I was banned not only one but twice from that forum
now i remember why i should not post here or attempt to interact with you.
note to self; don't take the bait again.🙄
What is the “World’s Best Cartridge”?
I believe that a cartridge and a speaker, by far, contribute the most to SQ.
The two transducers in a system.
I bit the bulllet and bought a Lyra Atlas SL for $13K for my Woodsong Garrard 301 with Triplanar SE arm. I use a full function Atma-Sphere MP-1 preamp. My $60K front end. It is certainly, by far, the best I have owned. I read so many comments exclaiming that Lyra as among the best. I had to wait 6 months to get it. But the improvement over my excellent $3K Mayijima Shilabi was spectacular-putting it mildly.
I recently heard a demo of much more pricy system using a $25K cartridge. Seemed to be the most expensive cartridge made. Don’t recall the name.
For sure, the amount of detail was something I never heard. To hear a timpani sound like the real thing was incredible. And so much more!
This got me thinking of what could be possible with a different kind of cartridge than a moving coil. That is, a moving iron.
I have heard so much about the late Decca London Reference. A MI and a very different take from a MC. Could it be better? The World’s Best? No longer made.
However Grado has been making MI cartridges for decades. Even though they hold the patent for the MC. Recently, Grado came out with their assault on “The World’s Best”. At least their best effort. At $12K the Epoch 3. I bought one and have been using it now for about two weeks replacing my Lyra. There is no question that the Atlas SL is a fabulous cartridge. But the Epoch is even better. Overall, it’s SQ is the closest to real I have heard. To begin, putting the stylus down on the run in grove there is dead silence. As well as the groves between cuts. This silence is indicative of the purity of the music content. Everything I have read about it is true. IME, the comment of one reviewer, “The World’s Best”, may be true.
- ...
- 576 posts total
Ahhh... point taken. If the SUT were truly symmetrical as you state then one could reverse the polarity of the primary and net the exact same frequency response at the secondary. Some SUT's behave better than others in this manner but one polarity will always measure 'different' than the other. As for the cartridge we already have the interesting wrinkle that by necessity the L & R coils are out of polarity with each other so this is a much grayer area. In both cases I would expect these to be far easier to observe phenomena than the behavior of a symmetrical vs. asymmetrical cable. It is important to note that jut because phenomena are measurable in the real or theoretical world doesn't equate to them being meaningful. dave
|
When someone gets banned twice and still feels it is the forum's fault I believe I might be justified in thinking that is a red flag. With respect to my comment that feeling the need to turn the volume up is an indication that there is something wrong in the reproduction chain, I confess I heard that repeated many times by the sages at the Canadian UHF Magazine, which is now pretty much defunct. In its day (1982 - originally as Hi-Fi Sound magazine - up to cessation of the print version after issue #97). It was an unusual magazine in that it would not review a product that was not up to snuff, and was honest about those it did. They did not lead me astray. |
do you have a reference on this? I know the origin of the decibel scale is based on 1dB being the smallest difference in level detectable by the average person. In system I find a overall level change of 1dB to be quite subtle and that is the topic at hand. When dealing with specific frequency ranges (crossovers) smaller changes are audible if you know what to listen for and when it comes to soundstage a 1dB change in one channel (ie balance) also is easy to hear. It has also been argued that the entire concept of level matching and ABX testing is pointless since due to comb filtering, small changes in listening position can dominate the listening experience. (i can't dig up my reference article on this one so a pointer will save a lot of google work)
dave |
@mijostyn Where did you get this info from? I’ve 4 Decca cartridges and they are incredibly robust in that there’s no cantilever to get destroyed in an accident. They all track splendidly although they can be susceptible to noise from unclean vinyl.
|
- 576 posts total