What is the “World’s Best Cartridge”?


I believe that a cartridge and a speaker, by far, contribute the most to SQ.

The two transducers in a system.

I bit the bulllet and bought a Lyra Atlas SL for $13K for my Woodsong Garrard 301 with Triplanar SE arm. I use a full function Atma-Sphere MP-1 preamp. My $60K front end. It is certainly, by far, the best I have owned. I read so many comments exclaiming that Lyra as among the best. I had to wait 6 months to get it. But the improvement over my excellent $3K Mayijima Shilabi was spectacular-putting it mildly.

I recently heard a demo of much more pricy system using a $25K cartridge. Seemed to be the most expensive cartridge made. Don’t recall the name.

For sure, the amount of detail was something I never heard. To hear a timpani sound like the real thing was incredible. And so much more! 
This got me thinking of what could be possible with a different kind of cartridge than a moving coil. That is, a moving iron.

I have heard so much about the late Decca London Reference. A MI and a very different take from a MC. Could it be better? The World’s Best? No longer made.

However Grado has been making MI cartridges for decades. Even though they hold the patent for the MC. Recently, Grado came out with their assault on “The World’s Best”. At least their best effort. At $12K the Epoch 3. I bought one and have been using it now for about two weeks replacing my Lyra. There is no question that the Atlas SL is a fabulous cartridge. But the Epoch is even better. Overall, it’s SQ is the closest to real I have heard. To begin, putting the stylus down on the run in grove there is dead silence. As well as the groves between cuts. This silence is indicative of the purity of the music content. Everything I have read about it is true. IME, the comment of one reviewer, “The World’s Best”, may be true.
 

 

mglik

Dear @mikelavigne : " Bernie feels every digital step also degrades things compared to the original.........."

" He feels " and that what’s means? other than a " feeling ".

 

" any manipulation degrades. digital plug in tools degrade. some recordings need fixing, and some artists want particular results that might not deliver the best sound to all listeners. "

well, you need to add: " any manipulation to an analog signal ..." and that kind of manipulations as " some artist want particular results... " could be a signal degradation because the artist WANTS it, the " degradation " is made in PURPOSE and not at " random and certainly not developed by digital enviroment domain.

Digital plug-in are " transparent " for the digital signal . If you want to change in anyway the digital signal you can do it through a DAW ( Digital Audio Workstation ) that makes the job in the digital domain and everyting is transparent for the digital signal we want to be modified, an example could be equalization of the original signal and that eq. proccess works totally in the digital domain. Digital can makes " MAGIC " that you or any one can detect or be aware of it, it’s that transparent.

You have to think that all the very special effects in any movie picture is mading through computers that works in the digital domain but when you seen in the movie theather you detect nothing about and the same for the sound.

But what if Bernie not just " feel " but can prove the digital signal degradation?

Well in that hipotethical scenario we can ask: in a normal analog or digital recording proccess how many steps the signal microphones pick.up must pass in either proccess? and in the playback proccess. How many degradation steps in either native domain ?

Any sound detected by our whole body ( not only ears ) is transmited by electric impulses in digital way for the brain can function as a transducer, I already posted in this thread about our ADC,

 

Again, I’m not talking on what I " prefer " but what is wrong, rigth or in between.

You insist in what " we like, what each one prefers " and this is not the whole issue.

I don’t know if you are " subjectivity " by convenience because what we like is a personal an unique privilege where no one can touch us. I hope you don’t but I can’t see yet signs of objectivity through your posts in this thread.

 

Btw, "" but feel digital can be exceptional when done simply, or a mess on some level when processed. ""

Could be but not because digital per sé but because that " proccessed " was a choice by recording/producer gentlemans " mistakes ": they are the culprit not because digital. That " mess " it happens too with analog because those " mistakes " made it by those gentlemans or by the artist.

 

R.

 

 

 

I have terrific sounding recordings in both digital and analogue format, so I am not taking sides.  But, the notion that digital is so deleterious that it is unlistenable is ridiculous.  On a Chesky test CD/Jazz sampler, they have a music recording which has been converted between digital and analogue 100 times; listen for yourself to see how much progressive damage has been done by digital encoding and decoding.

Amazing.

We used to have digiphobes in the 80's, now we have analphobes.

This is supposed to be a thread about cartridges and it gets invaded by some wags who seem to have got lost - there is a digital forum for you guys.

If any of you actually understood nyquist/digital theory, you would know that digital is only a little bit out ALL of the time. I'll give you a clue - try building a DA converter not using sine x/x in the calculations to eliminate truncation errors that occur on almost EVERY calculation.

It was the 3M contract to store the US census data on tape long before Sony etc that gave rise to digital storage - given the rapidly increasing population and additional data the US government were running out of space and needed to derive a system that could up the storage capacity using analogue tape. The 3M mathematicians built the mathematical logic that was used for red book CD.

The funny thing is by the time Sony/Philips launched red book CD they were all dead, and no-one at 3M realised the significance of their old patents. Its in the maths.

End of story.

By the way I have a few recordings of some of my audiophile wankwank records on DSD, and funnily enough even playing through a $40k digital front end using DSD direct, my TT extracts more information. What can I derive from this - nothing, zilch. Too many variables to reach a conclusion.

The only thing I can say conclusively is that on large scale classical music, with a top analogue system I am engaged, with a top digital system I often fall asleep.

Make of that what you will.

 

 

@lewm any idea as to why the best mono cartridges are but a fraction of the cost to a high end stereo cartridge? Isn’t the design principle generally the same?

@goofyfoot 

You might be amused to know that Decca, in the 1950's, before stereo became common, often recorded in stereo but released in mono because they thought they would have to pay the musicians double if the musicians knew they were being recorded in stereo.