Cartridge ISOLATION; What Say You?

Dear @tomwh  :  "   has shown me most people have not had enough exposure and or interest in what real music sound like to even begin to evaluate a system.  "

But other people like you, me and some other gentlemans in this thread and out there have enough exposure to live MUSIC and know what is down there for sure in their systems and for some of us our main target or system premise is to stay truer or nearer to the recording.

""    So even if that is not what real music sounds like who cares. If it makes you happy thats all that matters.  ""

Obviously it does not matters to you but there are MUSIC lovers/audiophiles that care about. 

The "cancer " in the jigh-end world and through the audio high end room/system audiophiles is something similar to what you posted with the expression: " I like it..." Who cares " I like it "

Mijostyn has a good point here to start a dialogue in the issue, we can agree or not with graphs or not.
 Which is your point here other that what you already posted. Is there something additional or that's it? or like you posted:

""  Just wild ass guesses posing as the truth...""

With and with out graphs there is something name it common sense that we all have in some different degrees levels and that are full of what we experienced through our audio/MUSIC life. Yes, your common sense as mine is specific and singular to each one of us. 


Regards and enjoy the MUSIC  NOT DISTORTIONS,
R.

If I’m were not planning to use multiple cartridges; I’d melt a few dabs of a low-melting point solder like Tix into the head shell to tobrsrm joint; or locktite it. 

^^ tonearm joint 

@atmasphere,

MCs point on transmitting vibration from the cartridge body to the tonearm is seminal. The design of The Cartridgeman‘s Insulator is precisely addressing that issue while avoiding your concern of cartridge displacement by choosing a polymer too stiff to be displaced by the cantilever, which displacement -as you point out yourself- is magnitudes smaller than the former. On my system (Zyx Universe, Dynavector DV 507MkII) the benefit is so obvious, that I can only recommend that people try it rather than defer to principle based pontification.

The design of The Cartridgeman‘s Insulator is precisely addressing that issue while avoiding your concern of cartridge displacement by choosing a polymer too stiff to be displaced by the cantilever, which displacement -as you point out yourself- is magnitudes smaller than the former. On my system (Zyx Universe, Dynavector DV 507MkII) the benefit is so obvious, that I can only recommend that people try it rather than defer to principle based pontification.

If the cartridge transmits vibration to the arm, the arm hasn't done its job properly. But its a simple fact that no arm is perfect in this regard. So what really becomes the question is whether the arm tube should be damped to absorb such vibration or whether you want to decouple the cartridge from the arm in trying to do the same thing?


From an engineering perspective damping the arm tube seems the more elegant approach. But this is by no means universal so you may well perceive a difference (hopefully better). I alluded to this earlier.

The most efficient and effective means of absorbing and dissipating cartridge mechanical energy is via employment of a damping trough (containing viscous fluid) located at the front end of the arm, as found in the series of Townshend Audio Rock turntables.

Look up the Korf headshell

The Korf is ceramic

this is what got me excited:

" HS-A02 comes carefully packed in a special protective foam-padded box."

Lets make this as simple as possible.

The turntable supplies the energy the groove uses to force the stylus to vibrate in any combination of two directions, up and down, side to side. In an ideal world the cartridge body would remain absolutely still. It would not vibrate or resonate at all. However due to the fact that the stylus is suspended from the cartridge some of this energy is transferred to the cartridge body. Assuming the cartridge body does not ring the frequency this energy is transferred at depends on the stiffness of the cantilever's suspension and the mass of the cartridge. If the cartridge is solidly mounted to the tonearm you can add the effective mass of the arm to the mass of the tonearm lowering this frequency which all agree should be around 10 Hz. Putting a flexible material between the body of the cartridge and the tonearm add a second suspension with another resonance point determined by the stiffness of the material and the mass of the tonearm assuming the tonearm does not ring. Since this suspension is obviously stiffer than the one supporting the cantilever and the effective mass of the tonearm is lighter than the effective mass of the tonearm plus the cartridge, this resonance frequency is going to be much higher. If it winds up in the audio band it will be audible and represent distortion. If it is above the audio band it will inaudible except maybe to members of the tweaky gang. Is such a device going to dampen any ringing? I suppose it could but I would rather have a cartridge body and tonearm that do not ring. Good tonearms and cartridges do not ring so adding a secondary suspension can either do absolutely nothing or add an audible resonance which is obviously not good.

Dear @mijostyn :  did you try/test that kind of isolator between the top plate of the cartridge and the tonearm headshell? or what you posted in the thread is only non first hand experience proved " imagination "/hypothesis or the like.

R.

@rauliruegas,

Touché!

I don't understand why some folks seem to think that the tail wags the dog.There is no movement of the cartridge when an elastomer is tightly clamped between the body of the cartridge and the tonearm mounting plate. My Graham 2.2 comes with what appears to be a velour covered gel pad below the tonearm mounting surface, and thus provides some damping properties. I would not consider to defeat this built in damping, nor add to it.