Speaking from experience, the tracking ability of this cartridge is amazing. Passages that used to make me cringe because I knew distortion was coming, are now crystal clear. Rickie Lee Jones comes to mind.
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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@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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SoulNote states that the electronics in the E-1 Ver2 Equalizer need an hour's warm-up to reach peak performance. I need a lot more than that! Anyway, it is on being warmed up as I write this. It only consumes 28-Watts so I will leave it on unless I am away for days on end, which is most of the time. My initial cables will not do it justice, either. 6-meters of microphone cheapo XLRs |
Apart from the User Guide, the SoulNote came with a 24 page booklet entitled SoulNote High End Audio Brand which I find fascinating. Kato, the Chief Engineer, explains that he was instructed
To continue to quote Kato
So here is a practicing engineer who goes on to challenge the conventional view of audio as frequency dependent. To him (and me) it should be time dependent. |
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