrup Auditorium in Minneapolis and run 150' mic cables to it and still get high fidelity. EMI hung their mics in Kingsway Hall; I have to assume they were a good 150' too. Single ended semi-pro audio equipment really didn't start showing up until about the mid 1970s so we have a 20 year period of classical, jazz, blues and rock that demonstrates what balanced operation can do. The fact that the better you make your system, the better these recordings sound should tell you something.

Balanced line operation was the first exotic interconnect cable industry/technology. Unlike what has evolved in high end audio where money is often thrown at the problem, the idea behind balanced operation and its standard is that if the proper drive and reception exists in the source and what ever its driving, the interconnect can be inexpensive, whatever length is needed and no artifacts from it.

In high end audio, little of the gear supports the standard, so there is little benefit. That is why audiophiles have such variable results. If its done right though there is no going back.

A LOMC cartridge can drive a balanced line exceptionally well since it is a balanced source with a very low impedance. So the connection can be exceptionally neutral. This is very difficult to do single-ended!

It would never have occurred to me that the road to cable Nirvana would be found by combining many strands of wire of different gauges and different shapes (ribbon AND round cross-section) and even different compositions (one strand seems to be copper sheathed in silver; the rest of the strands are pure silver).  I don't know how to rationalize it, but I don't argue with listening tests.  I think Mike and others on WBF are just as surprised at the results.

I was surprised at how much better things got when I went balanced. One of the goals of balanced operation is to eliminate interconnect cable interactions and it does that quite well.

fundamentally using an SUT potentially brings a musical touch, inner artistic view and envelopment that high gain phono preamps such as the darTZeel can’t quite do in the same way. this effect varies with actual execution of the phono and SUT.

SUTs can't pass the RFI that is generated by a LOMC cartridge (its an interaction of inductance in parallel with capacitance that makes the RFI). This suggests that the preamp is sensitive to RFI and so sounds better when its been filtered out. If the preamp isn't sensitive to RFI then the SUT won't bring anything to the table (other than possibly lower noise).

the real deal breaker for me was the strain gauge's tracking ability. Peter thinks he has got it as good as he can and feels it is acceptable. Generally I will only look at cartridges that can do 80um or better at 315Hz. Miss-tracking is very annoying. Miss-track a record once and it is permanently damaged.

@mijostyn LPs can survive mistracking and I agree mistracking is very annoying. I'm torn over the Soundsmith thing, since on the one hand I've heard it track extremely well (IOW not a concern at all); its clearly tonearm dependent as are all cartridges.

So I suspect he didn't have it set up on the ideal arm when you heard it, which strikes me as a bit odd. I'm not going to speculate further...

I auditioned the strain gauge at Peter's listening room. He spent two hours with me. I really wanted to like the strain gauge but it was just too sharp on female voices and violins for my taste.

@mijostyn To my understanding the Soundsmith Strain Gauge will need some EQ that isn't supplied by the manufacturer. Without that EQ an un-equalized strain gauge will have an EQ error due to that flat spot in the RIAA pre-emphasis curve. So it would cause the cartridge to sound bright.

Also recognize there are some things that are either unmeasurable or not yet measured.

The words of Daniel Von Recklinghausen come to mind. They apply directly to this conversation. As I mentioned, something is driving LP sales. If the digital community fails to recognize the significance of that, it will also fail to take the measurements that they have failed to take in the past. If you live your life according to made up stories rather than 'what is' you will suffer. Literally this is why digital has been unable to eclipse vinyl; the digital community simply makes up the story that 'its better'. This made up story is the impediment that causes digital to fall short for the last 40 years. 

A few pragmatic designers do move the art forward but a serious problem is so much really dreadfully awful terrible digital gear that is still in service. IMO that bit is what is preventing digital from finally committing the LP to history.

In the meantime having a good cartridge set up in an arm that can really track it solves a lot of headaches- you can just sit down and enjoy music rather than having to worry about any specs. But as Mr. Von Reklinghausen points out the right specs are important for that to happen.

digital is more accurate. There can be no doubt about this. It is superior in every and all measurable parameters.  This says nothing about "sounding better." Beauty is in the ear of the beholder. 

