How long before your cartridge warms up?

Mapman, I do think this phenomenon does happen. And as always I agree with you when you say there is no reason to have discussions of personal experiences as our tastes vary greatly.

"And as always I agree with you when you say there is no reason to have discussions of personal experiences as our tastes vary greatly."

There is reason to have that, but no reason to put too much trust into any single case that any of us might report, though some will be more trusted than others.

WHen many say the same thing, then clear patterns emerge that people can bank on with more confidence.

Also, fringe issues are just that fringe. WOrth some discussion, but not nearly as much as things that are widely accepted core principles and tenets of good sound, which one can read about in many places.

We all think we hear what we hear and know what we know, but that alone does not make it true.

I suspect cartridges do tend to "warm up" in general, for better or for worse, so that is worth knowing. Take action accordingly if this is a concern. That's about the extent of it from my perspective.

Just mine though.....

If you read the fine print on your cartridge manuals, some manufacturers actually publish temperature and/or humidity guidelines. A friend of mine found the Shelters mistrack here depending on the season, whereas the Benz tracks fine all year round. Interestingly Benz publishes temperature operating ranges that fit the climate here.

I find this whole discussion interesting and I have already gleaned some good things to take from the discourse. Thanks all.

Hi Doug: your experience with altered VTF for different operating temperature is worthwhile, but with one caveat.

Increasing the VTF will make tracking more secure and bring the SRA back to where it should be, but it will not compensate for temperature-driven deviations in measured frequency response. To correct that, I don't believe that there is any alternative to setting the room temperature to whatever the cartridge manufacturer recommends.

OTOH, since the measured frequency response at the outer bands of the LP will almost certainly be different from the frequency response at the inner bands, perhaps it is not such an important thing to quibble over.

(I have been re-reading a white paper that the Entre company published for their EC-25 cartridge series, which includes graphs showing the differences between outer-groove response and inner-groove response. The outer-inner difference that Entre reported was between 6-7dB for a Japanese-made test record, and it looks to be about 13dB for a test record made in either the US or Europe.)

kind regards, jonathan

PS. Recommendation for Lyra owners - our preferred operating range calls for temperatures of 22-23 degrees centigrade, and a relative humidity of 58-60%.