I've extensively experimented for decades with cartridges, turntables and tonearms, and if someone asked me that question, I would not know what to say, and I would not answer it, because it would involve too much of an overgeneralization. Moving coil over moving magnet (no problem). As long as you got the right arm, moving coil is generally the way to go. If you put an MC cartridge on a cheap turntable that doesn't have a great suspension, it's clarity, openness and all those good qualities will go away when there's lots of bass and drumming going on. So an expensive cartridge might sound great on a cheap turntable, when there's only an acoustic guitar playing or someone singing, but as soon as the impactful instruments like bass and drum come in, it will lose it. So an expensive cartridge on a cheap turntable will sound like an expensive cartridge only "part" of the time. More consistent sound quality can be had with a cheaper moving coil or moving iron on a really good, more expensive turntable that has better isolation. And they usually have better tone arms too, and I'm tempted to say that the tonearm is the most important of the three. Tonearm resonances and other problems with it, can really bring the sound quality down. The other REAL benefit of a really good tonearm is that the ticks and pops go way down in number. It's holding your cartridge steady in the groove; your cartridges stylus is not laterally bouncing around in the groove to pick up every tick and pop it can find. The ticks and pops can go down by 200% or more with a really good tonearm. I've seen really good tonearms from the 1980s for under $700 on the used market. When buying a cartridge, make sure to get some nice Litz headshell wires for it, and a good tonearm cable. It makes all the difference in the world. People who are stuck in a rut, who've never owned a really good cartridge/tonearm combination will be unbelieving how much better a good moving coil cartridge can sound, if your setup and synergy is right. Some medium output moving coils can be used straight in without a step up transformer. The moving magnet stage is usually the better stage of the two. A simpler signal path is usually the best sounding.
This is solid info, thank you. I would add, that I have a couple of set ups for different listening tastes. Some combinations I have put together are great for orchestral and jazz, but not so much for rock. Part of the fun (should be) of going down the rabbit hole with vinyl is discovery... finding what you like, what works with your set up, each can be very different. Cheers!
I do think a cheap but good cartridge on a great ultra expensive turntable, will for sound quality, beat an expensive phono cartridge on a cheap mediocre turntable over much of the record. It will sound more sure footed (providing the cartridge has good tracking). Phono cartridges do not have a bunch of expensive parts in them, so that makes it possible that someone could build a great phono cartridge cheaply. But a good Moving Coil will almost always make a Moving Magnet sound slow and sluggish, lacking a bit of transparency and openness. A regular mis-understander on here implies that it all comes down to moving mass. There are obviously other factors. The tiny coils at the end of the cantilever being much lighter than a much heavier magnet, gives the stylus more freedom of motion. Like running in running shoes versus running in combat boots. One thing that hasn't even been touched on is headshells. Finding just the right headshell for your cartridge, can make as much improvement as a cartridge upgrade. Some arms have removeable headshells. Having two very different sounding systems is smart. I would never want to listen to Jethro Tull or the Steve Miller band on my solid state gear. They sound so much better with tubes. But other artists and types of music beg for solid state.
The ticks and pops missing are solely due to vastly superior cartridge tracking and setup allowed by a quality tonearm. Lower quality tonearms rarely offer VTA, even when setup as best as possible, lower quality arms due not allow the cartridge to track as accurately and efficiently across entire groove arc. Even a really high quality tonearms and cartridge must be setup properly, requiring precision tools, skill and experience. Once VTF, VTA and azimuth is properly set, then and only then are we able to extract the maximum performance from that cartridge
I respectfully disagree with that..at least sort of. I don't follow the current turntable scene, but EVERY turntable I bought from 1978 through the 1980s, even the cheaper ones, had anti-skating controls. I notice you don't see turntables with sophisticated spring suspensions as much anymore. Have they taken both suspensions AND anti skating adjustment away from the consumer? I almost said taken away from us, but I'm more cd, than lp now, as my cd reproduction has come within 15% of the sound quality of my analog, and it even surpasses it in a few ways. 15% isn't that much or as much as the added convenience of playing cds. As for cartridge tracking. The worst tonearm I ever had was on a Dual 506 tt, and the cartridges tracked perfectly. Same thing on a budget Phillips tt, before that. Cartridge tracking isn't so dependent on quality of arm. "Sound Quality" is dependent on quality of arm. Even cheap turntables with mediocre arms let cartridges track wonderfully. The tick reduction has nothing to do with mistracking. It's because like I said, the stylus isn't extraneously moving around in the groove as much, because the better arm is letting it have a less troubled run through the groove by firmly holding it in place.. When I went from the arm on my Dual to a Sumiko arm, my cartridge tracked the same as in the Dual; perfectly. But my ticks and pops lessened audibly by a factor of 3.
