MM, MC, or MI cartridge

How ’bout this for a quick & dirty explanation? With a Moving Coil cartridge there is more there there. More detail. Better imaging. More dimensionality. Moving Magnets & Moving Iron cartridges, by contrast, often deliver better tonality & easier listening.

Greetings 

A MC cartridge will give you the illusion that you are sitting in a concert hall 7 rows back dead center. A MM/MI will give you the illusion that you are in row 30.

There more to it but that is my simple explanation.

joe nies

edcyn, I just cannot agree with your hypothesis, based of course only on my own listening in my own system. A great cartridge is a great cartridge, regardless of its operating principle. A great cartridge will give you those things you describe. Many mid-priced LOMC cartridges cannot hold a candle to the best MM and MI types, in the very qualities you admire. Again, based on my own listening experiences. For example, you mention "tonality". In my experience many LOMC cartridges fail at conveying the tonality of a real piano (as opposed to an electric one). Many good MM cartridges do a better job, possibly because as Raul says, they tend to be high in compliance and thus can better reproduce the incredible dynamics of striking a piano key without a hint of mistracking which seems to produce a kind of distortion that makes acoustic pianos sound like electric ones. I don’t know this is the reason, but there is some logic to it.

Also a happy Soundsmith Carmen 2 owner, if you check their web page there's lots of detail on different cartridge types.

Since I have owned a high end table I have always let the sound quality as expressed in multiple reviews be my guide without concern to type… other than compatibility with my table. Each has been MC.

As to the reason why certain cartridges sounded better to me @laltik did a great summary as first post.