Cartridge ISOLATION; What Say You?

I once had the experience of hearing a modestly skilled sax player perform in my listening room, standing between my pair of Sound Lab 845PX speakers. Now THAT was a real lesson in comparing live sound to reproduced sound in my system.  I was actually quite pleased with the degree to which my system could sound "live" next to the real thing.  But single instruments in free space are easiest to replicate.  I don't pretend my system could do as well with a full orchestra, if that was possible to demo in my listening space.  One thing that always strikes me when I get to hear musicians live and unamplified is the dynamics.  Live music is first of all more dynamic than most of us can achieve at home, or at least that is the biggest challenge to replicate.  All that audiophile stuff about imaging and depth is nice to think about, and establishing those two senses is a worthy goal in stereo, but in real life one cannot always place the musicians in space with eyes closed, either side to side or front to back.  What one can sense is the startling undistorted SPLs effortlessly achieved by live musicians.

With all due respect to fans of TOP (I am not one), I am thinking that a casino PA system is not likely to enchant me.  But for all I know, the named venue is set up like a real concert hall.

"a new isolator... is immaterial".  That's it! The perfect isolator is no isolator.

Sadly, the opportunity to hear live musicians playing music is dramatically reduced in the Washington DC area, and I imagine it is reduced in most American cities of note. Thanks to the pandemic for that. We used to attend concerts or clubs for live music once or twice a month. I’d guess we’ve done it 2-3 times in the past 18 months. Two of our favorite jazz clubs have shut down permanently.


tom and tomic, your exchange reminds me of a long article on rational thought and discourse that appeared in the New Yorker in the last 3 weeks.

Ralph, Have you had any hands-on experience with the Rega P10?  I am no Rega fanboy, but I find the approach taken in their flagship TT to be very interesting:  Super low mass plinth made of materials that are not likely to store energy efficiently and of low enough mass also to further reduce energy storage, but with a rigid beam connecting the base of the tonearm mount to the bearing assembly.  I'd like to hear it.

MC, It's interesting that you quote Isaac Newton's laws, call people "Einstein" as a form of sarcastic insult to indicate he or she is not brilliant, and use a famous photo of Einstein as your icon.  Yet it was Einstein who displaced Newton's Laws with his Theory of Relativity. Go figure.

Elliot, I am still stewing, because you said “Lew’s thing is ugly”. My wife refuses to comment.

The ugly truth is none of us understands the physics well enough to judge the Enabler out of context, where context is one’s own ears and one’s own audio system. My hunch is that results will vary according to cartridge construction and compliance, headshell composition, tonearm damping, effective mass, and bearing stability, etc. So insults and invective have no place in this discussion. If you’re interested, give it a shot and report back here stating the cartridge and tonearm you use, at minimum. Saying “I loved it”, or “I hated it”, doesn’t help.

The suspense is killing me. Does Peter Ledermann advocate using the enabler? Or what does he advocate after having demonstrated vibration in the cartridge and tonearm? I agree with Ralph. But then I will be chastised for using logic rather than experience. On the other hand I have had 45 years of experience playing LPs. Anyway I wonder what is the possible advantage of absolutely preventing vibration from moving from the cartridge into the tonearm? Especially if the tonearm is properly damped. I suppose it could not hurt to dissipate that energy within the context of the enabler, so in that sense the enabler may be harmless. For undamped tonearms by extension I suppose the enabler might be helpful. In previous discussions of these devices I mentioned that this issue is much bigger for low compliance i.e. moving coil cartridges than it is for high compliance cartridges which can dissipate more energy in their suspensions.