The folks at Linn would disagree. Many years ago, I replaced my very unreliable Bang and Olufsen 8000 turntable with a Linn Sondek with Basik arm and cartridge. The B&O cartridge cost $200 separately, the Basik $50. Even thru my mid fi system, the Linn was very obviously superior. A phone cartridge generates as much psi as a jackhammer. The tone arm and turntable have to manage all of that kinetic energy. And think about the platter and arm bearings. They have to have no resistance AND zero play. These two things are pretty much mutually exclusive. Oh, and the bearings have the energy not damped or dissipated by the arm and platter pass thru them.
In cartridges there are certainly make/models that sound awesome, yet do not cost an arm and a leg. Ortofon, Hana, Grado, and Sumiko come to mind when it comes to considering products that hit way beyond their price point.
It can happen in a flash! Environment can dictate a lot. My Grandson took out a Goldring Elite in 3sec. Just put it up until you can get a new one, then go again. I came home one day and my RH Speaker was blown. My Son really didn't like telling me he was showing off to his friends. Repaired and went on.
I have a ski place in the mountains. A neighbor was asking me about LP sound quality. I had kept my vinyl and 2 turntables at my main home, so I decided to take the lesser of the two tables up for him to listen to: a 44 year old Rega Planar 3 fitted with a Denon DL-103. The mountain preamp did not have a phono input so not wanting to spend much money I read some reviews, one of which said that the Schiit Mani worked well with the Denon. The end result was a weird sound - really bad. I hadn't used this turntable for years, so I was inclined to blame it or the cartridge, but before throwing in the towel, I got an Emotiva XPS-1 and lo, the sound was decent. My neighbor was so impressed, he rushed off and bought a turntable and is scavenging thrift shops for LPs. It reminded me that sound reproduction is a chain dominated by the weakest link.
Fully agree. I constatnly see super expensive turntables just because they have exotic design or materials used with cartriges that are maybe 10% of total price and always wonder why people are buying those. As a peace of art - OK, as a something that looks nice and exclusive - OK if you can afford it, but that doesn't define the best performance at all. If turntable is silent and spot on with cycles no matter how "cheap" it is, that's by definition excellent turntable. That's what we need turntable for: spinning a record so cartridge can create signal that goes to the rest of the gear. Period.
I sold audio in the '70s to pay for college. We were not audiophile quality (think Marantz, Pioneer, Infinity, JBL, etc) and the typical guy walked out the door with a turntable, receiver and speakers. I always counseled to spend the most time and money on the cartridge and speakers, because both were responsible for the hardest part of reproduction. Just getting gain out of a signal was relatively easy, so the amplification was not as critical.
This sounds a lot like the "A great cassette deck will make a bad tape sound good, but a bad deck...." argument. And having a brushless direct-drive vintage Pioneer (PL-300) that surpasses the current breed of "entry-level" turntables--All of which are belt driven--in terms of Rumble, as well as Wow & Flutter, I can certainly see how investing in a quality cartridge is worthwhile.
While I do agree with the sentiment that the cartridge is more important than the turntable, I was surprised how much of a difference I heard upgrading from a Pioneer PLX-1000 turntable with a Denon DL-A110 cartridge to a new Music Hall Stealth turntable with the same cartridge (I moved the cartridge over myself). They were both also using the same Hegel V10 phono preamp. It was not a subtle difference.
Hi from Glasgow Scotland, it's not that the project turntables are truly beautiful yet they fall short upon the cartridge but hey a lot of others are guilty also, I fell in love with the thorens TD 201 gloss white yet rather a cheap audio technica cartridge had it upgraded to goldring E3 sounds truly great now
Yes! Carts matter most. Going from (say) $2,500 for a competent table to $10, $30, $30k for an exotic table is results in near zero incremental sonic return IMO.
My TT came with an Ortofon 2M Black. It was a good sounding rig. Then I moved up to a Soundsmith Zephyr MMIC Star which is their entry level low output cart. The sound quality improvement was very noticeable and well worth the cost of the cart.