Something is keeping current LP sales on the rise. Most of it isn't coming from audiophiles and likely the buyers know nothing of the specs. Usually when a succeeding tech appears it eclipses the prior art which disappears. That's not happened over the last 40 years with the LP so we can safely say digital is an incremental improvement sound-wise as opposed to transformative (disruptive).

IMO the factor is that most people don't ever hear good digital audio (just as most people don't ever get to hear good analog either). Some of the older digital playback gear was pretty dreadful, especially if it was less expensive and my surmise is a lot of that is still in service.  

Hereby Resolved These Resolutions:

Resolved The best cartridge will be the one that matches the tonearm in use, in this case the Triplanar, since the ability of the tonearm to track the cartridge is paramount to the cartridge, which is penultimate.

Resolved Analog vs digital will be on-going until digital is so much better that LP production ceases.

Resolved These statements will make no difference to anyone entrenched in their arguments per human nature.

 

But to my ears, there are digital problems too, often larger than the analog problems (even if the gap has narrowed).

 

😁 If digital were really that much better there would be no discussion about cartridges, tonearms, where you bought that record and the like. It would be moot. Its not; its been 41 years since the inception of the CD and LPs are still around. Can we finally agree that digital is merely incremental in its improvements? I've no doubt that one day it will be better in every way... when that day comes people won't argue about it.

Anytime a new technology appears, if it is truly superior the prior art vanishes and becomes a thing of collectors for nostalgia only. I like to point to the example of side valves in internal combustion engines. Overhead valves showed up and no-one looks back- they are more reliable and offer vastly improved performance. As a result no-one puts side valves in cars anymore. Its not worth it!

When digital is truly better there won't be cartridge and tonearm manufacturers, no LPs produced and so on.

IME the kind of cartridge you have matters far less than does the ability of the tonearm to really track it properly. I hear far more dramatic differences on this basis. I've yet to find a tonearm that tracks a wider range of cartridges than the Triplanar; likely this is because its also one of the most adjustable tonearms made.

At any rate the ability of a cartridge to track properly in a given tonearm varies due to the mass and compliance of the cartridge (since that interacts with the mass of the arm). Since @mglik has a Triplanar it follows that we are looking at a subset of all cartridges: those that are most suited for that arm.

Some of my European Classical albums from the 70s and 80's are fabulously quiet and are great recordings. I can not imaging new releases being any better.

QRP (Acoustic Sounds) has succeeding in making LP surfaces that are about 10-15 dB quieter, FWIW.

@ghdprentice I agree on all counts. I would prefer to not have all that space taken up by so many LPs, but OTOH I'm also a bit uncomfortable with having all my music on the cloud, since this means a server farm (which can take as much power as a small city) has to be running 24/7 to maintain my music collection. If something were to happen to my online account, all of a sudden that music is gone. I don't like the idea of wasting all that energy when I'm not at home or when I'm asleep; with all the different hacks that keep showing up (and outright online attacks) I just feel better having the LPs available. Old school, I know.

Also its fun to put the LP on and have guests think that is really a CD because they play without 'surface artifacts' which I found out 35 years ago are often caused by the phono preamp rather than the LP surface.

I had some guests over this last weekend and I noticed that they were all about the sound and didn't have any thoughts about the media. That's how it should be.

That might well be the case but there’s absolutely no denying that there were some fabulous sounding LPs made back as far as at least the 1950s.

The best sound that I have ever heard came from one such LP.

It had that spooky ’Is it real?’ soundstage that I’ve yet to hear from any digital.

 

I would love to see digital finally fulfill its potential on commercial releases, especially regarding dynamic range and transference of classic analogue masters etc, but I’m resigned to the fact that market forces will never allow such a thing to happen.

😀 If I want to demo the dynamic range of a stereo, the LP I put on is the RCA Soria series Verdi Requiem, side 1 track two, Dies Irae. Not a CD and not some digitally recorded LP.

