The effective mass of your tonearm basically determines your choice of cartrige in terms of compliance. Higher mass arms are generally coupled with low compliance designs & the lower mass arms with higher compliance cartriges. George Merrill writes a very useful & inexpensive booklet about this & many other analog issues analog setup booklet. Also see http://forum.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/fr.pl?eanlg&1114527606&read&3&4& |
Thanks bundus for pointing those ressources related to the understanding of the materialistic and practical aspects of cartrige's compliance and I for one, would certainly benefited from getting myself the Analog Setup Booklet (specially a french version of it ). Yet my question was related to the subjective nature of a cartrige as being ''conditional'' to the compliance's categorie (low, medium,hight) of witch it belong. Exemple: When arm-cart mismatching is not an issue, are the higher compliance cartriges better at delivering ''macrodynamic'' than their low compliance's cousins,.. etc..etc.. ? |
Pboutin, supposing I understand your question I am amazed by the intelligence of it! I would say that still when there is a good match between effective mass and dynamic compliance, there is no real basis for the assumption, that the higher compliance combo would sound better. IMHO other parameters like: accurate basic tip geometry, accurate tip shape orientation and shape quality, accurate orientation of crystal grain direction, tip polish quality, low enough effective tip mass, cantilever rigidity, suitable internal mechanical and electro-magnetic damping, electromagnetic linearity, damping of the high- frequency resonance, cartridge body stiffness, low linear distortion, several time domain characteristics, properties concerning electromagnetic saturation resistance (related to compression and dynamic behaviour) and frequency response linearity are all factors which are more decisive for the resulting sound reproduction quality than dynamic compliance on it's own. Jan. |
High compliance cartridges tend to be low mass moving magnet or moving iron designs. On audition, I find them to be slightly sluggish and less "airy" than lower compliance designs. That beind said, it's hard to get beyond the differing sonic qualities of moving magnet and moving coil designs - moving coils have a very pleasant coloration which gives a warmth to vocals and a depth and "presence" to drums/percussion that can sound really special. However, my hunch is that moving coil carts have faster "acceleration" in that they follow transients more faithfully, although the Grado line are an exception in that their stylus/cantilever are very low mass and they therefore exhibit very good performance on transients, albeit without moving coil colorations. |
Jan is right. If I have to choose one aspect that do a difference between the three compliance cartridges, this is how are the capability for do the record traking. In the same conditions ( good tonearm macht ) the high compliance cartridges do a better traking job: this means less distortion/more music. So, the high compliance cartridges have an advantage over the other two low/medium compliance cartridges. But the compliance " per se " don't say to much about the quality sound reproduction of any cartridge. The subject is more complex than that. Regards and enjoy the music. Raul. |
Finally someone as cut a slice and brought forth a tentative conclusion to the question. I am not surprise that the proposition was offer by someone possessing a wild field experience with cartriges, since the nature of the question, it seems, could most likely be best answered deductively. So according to Raul's proposition, good and very good tracking ability are acheived by cartriges belonging to any of the three compliance' s grouping,.... however, ultimate tracking ability has thus far been found, in his experience, mostly on cartriges belonging to the high compliance grouping. Interressant Raul, thanks |