Two items: 1a) Turntable set-up is critical. I cannot emphasize enough how much of an improvement you will get out of any cartridge, when you dial in your turntable, professionally. You must dial in each of the following vectors / settings: -- the effective length of the tone-arm -- the cartridge's weight -- the vertical tracking alignment / rake angle -- the anti-skating -- the overhang -- the offset -- the zenith angle -- the cartridge's azimuth. It is a complete package tuning. Like a smooth running car's engine. If one thing is out of tune, you will know it. The same is true for anything being out of whack with your turntable's set-up. However, if you have always had it out of whack, your ears will not know. But once you tune everything, professionally, then you will be rewarded with musical bliss (well, it will sound far better than you image). Even a mid-level cartridge will sound better or be competitive with a cartridge 3x its price, if the former is professionally dialed in, and the latter is not. 1b) The worst case scenario includes when a cartridge manufacturer installs the stylus into the cantilever at an improper angle. This happens occasionally on multi-thousand dollar cartridges, and probably happens regularly on sub-thousand dollar cartridges. So check it, and return bad ones right away. Most people, myself included, neither have the tools nor the skills / experience to professionally set-up a turntable. Setting the cartridge's azimuth requires a special pressing and an oscilloscope. I was lucky enough to have a turntable guru (named Nick) at my local high-end store (Verona, NJ) where I purchased my turntable. His time was a bit pricey. It took him 90+ minutes (hard to remember). And the person doing the tuning has to have a good ear (which Nick has). Doing it properly, even by a professional, is tedious, time consuming work. But the sonic rewards are worth it. 2) If you have money to burn, get the Clearaudio Goldfinger Statement cartridge. I heard it in a high end store in Verona, NJ, feeding Vandersteen's System Nine grouping of equipment, and also the Aesthetix Metis pre-amp and the Aesthetix IO Eclipse phono-amp in a treated room. I had heard that system before, with all the same components, but with other very good cartridges. None of them stood a chance against the Goldfinger Statement cartridge. There are probably other wildly great cartridges. I have not heard them. I am very lucky that I got to hear the Goldfinger Statement. Garth Leerer, President of Musical Surroundings, was a guest, and he brought with him the Goldfinger Statement. The store normally has the Clearaudio Stradivari cartridge (very good, but a distant competitor to their Goldfinger Statement cartridge (and in completely different price points). One is expensive. The other requires a 2nd mortgage on your home.
The more I futz with vinyl the more I appreciate high end digital. I still enjoy the physical process of playing a record and the sound of it. Unless you're talking about vintage vinyl nearly all modern records were recorded and mastered digitally most likely with Protools. It always amazes me when members of the Church of Vinyl who believe that digital ruins everything enjoy a record that wasn't analog until it hit that DAC used in the studio to create the vinyl.
@@randyduncan795 That is likely due to you not understanding 1) the digital process that happens for creating vinyl, 2) nor do you understand the function of the home gear in the process. As to #2: If you have a digital copy of a song, and you also have the vinyl pressing made from that digital copy, then it is up to the playback gear to decide what sounds best. A CD player (DAC and transport) creates sound from complete and utter silence. The DAC uses mathematical formulas to create voltage to feed your pre-amp. How well a DAC does that varies wildly, from DAC to DAC (from CD player to CD player). CD players are plagued with jitter. Turntables have no jitter. A quality transport will minimize jitter, allowing a CD player or DAC to sound its best. Few people have ever heard digital with minimal jitter (if you do not think that you have jitter, you have not heard jitterless digital. When you virtually eliminate jitter, you will then always recognize jitter. But if you always have jitter, then you do not realize that you have it). And turntables have no jitter. The quality of digital playback is at the mercy of your DAC and transport (or CD player, which contains both). As to #1: Many recent vinyl pressings were made with DSD content. That DSD content is not what you get when you play a DSD disc. Why? The DSD disc is encrypted. Sony has the only key. That key is built in to the hardware of any player that can play DSD discs. Ergo, you will always hear that Sony chip that does the decryption. You will never hear the true beauty of the actual DSD file. So the public hears DSD, with its diminished sound quality (due to the mandatory Sony decryption chip), and they hear the vinyl pressing that was derived from the DSD file. The huge difference is that the record company has an unencryped DSD file. They do not have to use the Sony decryption chip. So the record company is able to create the vinyl pressing using 100% of the beauty of the DSD file. That is why (with a quality analog front end), the vinyl will sound better. Because the digital that the public hears goes through that Sony decryption chip, and the vinyl pressing never dealt with encryption nor that Sony chip. The best sound quality that a customer could have is if they got a pressing made directly from the master tape (which has not converted to digital and back). The people that say that the vinyl pressings sound better than the digital files are correct. Their digital files are hurt by that Sony decryption chip, and their vinyl is not. The route that the digital DSD data takes is responsible for what we ultimately hear. People are not hearing things, when they hear the better sound quality from vinyl content that was derived from a digital DSD file. They might not understand why. But they cannot deny what they hear. I do understand why, and I hope that you now understand, too. There are folks that still choose to make fun of people that can't explain why they hear what they hear. I hope that you are not going to be a party to that childish conduct. Cheers!
