Dear Raul, I am not put off or insulted by your remarks on the Ayre. I have no dog in that fight, BUT I really don't think that the "problems" I am hearing, such as they are, reveal a qualitative shortcoming in the Ayre, except as noted the possibility that the Ayre is overloading on transients. I listened carefully last night for that type of phenomenon. What I am hearing is that the sound congeals on massed instrumental crescendos and gets kind of steely. This is not inconsistent with overload. By comparison, the Colibri (in a Triplanar on a slate plinthed Denon DP80 feeding directly into my modified MP1 phono stage) does a much better job of keeping things under control and delineating the instrumental lines. By the way, this evaluation was made listening to a fairly second-rate re-issue of The Genius of Ray Charles on feaux Atlantic. (Love the music.) The difference in sonics could even be due to the difference between the DV505 and the Triplanar, but I doubt that. When the music is simple in tonal character, the Azden does sound great. I tweaked VTF with my new digital gauge; that is not the problem. Next I will play with VTA. Eventually, yes, I will try to run the Azden direct into the MP1 phono section, but the MP1 will need a modification to accept such high gain, which I can do, altho it is a pain in the butt.
If you need a megabuck phono stage to appreciate this cartridge, does that not defeat the whole mystique of this pursuit, to a degree? Lets define "megabuck" as costing >US$10K. It would be interesting to learn what phono stages others are using with the Azden. Short of your phonolinepreamp, what would you suggest as an alternative to the Ayre, Raul?
Another simpler possibility is that the suspension of my particular sample of the Azden has suffered from the aging process and still needs more hours to come back to life. It's got about 4 hours now. Did anyone else hear what I described above, prior to break-in? |
I am hooked on MM cartridges, nevertheless. |
Sounds like a troll to me. |
Will not raise VTF until I've spoken to Peter. Would in any case raise VTF by 0.1g increments from the present 1.6g. |
Except once you've done it, you will not be able to make any adjustment in overhang or offset angle, so it must be done perfectly the first time. That's a bit scary. |
Ok, I guess I was being too "sensitive". Have at it. I am going downstairs to see whether my Super Nova stylus can fit on my P8ES. |
Raul, Thank you for your thoughtful treatise. You speak of compliance as if higher is always better. I have been giving this a lot of thought, too. Suppose we take an auto analogy. If you drive a car with no suspension or a very stiff one (i.e., low compliance), the ride will indeed be very bumpy and the whole car, wheels and all, may be thrown up in the air or from side to side, if the road (the groove) is highly irregular, so obviously, some springiness (compliance) is necessary for a smooth ride. But on the other hand, if you drive a car that has a spring suspension and no shock absorbers ("dampers" in the English vernacular), the ride will also be a bit crazy; each bump in the road will cause the car to rise up which stretches the springs and we will experience a series of bounces, as the undamped springs react to the stretching effect of the bump until the energy imparted is dissipated. The wheels may or may not remain in contact with the road, but the weight on each wheel will vary wildly as the car bounces up and down. So, in my thought experiment, high compliance is not an unalloyed blessing. With high compliance, one must have some damping to dissipate the energy generated by compression of the springy cantilever. Have you found any relationship between tonearm damping and cartridge compliance as regards tracking ability? |
Raul, Have you considered that all your tonearms with removeable head shells and interchangeable arm tubes may compromise the performance of a really good LOMC? You are placing one or more additional physical contacts in the path of a signal that is 10 or more times lower in voltage than what you get from a typical MM. Moreover, if you also terminate the wires at a junction box at the turntable and then use RCA ICs to go from there to the phono section, you have yet another undesireable physical contact in the signal path. Some of the detail and nuance that are said to be uniquely elucidated by LOMCs, qualities that may distinguish that class of cartridges from all MMs, may not be reaching your speakers. Perhaps you have at least one tonearm that provides a "straight shot" from cartridge pin to preamp, in which case I stand corrected, but then you are not fairly comparing MCs to MMs, because you are using the two types in disparate tonearms. Just a thought. |
Raul, Altho I don't agree with your (rather negative) assessment of either Koetsu cartridges (at least as regards the Urushi) or the Triplanar tonearm, U da man. Still, you are talking about the results in your system (which is hugely different from mine) using your ears. Yet I am stimulated to try out some of your ideas. |
Dave, So don't tap the headshell. What's the full name and source of that anti-resonant paint, again. I seem to have lost the reference. Thx. |
Raul, Have you found surprising virtues in old MCs, as well as old MMs? I did see here or elsewhere that you were fond of the Supex (or one particular model of Supex). |
Dear Raul, Just to be certain I am not misunderstanding your last long post above, I take it that the following MMs have ranked as "stellar":
Audio Technica ATML 170 and 180 OCC, Grado The Amber Tribute, Grace Ruby, Garrot P77, Nagaoka MP-50 Super, B&O MMC2 and MMC20CL, AKG P8ES SuperNova, Reson Reca ,Astatic MF-100 and Stanton LZS 981.
