What is the “World’s Best Cartridge”?

Dear @frogman : " How many examples of equipment with great measurements that sounded mediocre, even poor, have we all experienced? "

your statement was something that happened several years ago but not today, could be everywhere an item that fullfil what you said but you can be sure that’s an exception.

I have first hand experiences about measurements and learned what to look for through them and which ones are really important. I learned all those when we manufactured a phonolinepreamp and this was over 10 years ago and even that that phonolinepreamp inside the owners systems today is still competitive and it still is my phonolinepreamp reference that has some modifications over the originals units.

In those times we fixed the main targets at different levels of the design and builded needs. We makes several mesuremenst with our tools about and other measurements were made by others because we did not own the Audio Precision as the one used by J.Atkinson in STRPH and guess what: the unit measured really good and excellent in some parameters before we listened to it and when we did it the unit was " rigth on targets " and I can tell you that we were and are extremely demanding MUSIC lovers/audiophiles. At the end we only had to fine tunning it with almost no severe active/passive parts changes.

With out those kind of first hand experiences you can’t understand the today measures importance and how read those measures and what are telling you.

The amps I own were modified and were measured and are excellent even today and the same I can tell with my speakers and speaker crossover modified too and my tonearm is like the phonolinepreamp " made in home " and excellent too ..Those adjectives were shared by audio friends to me.

As I said my subjectivity is well weigthed by objectivity and enjot a lot the MUSIC putting at minimum developed distortions/colorations and yes my real reference is live MUSIC seated at near field position.

You can be sure that the MUSIC " color " you like it is not exactly what likes M Lavigne, me or any other gentleman. What you can be sure too is that I always try to finish a dialogue when the other gentleman tells me: " I like it " end of the history because no one can't questioning that personal preference but what I can do is to analyze the overall scenario/context room/system from where is developed that " I like it ".

R.

really the MC Century, Anna Diamond, and MC Diamond are really all equivalent.

all three excellent cartridges. maybe nuanced differences at most.

the MC Century was a limited volume, so they had to bring out the Anna D., then war, thus the MC Diamond. three versions of the same thing.

@mikelavigne the name change actually did involve a design change as well. Ortofon’s chief designer is on record explaining about the new suspension of the MC Diamond, using nanotubes or something. In a video interview with Fremer (part of his coverage of the Munich event) he boasts about the enormous improvements or words to that effect. He also says they felt a desire to change the suspension because some owners had experienced tracking issues with the discontinued Anna and Anna Diamond.

I’m one such owner and my regular Anna sounded gorgeous but was by far the worst tracker I ever owned. I bought it used and therefore couldn’t be sure what caused the tracking problems. A factory rebuild didn’t solve the issue, so I resent it and after almost a year (!) of waiting they returned it with the new nano suspension installed. Thankfully this has improved the tracking somewhat, although it still doesn’t track everything. FWIW, sonically I don’t hear any difference with the old Anna, but perhaps things will improve after the suspension has settled.

@atmasphere ,yes, that is the cause of the brightness and I could EQ that easily in the digital realm but 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.

@edgewear , Ortofon is very conservative with it's ratings and list's the MC Diamonds tracking ability at 315 Hz as 80um which is excellent and should easily handle any record. The Replicant 100 and GygerS styluses are the two most severe styluses out there and really have to be spot on in the groove. If you are still miss-tracking it is either a set up problem or just as likely something else you are hearing like phono stage clipping. 

When I have mine in hand I will run it through the torture course and report back what it can do. Yours should do the same.  

An interesting aside when it comes to styluses. The line contact stylus of the MSL Platinum Signature is really quite special. Unlike other line contact styluses I have looked at, the tip of the MSL stylus is broadly radiused. It's azimuth can actually be off a few degrees and the tracking would not be affected at all. Channel separation would still suffer but not tracking or record wear. I have not had the chance to look at an Air Tight stylus but given the same designer I suspect it is similar. The Air Tights were very popular for a while but it seems you hardly hear about them any more. I do think the Opus 1 is overpriced so, fewer people are willing to shell out for it.

It is also interesting to note that in spite of it's rather high voltage output the Platinum Signature's gain is about 5 dB higher in transimpedance mode than in voltage mode. It is also as dynamic as any high output cartridge I have heard in transimpedance mode. What is just as special and the one area where this set up excels over any other I have used in my system is bass definition. Marcus Miller's bass now has almost the same gruf timbre it had at the Blue Note a month ago. I still think the bass could be better but I still have improvements to make in my subwoofer system.