MC-MM-MI CARTRIDGES . DO YOU KNOW WHICH HAS BETTER QUALITY PERFORMANCE? REALLY?

Dear @terry9 : " Am I correct in thinking that this is your favourite MM? Would you care to say more about why you like it? "

 

Well, not exactly. Today I have not a favorite cartridge between the top quality performers that share in between almost the same performance characteristics where what change in each one of those top cartridge motor designs mainly is its " color ".

All top LOMC/MI/MM/IM/ELECTROSTATIC and the like has first rate transient response; rhythm, dynamics, brigthness,agresiveness, tone equilibrium top to boo

om," perfet " handled of both FR extremes,no mistracking and superb noise floor. All can give you what is in the recordingadding the lessand losting the less.

I can easily truly enjoy MUSIC with any one of them.

 

Yes, now that I remember I have a favrite:MUSIC home system near " perfect " reproduction.

 

R.

@rauliruegas Perfect for you, but then that is all that counts. 

The difference between 50 kHz and 100 kHz is one octave, an octave not a single one of us can hear, not to mention most loudspeakers can not reproduce. The Koetsu of the day sounded better to my ear than the DL1000. After about a week in the store the DL1000 failed internally. Shortly thereafter Denon released the DL1000A. It also had a ridiculously low output. 

here is one thing I have become absolutely sure about during my years of expressing an interest in Vinyl Replay is that a Cartridge is required to achieve this.

With that Bombshell Dropped, I can now reveal I have collected a Cart' +One, Two, Three over the years.

I can also reveal these Cart's do not share the same design and the bulk of the collection is in storage.

I myself have many spare Headshells, in the same material and very close in weight or the same in their weights.

I have opted for the experiencing the Cart' of choice, and have not shown an interest in Pre Mounting Headshells for easy change outs.

One Cart' at a time is all that is able to be listened  to and I stick with this as the methodology.

@mijostyn  : My mistake because I owned the DL 1000A and was and is way way better than any Koetsu of those times and I know becase I owned almost all Koetsu cartridges of those times.

Even today the DL 1000A is a great performer and one of the favorities of your Lambda designer and you can ask him.

 

That the speaker can not reproduce is not the issue.

 

R.

Dear @terry9 ​@mijostyn  and friends:It's obvious that not only the " color " on each cartridge changes but mainly the " color " where the other named characteristics change too but in different way and in way lower gradation.

 

Now, my audio/sound/MUSIC experiences through over 40+ years gave me a lot of lessons on how a human being " hears and listen and in my case this is what I do when listening at my place and what I learned it happening:

first I like to listen MUSIC/recordings at nigth when the street noise floor is lower as is my building noise floor.

I never wear any kind of clothe not made it by natural fabric as cotton, wool, silk and the like.

I don't listen with the room/system ligth off but not very shiny and I never listen with my eyes closed. Yes, my seat position is near field and when I want to listen something seriously by seat is a wood chair with my head totally free of any near boundary because my normal seat is a confortable couch that absorb the sound from speakers what is not a good idea.

 

" 

There's Life Above 20 Kilohertz!
A Survey of Musical Instrument Spectra to 102.4 KHz

---

James Boyk
California Institute of Technology
Music Lab, 0-51 Caltech, Pasadena, CA 91125, USA
Tel: +626 395-4590, E-mail: boyk@caltech.edu
Home: http://www.cco.caltech.edu/~musiclab

Copyright © 1992, 1997 James Boyk. All rights reserved.