Correct?
Have you tried the readily available latest version of the MP50, the Nagaoka MP500? |
Viper, Usually there is no actual capacitor at the input to a phono stage, except when one is deliberately added in order to properly load an MM cartridge. If you see a discrete capacitor in there, then yes you can measure it with a very good quality meter. (I say good quality, because the cap will no doubt be in the picoFarad (pF) range of values. A pico anything is 10 to the negative 12 power, or one-trillionth. Not many meters can measure such tiny values.) Other capacitance that affects a cartridge comes from the tonearm cable and from the gain device itself. Those capacitances are difficult or impossible to measure with a meter, but usually the maker of your cable will be able to tell you that the cable has X pF per foot of capacitance and if you can identify the devices used in the input gainstage of the phono section you can guesstimate the capacitance added there, which is usually very low but not negligible in this case. |
Raul et al, I am still waiting for you or someone to try one of the old Grado TLZ or XTE. I still have my TLZ, and I intend to give it a listen via an RS-A1 tonearm that I just bought. What I remember about it is that the TLZ was head and shoulders better than the other Grados of that era (I tried them in my system at the time), and on certain nights, when everything was just right, TLZ had tremendous "air" and detail plus never clinical sounding. |
Raul, Before auditioning the TLZ or any of these MMs you are enjoying, I first have to de-tune my phono section in order to tolerate the huge output of an MM compared to any low output MC. I know how to do it actually; it's just a matter of getting out the soldering iron. That's the beauty of your preamp over most others; you have both MM and MC capability without flipping switches or etc. |
Regarding the efficacy of loading MM cartridges at around 100K ohms instead of 47K, I discovered this myself many years ago by accident. (I soldered in the wrong resistor; when I then replaced the 100K one with a 47K one, the sound was definitely not as good.) A few years later I converted to an MC cartridge and forgot all about my finding. I thought at the time that it was some special quality of the particular cartridge I was using (maybe a Grado TLZ) and the preamp, etc. It is interesting to learn from Raul's much more vast experience that this appears to be a general fact of life for MMs. I wonder why this is so. One would not think that the difference in R at these high values, where the cartridge is essentially unloaded in both cases, would do much. Maybe it has something to do with the capacitance of the loading as well. Quien sabe? |
Dave, No photo seen in or near post #401 on the thread you referenced. I am kind of curious about the clips, if you can help. Thanks. |
Here is a relevant question for all retro-adapters to MM cartridges. What are the best sounding MM phono stages? Most "modern" phono stages are designed to maximize performance with MC types. As Raul found in designing the phono stage of his preamp, good results are not synonymous between MM and MC. Do any of you have a sense for this subject?
