@tablejockey
I bet your new Holbo/DS rig sounds exquisite
I've only spent a couple of weeks with it, but I have found it totally involving.
So much so, I have gone to load SACDs and wondered which is the A side 
The clearest illustration of what the rig can do comes from a Telarc recording of the Saint Saens Organ Symphony. The second half of the second movement contains thunderous organ passages, but I was never really aware that the second half of the first movement contains some really quiet underpinnings from the organ.
The Holbo / DS Audio combination presents these very quiet, very low notes with crystal clarity.
I put this down to the fundamental difference between MM and MC cartridges on the one hand, which measure sideways velocity, and DS Audio optical cartridges which measure the sideways position.of the stylus. Very quiet, very low organ notes don't produce much sideways velocity, which becomes zero at the peak intensity. This is exactly where optical produces its peak output.
The much greater output voltages (70-mV versus 5-mV) probably significantly raise the signal over the MM masking noise floor.
Getting back to the real subject of this discussion, the rig reduces the effects of surface noise but it is still there at the volumes I use for classical music.
