Cartridge ISOLATION; What Say You?

In locus sounds impressively Latin and gives an air of certainty, which is unfortunate since in this case that is the last thing we have. The phono cartridge is moving around like all get-out. It isn’t even "in locus" with respect to the head shell, which is the one thing it is most "in locus" with of them all.

To understand this it helps to understand, neither is the cartridge body. In fact, not one speck of any of it is "in locus" that is the whole point! The instant the stylus moves, the other end of the cantilever does not instantly move exactly 1:1. Quite the contrary.

What happens instead? A wave travels down the cantilever to the other end. Whereupon reaching the end it is reflected and travels right back down to the stylus. Don’t take my word for it either, watch the darn Ledermann video!

This same concept of vibration does not stop here. The whole cartridge body is vibrating. Upon reaching the head shell a lot of this energy reflects back into the cartridge, and all the way back down into the stylus. This is what we are trying so hard to avoid. This is where the Enabler comes in.

But it does not stop at the head shell either. The same process continues on down the arm tube to the bearings, base, plinth, and on and on. Each and every one of these interfaces is an opportunity for vibrational energy to either be absorbed and dissipated or reflected back down to the stylus.

The generator of course cannot distinguish one vibration from another. It sums them all together and away we go. This is what we hear when we play a record. Not some academic theoretical "in locus". A whole bunch of stuff vibrating around like mad. As far from in locus as you can get.

Wood is not inherently damping. Quite the opposite. Why it is used in so many musical instruments. Notice no musical instruments made out of carbon fiber? Fiberglass? Composite materials like these ARE inherently damping. 

"Nude" merely means the body doesn't extend around and cover as much of the mechanism. Other than that, no difference.  

why are only MCs "nude"? 

Because he is so handsome. Michelangelo did his best with what he had to work with.

So many interesting points.

Question, is it not the job of the cantilever to function as suspension along with transferring the vibrations to the motor of the cartridge?

No, the only job of the cantilever is to transfer stylus motion to the generator at the other end. The cantilever is really just a shaft, a stick, sometimes a pipe. Cactus needle, in the case of Ledermann and Schroeder.   

Usually somewhere along there the thing runs through a donut of rubber, or elastomer if you want to get fancy about it. That donut, together with whatever it is mounted in that holds it in place, is the suspension.  

In which case, shouldnt it be the only thing that is vibrating/moving?

Yes, but how you figure that is ever gonna happen? Nothing ever moves without making everything around it move. Stylus moves, cantilever moves, suspension moves, and this same thing continues right into the cartridge body, head shell, arm tube, arm bearings, arm base, plinth..... This is the whole point of using special material like the Enabler to help minimize all this harmful vibrating.  

If the cartridge is also suspended, would that not remove the accuracy/immediacy/directness of the transfer of energy - as the place where that energy should go, would be damped. In being damped, seems like the energy transfer would be reduced.

Correct. That is why it is so helpful to distinguish between people like me who are carefully explaining the precise nature of decoupling, and those who leap to all kinds of unwarranted conclusions. 

To wit:

The cartridge however is very low mass and has to track a violently undulating groove. It cannot just be free to move. It must be held rigidly, but yet also in a way that facilitates some vibration to dissipate into the more massive arm, while damping cartridge vibration, and all of this at the same time as not reflecting vibration right back down into the stylus. 

One to remember. Watch for when they over-simplify the complex. Seriously, watch! It is fun, because for sure fifteen minutes later they will be over-complicating the simple!

It’s about Jitter getting into the tonearm and back into the cartridge isn’t it?

It’s about less rigid fastening of the cartridge body, no matter how thin, to the arm isn’t it? This UGLY thing is quite thick.

And, the reviewer (not the isolator’s maker) mentioned a less rigid fastening of the tonearm base to the plinth, a double whammy of some, even if infinitesimal, movement.

Jitter into/back out of the arm, if acknowledged, is unwanted movement, sooooo, isolate from jitter? a speck of isolation (movement) reduces the jitter going/thus reduces the jitter feedback?

That's what makes the Strain-Gauge, supposedly essentially Jitter Free so tempting to me.

By Jove I think he's got it!  

Sounds like you've been watching Ledermann and know the importance of lowering moving mass. Soundsmith MI carts have much lower moving mass than MC, and strain gauge has even less moving mass than MI. This is huge, and has a lot to do with the outstanding performance. If you read the reviews SG1 is cost no object performance for what works out to be quite reasonably attainable cost.  

This still leaves the question of cartridge vibration control. Always prefer vibration control as more precise than isolation. There is no true isolation ever, but we can tune frequency and amplitude, and this is vibration control. 

With the cartridge we want some combination of materials structured so as to hold the cartridge firmly in a fixed relationship to the head shell, and yet at the same time have just enough flexibility on a micro level to dissipate cartridge vibration and not reflect it all right back down into the stylus.   

Of course, that will lead to what Tonearm?

Origin Live Conqueror, or Enterprise. I had the old Conqueror MkIII and now have Enterprise MkIV. These are awesome arms! Among the many great features are the hard-wired phono leads. I’ve had both and there is no doubt all the extra connections of an interconnect is not good. Also the quality needed at this level costs a small fortune. Whatever you do go with an arm with integral leads.

Please ignore the gnats. Any time you see someone twisting things around or even making stuff up out of whole cloth that is a sure sign of a weak mind and even weaker argument. Ignore them.