Also, while we are talking of MM cartridges, what about MI cartridges? Raul specifically named a few (e.g., the B&Os) that he liked at the outset of this thread, but the subject of MI designs has not been pursued. MI cartridges potentially have lower moving mass than even an MC does and yet higher output than an MC, closer to MM levels. |
Thanks, R. I did know that. Maybe my post implied otherwise. |
Raul, your long post of 6-25-09 on comparing two top line MCs to a bunch of old MMs is pretty heretical. If adopted, your ideas (on a less grand and less important scale of course) would be reminiscent of the impact of the Reformation on the church, that took place in England under Henry VIII. Only in this case, you might be turning the clock backwards rather than forward. The Audio Technica ATML-180 OCC, is that one available new these days? Are ALL the MM cartridges you named out of production? Further, in this short list you left out many of the other MMs that you previously praised highly. is that to be taken as significant or just due to the fact that you did not want to retype that long list? You are really stirring the pot. |
Just for laughs I wrote that. I know we are a tiny minority, and most audiophiles do not even know what goes on here, not to mention that true audiohiles are also a tiny minority. So we are a tiny part of a fringe group. |
"Dunk them, if they stayed afloat, they where guilty and got burned -- after they'd been dried first of course. If they sank -- to bad"
Axel, this form of justice is quoted in the Billy Wilder movie, "Fortune Cookie", about a guy who pretends to have a back injury in order to make money from the insurance company. The great Zero Mostel recites the above quote. Someone else says, "but what if the person was innocent?" Mostel replies, "Well then he's dead, but we found an honest man." |
Dgob, That Nagaoka MP50, is it a vintage "Super" version, or is it the current model available from Thakker, for example? Also, since this thread is about MMs, how do you like it? Thanks |
You mean all that stuff Elizabeth Taylor collected all those years was merely aluminum oxide and/or corundum? Do not tell my wife that her sapphire ring is just another inorganic chemical. |
Dear Raul, In your seminal post to start this thread, you mentioned that you prefer the older B&O cartridges, with sapphire cantilevers, to the SoundSmith versions, which have ruby cantilevers, and you attributed the sonic differences to sapphire vs ruby. Yet, the Grace F9Ruby is a fave of yours and many others. Is there a contradiction here? Could it be that the perceived sonic differences between the older B&Os and the newest ones made by SS have nothing to do with cantilevers?
Goatwuss, I mentioned in my post just above where you can find Nagaoka cartridges, via William Thakker on eBay. You can also buy them from LP Gear in the US. LP Gear AND Thakker sell many other MM types as well. |
Headsnappin, there are many threads on Vinyl Asylum regarding tonearm/cartridge matching. Here I have referenced a post by BKearns, taken from VA. BK is one of the smart guys, so I would take his message to heart.
http://www.audioasylum.com/audio/vinyl/messages/359920.html
To guesstimate what tonearm to use, you need to have some ballpark idea of the compliance of the cartridge and the effective mass of the tonearm (manufacturers usually give you these specs), but as BK says, after that the formulae are flawed so just go with his generalization. You can do a further search on the subject at VA, too. |
Raul, Your point that the match between tonearm and cartridge depends on more than just the resonant frequency is an excellent one and does run thru my mind when I read such mathematical treatments. I guess the idea is that once you make sure that the resonant frequency is not an issue, then the art of matching tonearms and cartridges, based on listening to different combinations thereof, comes into play. That's why all of us bug you so much on this topic. (I bet you get 10 private e-mail questions on tonearm/cartridge for every one posted on this and other sites.) You're just about the only one that has made a huge effort to sample the available options.
Raul, do you ever listen to MCs loaded at 47K ohms or higher? (See below.)