The simple fact is that the LP has a lot more dynamic range than most people think. It may not be as much as the CD, but if you want to talk about undistorted high resolution dynamic range, it has more. I know people are likely tired of hearing stuff like this, but you have two phenomena for why this is so:

The first is that recordings made for digital release have a high expectation of being played in a car (unlike the LP). So due to that industry expectation, which has nothing to do with genre BTW, the digital release is usually compressed.

The second is that if you really want to hear 16 bit digital (Redbook) at its best, the recording should be normalized so that the loudest part of any track is 0VU. As the signal strength goes down, more and more bits have to be turned off. So when you get to -45dB (which is pretty quiet) there’s not enough bits for the signal to be undistorted (which, in digital parlance, is usually referred to as ’less resolution’). So to get maximum resolution the recording is normalized.

Of course the LP has noise so its a bit of a tradeoff. Anyway, that Soria series recording goes from a whisper with which the noise floor competes to putting your amps in danger of extreme overload if you try to play it at a lifelike level. Lots of fun- big bass too 😁

Absolutely. The resurgence happened in response to the unending disappointment in the CD. But at last digital… both CD and more importantly streaming has reached equal or better (high Rez streaming) sound quality in many component combinations and will continue advancing. Without the sound quality advantage vinyl just becomes nostalgic.

Well... The LP has continued to advance as well. QRP (Acoustic Sounds) sorted out that vibration was the primary cause of surface noise in LPs and so installed damping to reduce it- and makes vastly quieter LPs as a result, rivaling the noise floor of Redbook in that the electronics become the noise floor rather than the LP itself.

Then there have been advances in amplifiers; before I sold off my LP mastering system I was really thinking of replacing the original mastering amplifiers (which were state of the art in their day) with some class D modules, perhaps our own, as they are more stable, more reliable, lower noise and lower distortion.

Finally the real limitations of the LP are in playback, not record; tonearms and cartridges have continued to improve. So while this is all incremental, saying the LP doesn't have the sound quality is a bit of a stretch- its still got potential just as digital does.

I wish you guys would kiss and make up.

@mijostyn FWIW  dept.: I don't attack anyone on this site as a person, I respond to correct false narrative or provide additional information. I use simple logic to do it, not personal attacks (personal attacks violate the forum rules). If I don't respond to misinformation, misinformation will be what exists instead. I've used that technique with everyone on this site and a very few seem to take it personally (apparently for reasons well outside my control)- most of whom have have gotten banned without any help from me. 

I don't have a battle with analog or digital either. If you recall, Raul said (paraphrasing) that 'analog couldn't compete' but all you have to do is to walk into a record store to know that isn't true- if it were true they wouldn't sell LPs! That seems pretty simply logic to me and nothing to get upset about.

who currently makes reel to reel tape? Just wondering.

@goofyfoot see https://www.atrtape.com/

ATR Magnetics makes cassettes as well as reel to reel tape.

Are you " crazy " ( at least ) or what?

 

"  up is absurd "  if it's then don't following your futile " rummage "?

 

I already said: who cares but you?

I get accused of being crazy all the time 😉

I don't follow your word salad, the second question.

Do you want a list of names or is that rhetorical?

Again, if no-one cared or analog could not compete this would not be a conversation. We would be doing something else 😁

Absolutely and with out any single rancor. Who cares but you?

@rauliruegas 

Apparently you or you'd not have responded. Based on other's responses others apparently do too.

Mike Lavigne brougth BG here thinking that in some way those comments could supports the Mike point of view and was an unfortunated " kind of support " because did not helps for him.

There is an alternative explanation as well 😁

I recommend if you can, get one of the more respected Reel to Reel tape machines (like a Studer) get it properly refurbished and see for yourself. To make comments lacking the experience to back them up is absurd.

@rauliruegas I'm guessing you didn't read my last post without rancor. Here it is again:

Raul, you seem to be missing something here. Clearly, analog has been competing 'against it' for a very long time.

