We are not talking about cd players, you might've lost the direction a little bit. |
Big deal is that the increasing number of audiophiles cannot afford anything real good new and like second rate citizens have to chase things on a 'flea' market. |
It's like real estate in Manhattan. Do you know who drives the prices up and how exactly it's done?
$2.5k for an ordinary cartridge is a lot. It must be outstanding.
By the way, great $50k speakers is okay with me. If you keep them for 20 years it's not too bad. |
Besides, if you get $2500 cartridge you better have $5k tonearm, $10 turntable and at least $5k phono stage. Add tonearm cable and power cords and it's $25k only for the front end. Which means $100k system, about. |
Dave,
You are a big thinker. |
One does not contradict another. What you said is obvious and that's why I didn't even mention it.
Yes, I hear enough people putting $3k cartridges on $3k turntables and playing them thru $2k phono. This will not be bad, this will be stupid. |
I heard that too, that you can get at least some Japanese cartridges directly from Japan. Sometimes, even buying from the UK is less expensive. American prices on imports are often bloated because..you know why. Yes, $10k for a great cartridge that would last 20 years would be acceptable to me. Not the case.
As for the mystic surrounding this..to a degree maybe for some.
If you have great turntable, tonearm and phono stage, sure, you just get the cartridge you think will be best for this set-up and your taste. Still, the price appears to be disproportinally high for many. Bazaar economy laws of course apply, but this doesn't mean that the thing itself has such a high intrinsic value.
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Anyway, Japanese and some others cartridge makers love audiophiles. And not just cartridge makers. They feed on obsession.
I heard that Accuphase costs half as much or so in Japan, don't know about Kondo Japan and Wavac. Americans can be funny too. How much is D'Agostino Momentum integrated? $35k or so? Do you really think that it sounds better than Gryphon Diablo 300 for $16k? I doubt it, but since I haven't heard either, I would be happy if someone who had commented. To be blunt - this hobby field is full of BS, but this doesn't mean that there is nothing but it. |
Couple of years ago one could get Lyra Delos for $1k or so from the UK. That semed reasonable. As for Sumiko and lesser Koetsu, though I am unfamiliar with them, there is an opinion that they are not really good enough. There is also $1.5k Goldring, which is supposedly acceptable. Kiseki and Transfiguration for about $3.5k would be as high as I ever cared to go. Provided the rest of the analog set-up is up to this level.
Not Bugatti - Koenigsegg, $2million. I think, they make a dozen each year. |
If I were those Japanese cartridge makers I would take the prices much higher, say, $50k for top of the line models. All Japanese makers, they know how to talk to each other. How many would still buy them? Enough, I guess. |
Rich people are as diverse as the rest. What is often true is that my 10 dollars is their one dollar or less.
Also, not all audiophiles who have great systems are exactly rich. They have been improving their set-ups for many years and eventually might have systems that sound incredible and would cost over $100k if everything was bought new now.
Bill, I heard of Air Tight cartridges. Balanced warm sounding? |
To repeat myself - cartridges don't last long if you play them a lot, they are disposable elements in the system. If you buy $10k cartridges in a number of years you will have spent $100k. How does it sound to a reasonable ear, $100k for cartridges? |
Herzan platform? What's this?.
Yeah, I was talking about $10k cartridge replaced every 1.5-2 years without any big discounts and generous trade-in policies.
Generally speaking, I think $10k - $15k cartridges are really only for those who already did every imaginable upgrade, it is the last touch.
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Bill, if I remember right you have Lamm ML2.2 amps and Avant-Garde speakers, and you use Kubala Sosna cables. If I were you I would definitely wanted to try best Purist Audio and Echole cables. The outcome of this comparizon is unknown, it may be a better move than upgrading the cartridge. Each time, at a much lower level, I upgrade my Purist Audio cables and power cords, my $375 Goldring 1042 MM cartridge sounds better and better. The difference is not slight. Good cartridges have more potential than it may seem, the same with speakers. |
Herzan looks serious. Swiss things. How do they compare to Vibroplanes? |
Yeah, probably, that's why I said "generally speaking", this would be possible guidelines.