Dave, Allen Wright never misses the opportunity to reiterate his preference for loading MCs at 47K ohms. As I understand it, the reason for loading down an MC is to tame a high frequency peak that typified early MC cartridges. More modern MCs do not always produce such a peaky frequency response, so maybe they don't really need to be loaded down. I guess the proof is in the pudding; if it sounds good, it IS good (to paraphrase Duke Ellington, I think). As for Charles Hansen, like AW he is also very smart in his field, but his opinion is no more valuable than anyone else's, IMO. Yes, it's a tone control. So what? Dave, you've got to come over and listen to my Denon DP80 in slate. |
This is all off-topic, but once back in the day I also tried 47K with an MC, and it WAS bright. However, my present system and the system I had back then have nothing in common. In one way, this subject may indeed have relevance to the present discussion of MMs; possibly the lurking dissatisfaction with MCs after one has heard a high-quality MM running into 47K ohms is in some part due to the effect of the load resistor on MC performance. Which is why I asked Raul about his experience loading MCs. I'm just sayin'... |
Dear Raul, If there is a real measurable difference in SPL when one goes from 100R to 47K load, this indicates to me that 100R is too low for the particular cartridge, because some signal voltage is being lost to ground with that load. There is a certain value of load resistance where the voltage output reaches a plateau, which would be different for every cartridge and would depend upon its internal resistance and probably other parameters. Above that value, there should be no further increase in signal voltage output. One method that has been put forth to determine the optimal load for an MC is to start at a very low load resistance, where there is obvious loss of signal, and increase the value until there is no further decrement in voltage output. The elbow of this curve, where increasing R no longer results in a change of signal voltage, occurs at "critical damping", which has been taken as the optimal load. Having said all that, I would agree that the 47K load might be perceived as "louder" because there may be more apparent high frequency energy due to lack of damping. |
Dear Tobes, Your data would seem to be essentially in agreement with my statement. At all loads of 100R or higher, the voltage output varies very little, altho it does get a little better with each increment above 100R, by an amount which would be barely noticeable in comparison to what happens at 50R vs 100R. So my point was that in Raul's description of WHY 47K might be experienced as being "better" than more typical load R used with MCs, if there is a big difference in gain, then one might conclude that the original chosen load resistance was too low to begin with. For example, with your cartrdige, 50R would be too low. 47K would likely sound better than 50R for this reason in part. At 50R there would also be noticeable hf roll-off, too. |
The best cartridge is always the one that got away or that you cannot find at all. There is a reason for this, but if I divulge it you will think I am a cynic. |
By now, one could make a very very long list of MM and MI cartridges that have been recommended, sometimes with extravagant claims re performance, over the long course of this thread. It would be informative to know what cartridges you guys, especially Raul, have auditioned and found to be BAD. At least some of them must be disappointing. Which ones?
I've bought 4 or 5 cartridges based on what I've read here and Raul's private information, and I was wondering whether there is a guide book on what to avoid. |
Raul, I will say in advance, thanks for recommending the M20FL to me and for all your other previous good advice. Axel, where are setting VTF, and are you loading at 100K or 47K?
It still would be worthwhile to know what cartridges did not sound so good, or what ones were obviously inferior to specific other cartridges that were also auditioned in the same system. |
Dear Raul, I guess it is unfair to ask you or anyone else to declare that a cartridge is "bad" sounding. It might be best to try grouping them in terms of overall performance, as you suggest. |
Axel, I think you are safe. Your critiques are not so damning. You left room for alternative opinions. Moreover, since many of these cartridges are no longer made or the companies do not even exist (except for Ortofon, AT, and Lyra), there is no danger of insulting a manufacturer. And finally, we all agree that the tonearm matching and then the tt in use and the phono stage will affect observations of the kind you have offered. |
Dgob, Besides the MP50, what other MMs have you auditioned? Also, is the cartridge designated "AT20SLa" as you have written, or is it "AT20SS", as Raul and others have written? There are so many AT cartridges out there that one needs to know specifically. Anyway, your declaration that the AT sounds better than the XV1s and the Allaerts is pretty heretical and shocking; thanks for being so honest. |
Dgob et al, They are hard to find, at least on ebay. And now that the proverbial cat is out of the bag, those of us who don't own one will be bidding against each other. I am going to take the calm route of listening to my current stable of B&O MMC1, MMC20CL, Grado TLZ (my very own for about 20 years now in a drawer), Ortofon MF20L (or whatever it's called), AKG P8E. In the interim, if I see an AT20SS or SLa or AT15, I will grab it I guess. I am tempted to pick up a Nagaoka MP50 too, but it is not cheap from William Thakker or LP Gear.