You don't have to know anything technical to understand this statement! All you have to know is that tape is still being made for analog recorders, that used quality analog recorders command prodigious prices, that new titles are being issued on reel to reel tape and what people say about the tapes and their machines.

If analog could not compete quite simply we wouldn't be having this conversation! Instead it would simply be gone and no further talk about it other than historical context.

It really is that simple.

[emphasis added]

Analog can't compete against it and I don't have and even do not read yet any real/true evidence in favor of analog/tape vs digital:

@rauliruegas @mikelavigne 

Raul, you seem to be missing something here. Clearly, analog has been competing 'against it' for a very long time.

You don't have to know anything technical to understand this statement! All you have to know is that tape is still being made for analog recorders, that used quality analog recorders command prodigious prices, that new titles are being issued on reel to reel tape and what people say about the tapes and their machines.

If analog could not compete quite simply we wouldn't be having this conversation! Instead it would simply be gone and no further talk about it other than historical context.

It really is that simple.

I remember that when I posted that a difference  in digital recording for the better was that bass range can be recorded stereo due that digital has no limitation as analog that always needs the bass range mono  and you posted that even that it could be that way normally digital comes in mono too due that the cost goes to high and in the other side engeeners are a little lazy to do it in the rigth way.

I missed this earlier.

@rauliruegas Emphasis added. This is a common myth. Tape is analog and does not need any mono bass. The reason it can show up on LP is to save time but you don't need to do that if you simply spend time with the project and look into ways to prevent out-of-phase bass from knocking the stylus out of the groove.

There's a number of ways to do that: rest set the groove depth to be deeper, perhaps cut the passage or project about 1dB lower- that doesn't sound like much but 3dB doubles the amount of modulation in the groove so 1dB less modulation can have an enormous effect!.

FWIW where this is really a problem if you are in a hurry to master the LP is below 80Hz- in most rooms its of no consequence. At that frequency the bass note is 14 feet long, and it takes several iterations of the bass note for the ear to know what the bass note is- by that time, the bass in most rooms is entirely ambient so mono bass is inaudible. Subwoofers take advantage of this fact all the time. At any rate the processor that does the mono bass is a passive device. Our processor (which we found we never used) would mono the bass only for a few milliseconds.

So when you are commenting about these things, its best to be informed- keep this in mind with future posts.

Yes, I've met Stan. He was very nice, liked our room and Canto General which I played for him.

If you think digital is 'immutable' think again- why do people endlessly talk about which site has the better file to stream, which CD is the better version, the different sound of DACs and so on. Stan and I both sought out when mastering LPs the digital source file that lacked the DSP for the digital release because the DSP messed up the result- you could make a better sounding LP without it.

In the other side and talking of that specs " tree " in those old times the Studer R2R mike owns were not designed for home use by audiophiles but to be used by recording studios and Studer was not the only R2R with the quality levels for that kind of job because were deep quality competition with true challenges for every R2R manufacture. So the specs Studer gaves to the recording studios were the best they achieved on those times to competes against other manufacturer machines. That was the overall context on that Studer issue.

Ralph, I appreciated that this time you posted with a good attitude and not trying to hit me and that’s why I give my answer.

Probably those mike’s Studer performs a little better but even that is not a today reference and cant compete in any room/system with what I posted: reference is the digital medium other than live MUSIC.

@mikelavigne 

@rauliruegas I get all that you are saying about tape degradation. But your comment in the last paragraph really isn't correct. If you spent some time recording live with such equipment you would know why- they can be so beguiling that you can be easily fooled into thinking that what you are hearing on the headphones is real as opposed to a recording. Yes, they are that good.

A direct lathe cut is even better as it is lower noise and wider bandwidth.

But for the most part, regular audiophiles in the trenches never get to hear what such equipment is really all about and how real the recordings they make actually sound. In the studio, if the engineer is careful, the big difference between digital, tape and the mastering lathe is cost, not sound. Again if you doubt this, I advise spending some time around such equipment to get to know the ropes. FWIW I've managed recording studios since the mid 1970s.