In any case, I hope that this thread will help some people avoid big and costly mistakes, including the mistakes they might never be aware of because the system will sound better and yet.. |
Looking at all this from a different angle, sometimes you want to upgrade, have a specific amount for this and start thinking what exactly you could upgrade. So it might turn out to be a very expensive cartridge because you can’t upgrade turntable or phono or amps or even cables. It is actually my own current situation. I do $1k upgrade a year, usually just one item, sometimes two. But I have only two more steps for this - one more interconnect and one more power cord. After that I will probably have to switch to 2-3 years cycle unless I am very lucky. And I see no reason to get $1k cartridge, though my phono would still more or less hold its own. I will wait. |
Now that's the price of a record !
Yeah, electrical power is a never ending struggle. Here, in addition to a very dirty current, voltage fluctuates from 115 to 128. PS Audio Premier does stabilize it and cleans it pretty good, but if it is too bad it spends a lot of energy on itself and the dynamics gets compromized. Still incomparably better than without it. Power cords from the wall to the regenerator make a difference, by the way.
Unpgrading your amps/speakers set-up would be a huge undertaking, that would probably take the entire system to the ultimate level. |
Yeah, this could be interesting dilemma for some. If you have $10k to upgrade your analog front end and your table arm and phono seem just fine but cartridge and isolation could be better, what do you do? Do you spend it all on Herzan active, supercartridge or do 3/7 split and get Minus-K platform and another cartridge? And how can you know in advance? I suppose, you can return the platforms if bought from authorized dealers or directly, though. But not cartridges. The answer to this question is, I think, you have to develop 'audiophile instinct'. It will not always be right but in most cases it will. |
Syntax, you are right too, but I didn't want to go into this openly, though indirectly I did. 'Audiophile class warfare' is something that we should try and avoid. Yes, if at least half of all audiophiles everywhere stop paying these insane amounts for the cartridges, things would probably get better for most. As for the distributors, that's another interesting story, and it goes far beyond audio and the US. Even French farmers suffer not to mention African miners.
Deaf reviewers... I don't have an impression that most of them are deaf, but if they say everything they really think their livelihood will almost certainly get very insecure. Do you meet many people who are ready for that? |
Does anyone make custom cartridges with the best god damn coils, magnets and diamonds? Brazilian Rosewood cartridge body, please. No, not Indian, not Honduran - Brazilian. I don't want no stones, corals, plastic, metal etc. Wood only for me.
Nice box, great reviews, herd instinct, Japanese mistique - right. |
And custom tonearm too, and they should be voiced together. Now that would be worth paying for, I would hope. |
I won't argue, I don't know.
Michael Fremer must've upset many people with what he said. Even worse, that table and arm are thought by many to be one of the handful of the very best regardless of price. |
Halcro, if you are right it will make me happy, but I would like to hear what other very experienced audiophiles can say. It may also be a problem of defining "better" objectively. As I understand, correct me if I am wrong, no MC can compete with 'best' MMs in terms of coherence and impact. |
Fremer also appears to confirm that turntable, tonearm and phono stage are all far more important than cartridge. Cartridge must be excellent too, of course. |
Yes, whatever it is vintage is not for everyone. What about Grado Reference, Soundsmith, Audio Note, Clearaudio, Nagaoka ?
Bill, based on your brief description I would've chosen Airtight too, though I do like great pace and dynamics. What I don't like is exaggeration, larger than life presentation.
As Vladimir of Lamm said - You can get incredible bass out of transistor design but that's not how it sounds in reality -. |
The biggest problem with Ferrari and the likes is not the cost, you need to know how to drive or you are fool and possibly dead real quick. The second problem is that in many areas there is nowhere to drive such a car, even BMW M3 might be too much.
If I was a very rich man I would do the following. I would get that Continuum table with arm and a few different top phono stages and audition many cartridges at different price levels, including vintage. After that I would post my findings here describing the sound of each in great details. Someone among us could do it. |
analogueseduction.net in the UK appears to be a good place to buy cartridges, many cost less than here. I bought my cartridge there and talked to them before that. They also have some cartridges that I didn't see here, though they still may be sold here too. The Cartridge Man MI cartridges and EMT cartridges, for example. They can't ship Lyra to the US, though. |