The truth is when using a properly designed tone arm then compliance and other cartridge matching becomes moot. Therefore, whenever you see someone stressing the importance of understanding compliance, mass, etc and talking about matching what you do is make note of which arm they are talking about and cross it off your list.

Then if you really want to save a lot of time and effort do the same for the person telling you how absolutely essential these things are. All you have to do is look at my system, read the listener comments, or heck even come and hear for yourself to get it.

I gather you do not advocate adding a soft layer under the tonearm base, or adding a soft layer above any cartridge, correct?

Nor do I. So what happens around here over and over again, someone says something perfectly clear and uncontroversial, then someone else comes along twists it around to resemble nothing even close and fifteen immediately parrot the distortion. Here is what I actually said:

The cartridge however is very low mass and has to track a violently undulating groove. It cannot just be free to move. It must be held rigidly, but yet also in a way that facilitates some vibration to dissipate into the more massive arm, while damping cartridge vibration, and all of this at the same time as not reflecting vibration right back down into the stylus.

The Cartridge Enabler is not soft. Went out of my way to make clear it is not felt. Not soft. Engineered material. Not at all what people are talking about.

Thanks OP, good to see a few decent earnest audiophiles still around here.

Ledermann’s Strain Gauge is good enough it more than likely will be next for me. There are not a lot of reviews but search around, they are there, and the consensus is the SG1 is right up there with the world’s best cost no object cartridges. We are talking $10k and up carts. At this level of course you are using a $10k and up phono stage. One review if I remember right was $30k or more of cart and stage and the SG1 was right there.

This is with the stock power supply. There are gains to be made upgrading the power supply. Not that it is needed, but nice to know. Combine with being able to buy extra stylus/cantilever for dirt cheap, user-replaceable no less, it makes the SG1 about as much of a stone bargain no-brainer as can be.

What makes it especially attractive for me is since it eliminates the need for a phono stage then selling the Herron the SG1 nets out to a very reasonable upgrade cost especially considering it should be like going from entry level Koetsu to their finest for only about $5k. Can hardly say no to that.

What part of f=ma do you need help with?

My arm/arm-board/plinth (70mm 7 layer JVC) are solid, thus I believe all groove/stylus vibration is going into the cartridge;

Then either they stopped teaching basic physics in high school, or you slept through it. Newton, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. What you describe is impossible. Never happen. If it did we could not play baseball, tennis, drive cars, on and on.    

The reason the stylus vibrates in the first place is the record groove hits it. Therefore, equal and opposite, just as much vibrational energy goes into the record as the cartridge. Equal and opposite. Are you sure you never heard this before? Just checking.   

These record grooves by the way, they are at right angles to each other which means each side is 45 degrees to vertical, which means Ralph is wrong all the vibrational energy is not in the plane of the platter.   

If you want to try gaskets and duct tape be my guest. Right now on the Tekton Owner's Group on FB there is a guy thinks it funny to use jumper cables. So har de har har. Knock yourself out. When (if) you decide to come back to reality and learn something I will still be here. Who knows if I can set aside the BS might even answer another question or two.   

It is not a matter of "think" that is for people who guess. It is a matter of reason, by which I mean understand and reason logically from what we know.

Everything vibrates. If the cartridge is rigidly attached to the head shell then this vibration travels through the head shell into the arm tube and so on, with the result the whole thing is vibrating. There are plenty of Peter Ledermann videos you can watch if you want to learn how big a problem this is. The best one is where he talks about how analog is like digital because jitter has the stylus jumping back and forth sampling the groove instead of tracing it like we think it does.

It is critically important to control all these spurious vibrations. https://youtu.be/WmwnN_T_wW8?t=1200  

I used to think rigidly mounted with massive stiffness was the way to go. Until it turned out my Origin Live Conqueror did sound better just sitting in the hole not bolted tightly down. A lot of things are like this. Speakers and other components sound much better on springs. In all cases this is because it is better to let each thing vibrate and dissipate energy on its own rather than excite everything around it. Because vibration blurs detail, and harmonic vibration (it is all harmonic vibration by the way) alters tone and timbre. 

So the best approach is to decouple the cartridge from the arm. The cartridge however is very low mass and has to track a violently undulating groove. It cannot just be free to move. It must be held rigidly, but yet also in a way that facilitates some vibration to dissipate into the more massive arm, while damping cartridge vibration, and all of this at the same time as not reflecting vibration right back down into the stylus.

Watch Ledermann, he clearly shows how vibration travels up the cantilever and then right back down again to the stylus, which winds up being whipped around. Vibration control is everything. Rigidly mounting is not that great a method. Too much reflection, too much smearing.

My personal experience, first thing tried was fO.q tape. This stuff worked great on the arm tube and base so I cut a piece to fit between the head shell and cartridge. Nice improvement. Seemed to remove a layer of grunge that left dynamics and detail in place making them much more clear.

Then recently tried the Origin Live Cartridge Enabler. This looks like felt and some members with zero experience claim it is felt but even just looking at it is enough to know it is not just felt. The material is engineered to have one side up. One side against the cartridge, the other against the head shell. The same material is even cut into washers. When mounted the cartridge is held securely while also effectively isolated from the head shell.

This is definitely the way to go. The reasoning is solid and equally important matches actual results heard. But as always don't take anyone's word for it. Put in the time and effort to understand for yourself and then finally when you are sure confirm it all with actual experience.