@rauliruegas @mikelavigne 

-Look, these are some specs of the Studer A820 that confirms in some ways what you posted and I said here:

tape speed deviation: +,- 0.2% - tape slip: +,- 01% . Speed stability here is even more critical issue than in a TT because is the recorder and the information used to cut the LPs.

W&F is +,- 0.03 % at 30" and 0.04% at 15" speeds.

Frequency response +,- 2db ( that’s a swing of 4dbs ! ! ) at 30ips from 40hz to 22khz and at 15ips 30hz-20khz ( really limited frequency response. ) and obviously that at +,- 1db deviation FR is even worst.

FWIW Dept.:

You need to spend some time with these machines to really understand them, and having done that I can tell you that if you spend the time really setting them up correctly they easily surpass the published specs. Just for the record though you're never going to see a variation of 4dB in FR!! Heck, you're hard pressed to get anywhere near that even with a cassette deck. If you spend time with the record and playback calibration, they can easily be well within 0.5dB between record and playback.

So put another way the specs you see represent a nominal machine, not one that is properly calibrated, and certainly not one that has been tricked out by one of several gurus of tape machines (that anyone who really wants to know how good they can get) who are known to service them. Put another way, Raul, Mike's machines are tricked out, having lower noise, lower distortion wider bandwidth and certainly far greater speed stability than the original stock specs suggest.

So, Raul, what Mike is hearing and what you are suggesting he is hearing are two really different things. IMO you need to acknowledge that.

Regarding field coil ps variables @atmasphere has posted in the topic. Maybe he can help us here

I doubt it. I'd be very concerned about adding the wires needed to power the field coil. They would have to stiffen up the arm since they would have to travel past/thru its bearings. That would introduce a variable that might not be taken into account when making assessments.

your love affair with balanced circuits is legendary. are you wrong about them? no. are balanced circuits the ’main thing’ about how circuits might perform? no.

balanced circuits = one advantage....but not the whole ball game....which is what you are saying. and that cannot be known. we all can have an opinion about it though.

the best performing systems i have heard up till now have not used balanced circuits. which proves nothing either. since that aspect of a system is not dominant in it’s performance....one way....or another.

@mikelavigne 

(emphasis added)

My comments were about balanced line operation- the use of balanced cables in audio. Not so much about balanced circuits in audio equipment (that is a different conversation which I avoided).

That balanced lines when supported by AES48 are superior than any RCA connection is both measurable and audible. There is more than one advantage. Since I don't know which you were referring to I'll name a few:

* no ground loops since ground is ignored and used for shielding only

(this means if you get a ground loop with balanced lines AES48 isn't being supported)

* prevents coloration caused by the interconnect cable

* lack of colorations (including high frequency roll off) allows for longer cable lengths.

* since the crux of the operation lies with the associated equipment, the cable itself can be quite inexpensive

* Since the associated equipment will have a high Common Mode Rejection Ratio (CMRR) noise impinged on the interconnect cable is rejected at the input of whatever its driving. This isn't possible with a single-ended connection so you get lower noise.

OK I've listed 5 advantages and there are more.

My recommendation as always with this sort of thing is to try it. Phono cartridges are already a balanced source and most tone arms are wired balanced so this is really about the interconnect cable and what is receiving it. SUTs, being transformers, can run as a balanced input quite easily with very high CMRR values. Their output can be single-ended (this is why transformers are good at converting from one to the other). So this would be an easy thing to try.

For every one person who buys an LP 10,000 people buy a digital file.

@mijostyn 

That may well be. I see it slightly differently, which is this:

In reality it’s not a LP come back. What exist is a LP recording manufacturers making huge money mainly with re-issues and yes exist people that for curiosity go inside the whole LP " mess ".

Apparently the LP sells well enough that record stores exist and make a living selling them. That economic can't be ignored.

New titles (not reissues) are being pressed all the time. So the above quote from Raul is false. Most of the market has nothing to do with audiophiles- its record companies selling LPs to kids. Or old people like me that like new music. Heck, I just bought some Lana Del Ray LPs off ebay and they aren't reissues :)