Can I have my thread back now, please!
Thank you.
The only good thing about some of the posts is that if I read them before bedtime I'm off to sleep very quickly..
What innovative, unconventional cartridge designs can you recommend?
Most cartridges have a stylus and cantilever where the transducer (magnet, iron or coil) sits on the far end of the cantilever. What other designs are there?
I am mindful of two designs which put the business end right on top of the stylus. The first is the moving coil (MC) Audio Technica AT-ART1000 which places two tiny coils, each 0.9-mm diameter, with eight turns of wire directly above the stylus. Australian price is about AUD-7000 and there apparently is a newer model, slightly less exxe. the ART1000X. This has square coils for a bit more output, and threaded mounting holes.
A downside is that stylus replacement involves a factory maintenance program and the Australian website page describing this service does not exist.
Another design is optical, exemplified by DS Audio's range. While these still need a stylus to trace the groove, the signal is produced by reading the intensity of light produced by a Light Emitting Diode (LED) hitting two sensors. Between the LED and the sensors are two 'shades' mounted above the stylus which change the amount of light as the stylus vibrates. These cartridges need a special "photo-stage" to replace the conventional phono-stage which is an additional expense.
Australian prices including photo-stages range from AUD-2,150 for the DS-E1 to the DS Master 3 at approximately AUD-40,800, which is a bit outside my price range! Where is the sweet spot?
What other way-out designs are there?
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As the original poster, I was interested in hearing about DS Audio and how it compares with TOTR (I'll spell that out for politeness' sake - Top Of The Range) moving coil. I mentioned the Audio Technical ART-1000 so that's 50% each. It pretty quickly became clear that the compromises with low output moving coil (LOMC) between getting a very low effective tip mass and sufficient signal for reasonable signal to noise ratios, simply do not apply to DS Audio's current implementation of optical. DS Audio has both lower effective tip mass and vastly greater signal - hundreds of times more. I have now put my hard-earned where my analysis led. I am not opposed to optical equalisers from sources other than DS Audio and in fact have purchased a SoulNote Equalizer rather than one from DS Audio. Before starting this thread, I had heard of Mr Nixie but I had not heard of SoulNote! It is hard to compare a fully balanced equaliser with no negative feedback and no operational amplifiers, that weighs 9.5 kgs, with a cigarette packet-sized unit. Neither my DS003 cartridge nor my SoulNote are anywhere near TOTR in their lineups. Nevertheless, my SoulNote follows the RIAA curve within 0.3-dB. I think it is worth mentioning that one of the functions of an equaliser for DS Audio is to supply DC power to the 3 diodes in the cartridge. Any ripple in that power supply will surely imprint on the diodes' output. The TOTR DS Audio equaliser is a two box system weighing 40-kgs which together contain about 5 Farads of high-grade capacitors. I am expecting the sound to be analytical (or CD-like) and I may not like it. Meanwhile I am about to plug my SoulNote in for the first time, using moving magnet cartridges and a cheap pair of XLR cables while I wait for my DS003 cartridge to reach Australian shores. Stay tuned .... |
@richardbrand I’m sure you know there will be some break in period for the phono stage so don’t jump to conclusions too soon. I would keep it on 24/7 and it should settle in a week or so. |
You are correct, and DS Audio is certainly a legitimate and worthwhile topic within this thread. However, it almost seems as if more attention has been lavished upon Mr. Nixie’s products than DS Audio’s, including the entirety of your 3,000,000-word penultimate thread :) Mr. Nixie makes only three DS Audio-related products: a €800 pocket-size equalizer that appears to have sprouted an extra zero in its price, and two standalone equalizers - a SS one and a tube one. I have auditioned none, to be clear, and his two standalone equalizers may very well deserve all the praise they’re getting from certain online forums. But his cigarette pack-sized entry-level offering can probably safely be dismissed, to the extent that it adds an extra box, an extra layer of signal conversion, an extra pair of interconnects, and an extra power supply between the DS Audio cartridge and a conventional MM phono stage that was, obviously, never designed to process the output of an optical cartridge. One is probably better off with a dedicated equalizer, whether from DS Audio or an alternate maker, but that’s just my opinion.
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