I am trying to finish mounting a Dynavector DV505 on a slate plinth with a Lenco L75/PTP3 hybrid tt (see Lenco Heaven, if you don't know what that is). This will be my test bed for MMs and MIs, taking advantage of the interchangeable headshell. |
Hey guys, I just took a flyer on an Audio Technica AT12Sa off eBay. It seems to be lower down on the totem pole from the AT15 and 20, but it does have a Shibata stylus. And it was relatively cheap. Any experience with this one? |
Dear Raul, If you read my post you will see that I acknowledged that the AT12Sa is probably below the AT15 (and the AT20, as well). My question was whether anyone here had listened to an AT12Sa. In other words, how do you know for sure that the AT15Sa is better sounding than the AT12Sa? I am guessing that you actually auditioned an AT12 during your experimental phase, but I'd like to know for sure. Anyway, I will give it a try and let you know how it sounds, if you don't already know. |
Advice: Give it a try. Should be at least OK, if not just fine. I don't know the compliance of the Aida, but the Ace Space would qualify as "medium mass", which means it would work well with the upper end of low compliance and the lower end of high compliance cartridges. But the formulae are of limited value, so don't worry in advance. |
Just when you guys convinced me to try it, the Sumiko Andante P76 for sale ad seems to have expired. Ah, well.... |
I recently bought an AT13Sa off eBay, just because it was so inexpensive, and I was curious about it. Can the later styli in this series be used on the AT13? I refer to the styli for the AT15Sa or SS or the AT20Sa/SS. Thanks. |
I was just doing some exploring on my own. Your assessment is probably correct. However, I will have a listen and decide for myself. Thanks for your comments. PS, I just bought an NOS ATN20SS stylus, so when the "right" cartridge comes along, I will be ready. |
Raul not only lets cats out of bags regularly, he also farms kittens. |
Raul, Have you seen the new $16,000-ZYX? Evidently the ball is not only in the LOMC makers court; it is also on the cartridge. By my calculations, one can own anywhere from 60 to 100 MM cartridges for the price of that one. |
Raul, I saw a photo of the ZYX on VA. You might check the threads there. It has a tiny blue ball at one end which is said to soak up resonances. (How often have we read that line?) Hence my allusion to your remark about "the ball" being in the court of the LOMC makers. (In the US, we say, "the ball is in your/his/their court"; it's a reference to basketball or tennis. Perhaps in soccer- or futbol- playing countries the metaphor is different.) You would probably also find a photo at the new ZYX distributor's website. |
Raul, Axel, Dave, Frogman, et al: Yes, it's got to have something to do with the hugely different gain characteristic of MM vs MC. But if this is all, then why don't MI cartridges stand out head and shoulders above the rest? A well-designed MI cartridge has lower moving mass than an MC and voltage output similar to an MM, the putative "best" of both worlds. I am thinking that vanishingly low moving mass is not all that important, once one gets down to a certain level. |
Raul and others, what tonearms and headshells are you using with the P76? I am wondering whether there is a commonality to your listening experiences. I am probably going to try mine in a Dyna DV505 first. |
I don't know what Raul will say, but vintage 9-inch tonearms from Stax, Sony, Micro Seiki, Grace, Audio Technica, etc, etc, are all way less than $1000 in excellent used condition, and all are excellent. I think (and I hope) Raul will say that there is no such thing as one "best" tonearm. |
The 999 series would seem to be 0.1% less good than the 1000 series. Just kidding. |