 

Abstract

At least one member of each instrument family (strings, woodwinds, brass and percussion) produces energy to 40 kHz or above, and the spectra of some instruments reach this work's measurement limit of 102.4 kHz. Harmonics of muted trumpet extend to 80 kHz; violin and oboe, to above 40 kHz; and a cymbal crash was still strong at 100 kHz. In these particular examples, the proportion of energy above 20 kHz is, for the muted trumpet, 2 percent; violin, 0.04 percent; oboe, 0.01 percent; and cymbals, 40 percent. Instruments surveyed are trumpet with Harmon ("wah-wah") and straight mutes; French horn muted, unmuted and bell up; violin sul ponticello and double-stopped; oboe; claves; triangle; a drum rimshot; crash cymbals; piano; jangling keys; and sibilant speech. A discussion of the significance of these results describes others' work on perception of air- and bone-conducted ultrasound; and points out that even if ultrasound be taken as having no effect on perception of live sound, yet its presence may still pose a problem to the audio equipment designer and recording engineer. Given the existence of musical-instrument energy above 20 kilohertz, it is natural to ask whether the energy matters to human perception or music recording. The common view is that energy above 20 kHz does not matter, but AES preprint 3207 by Oohashi et al. claims that reproduced sound above 26 kHz "induces activation of alpha-EEG (electroencephalogram) rhythms that persist in the absence of high frequency stimulation, and can affect perception of sound quality." [4]       Oohashi and his colleagues recorded gamelan to a bandwidth of 60 kHz, and played back the recording to listeners through a speaker system with an extra tweeter for the range above 26 kHz. This tweeter was driven by its own amplifier, and the 26 kHz electronic crossover before the amplifier used steep filters. The experimenters found that the listeners' EEGs and their subjective ratings of the sound quality were affected by whether this "ultra-tweeter" was on or off, even though the listeners explicitly denied that the reproduced sound was affected by the ultra-tweeter, and also denied, when presented with the ultrasonics alone, that any sound at all was being played.       From the fact that changes in subjects' EEGs "persist in the absence of high frequency stimulation," Oohashi and his colleagues infer that in audio comparisons, a substantial silent period is required between successive samples to avoid the second evaluation's being corrupted by "hangover" of reaction to the first.       The preprint gives photos of EEG results for only three of sixteen subjects. I hope that more will be published. In a paper published in Science, Lenhardt et al. report that "bone-conducted ultrasonic hearing has been found capable of supporting frequency discrimination and speech detection in normal, older hearing-impaired, and profoundly deaf human subjects." [5] They speculate that the saccule may be involved, this being "an otolithic organ that responds to acceleration and gravity and may be responsible for transduction of sound after destruction of the cochlea," and they further point out that the saccule has neural cross-connections with the cochlea. [6] Even if we assume that air-conducted ultrasound does not affect direct perception of live sound, it might still affect us indirectly through interfering with the recording process. Every recording engineer knows that speech sibilants (Figure 10), jangling key rings (Figure 15), and muted trumpets (Figures 1 to 3) can expose problems in recording equipment. If the problems come from energy below 20 kHz, then the recording engineer simply needs better equipment. But if the problems prove to come from the energy beyond 20 kHz, then what's needed is either filtering, which is difficult to carry out without sonically harmful side effects; or wider bandwidth in the entire recording chain, including the storage medium; or a combination of the two.       On the other hand, if the assumption of the previous paragraph be wrong — if it is determined that sound components beyond 20 kHz do matter to human musical perception and pleasure — then for highest fidelity, the option of filtering would have to be rejected, and recording chains and storage media of wider bandwidth would be needed.  "

 

Now, human being " hears " not only with the ears but with his whole body along all his different senses and all the concious information stocked in his brain Amygdala but down there the majority of the Amygdala information we are not concious but has direct influence in all what our body does or reacts. Even our brain with all its resources and it does not matters that mijos can listen to 16khz the brain and senses synthetize over 50khz even if the speakers can's do it.

We are 24 hours alive and everything counts that's why I don't listen with my eyes closed because when I close my eyes immediatly I " look " different " figures/scenarios/ideas " etc etc.

The sense of vew is way important when we are listen at home as is to choose a time to listen when our nervous system is more or less in equilibrium because if we are under high distress or something to worry our senses are afected directly and the rhythm of what we are listening changes that when we are listening in equilibrium.

 

It's really complex what happens around/surround us and normally we don't take care about. I care on all the listening experience at a live event or in a room/system.

 

As all of you I listen my system to live each time the developing of the MUSIC enjoyment, I'm a MUSIC lover not a hardware lover.

 

R.