Cartridge ISOLATION; What Say You?

for the stylus to read the groove "successfully" the whole system of..........floor, rack, shelf, plinth, platter, tonearm base, bearing, arm wand, cartridge plate, and screws need to be tuned together. each step has to be right......if one step is wrong, then things are off.

what is ’right’? i’ve not seen high end quality cartridges designed to be loose on an arm. not saying it can’t be that way, just never seen it with over 10 turntables, 20 arms, and 30+ cartridges over 30 years.

the best performing systems are solid where they are designed to be solid, and agile and resonance minimizing where they need to do that.

some cartridges even perform better with cartridge screws torqued to a particular spec. i could totally understand that. i recall when Joel Durand was in the early stages of designing his tonearms and he would bring them over to my room to test, he experimented with a number of headshell/cartridge mounting materials and methods. never was ’loose’ or "cushioned" a part of them.

throwing damping products at cartridge mounts is not a direction i see as productive. but might some situation benefit? i suppose i have to keep my mind open. but my sense is that sort of approach is a band aid for some issue elsewhere in the system.....or flaw/compromise in the cartridge, tonearm or turntable design.

Until it turned out my Origin Live Conqueror did sound better just sitting in the hole 

Yes, Einstein, thats what happens when you have a poorly designed arm with rattly bearings or poorly designed home brew TT that fails to deal with the cartridge vibrations that you talk about.

Atmasphere is absolutely correct - compromise loop rigidity between the cartridge arm platter and you cant measure the groove accurately.

If you are having probems with that then get a better TT and arm.

Putting a Isolator between the Cartridge and Head Shell serves one purpose IMV, it can change the perception of the presentation for the listener who is quite familiar with a Systems SQ.
The user of the Isolator is in their assessment liking the perception of the sound now being delivered or they are not.

It is possible for myself to change a perception of the sound in my system in a much easier method and that is to exchange Platter Mats.

The Science is the same as it is quite basic, the new material at the interface, either stimulates an individual and it becomes likeable or it does not.

Platter Mats are much easier to swap out than Head Shell Isolators.
The two methods probably share a requirement where the VTA might still need to be adjusted to get the full impact of the changes being made.   

millercarbon,

thanks for the link to the Peter Ledermann Video. 

I encourage everyone to find an hour to view it, link repeated:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmwnN_T_wW8&t=1200s

Makes me want to run right out, rob a bank, buy his best Strain-Gauge Cartridge.

https://www.sound-smith.com/cartridges/strain-gauge-systems/strain-gauge-systems

Have you or anyone tried one?

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.

Interesting reading this from a guy who in the past has been completely dismissive of cart/tonearm compliance matching.  Perhaps he's coming around?