@@NoEgg4u Well first, I enjoyed both of your posts. I do stand by my original comment in that most records are not mastered in DSD. Is there a new version of Protools that does this. Most are originally recorded in PCM, "adjusted" in PCM, then converted and pressed to vinyl. We have fine exceptions like Dave Grohl's Sound City Real to Reel. And we have vintage records that never saw any digital at all. Even through my Oppo 105 I find the Japanese SACD of Aja a bit better than my original record from the 70's. I wouldn't call it enough difference to make a difference so it comes down to convenience. I do have an O-scope and a test record and agree that setup is paramount with vinyl. My religion doesn't involve high end audio. I love good vinyl, tape, and digital. Same for solid state and valves. Hell, might as well throw ribbon and dynamic in there. I've heard great results with all. And lesser with all. I'm sure I'd enjoy discussing any and all of this with you further. Your comments on Sony and DSD made me wonder...what about ripped SACD? As in when we rip DSD from an SACD to a hard drive. Or buy DSD downloads. I keep meaning to rip my substantial collection of SACDs and I know the Oppo can do it, I just haven't found the time. Cheers to you!
I agree with Paul here. Back in the day (70s) I had a Shure V15 Type 2 cartridge, which was considered one of the best, in my Garrard turntable (although the Garrard model was their top of the line at the time). This raises the question of when you buy a cartridge and a pair of speakers (assuming all else is the same) what do you listen to first? And many stores can't A-B cartridges so you simply go on the advise of the store, hi-fi publication, etc?
I have a sumiko welfleet on a SL-1200GR and it sounds magnificent. One of these days I'll make the jump to a MC cartridge, but I'm afraid I'd trash it with my clumsiness during setup. I'm somewhat new to installing and setting up cartridges from scratch. My biggest question is how to properly set up anti skate. There seems to be multiple opinions on how to dial it in. Anyways...to sum up...I was blown away by even a mid range priced Sumiko.
I just went thru this. I purchased an expensive cartridge for my Music Hall MMF-7, which is manufactured by Project & at very similar price point. I am happy with my Soundsmith Cartridge, and pleased with my decision. Picking up the music from the source and playing it thru your speakers is what it's about. So, I will go out on a limb and say to spend your money according to your speaker quality. You will never make it sound any better than your speakers. If I wasn't happy I had 60 days to return it/them. And I went with the salesman recommendation and bought a Sutherland Phono Amp, too. Oh yeah, the setup was a little more difficult. Sounds Great.
Cartridges are like speakers --- they are the most variable factor in a phono setup. There are great carts that don't cost much, and at the other end of the scale you can waste a fortune on dreck. In 2023, the least one can expect to spend on a worthwhile turntable is $1500. Add $400 or more for a cart. Then there is the matter of aligning the cart on the arm for best tracking, and finding the optimum pressure. No wonder I like CDs so much!
Sorry Paul my dealer said, "there is no point in putting racing tyres (tires) on a corolla." I must admit I have not had the opportunity to test this conjecture. So, like many audiophiles I cannot resolve this debate, too poor!
That would be a mistake. If I put my spare Fidelity Research FR6SE on my old 1968 stereogram it won't work, not even with a pre-amp. The arm is just too heavy and stiff. Likewise if I took the cartridge from my gram and put it on my Zero 100 it won't work ether. Because the arm will move and not the stylus . Needs to be matched.
From my experience of many decades, I currently use a Lyra Delos and if you want to get a bit more harmonic structure, go for a Koetsu Black. The Delos a really good choice at $2000. There are plenty of other new cartridges from company's like Hanna and others that you may want to look into as well.
I totally agree with Paul..so if you put a really expensive cart on an expensive turntable you get really great sound…my Linn LP 12, 2000 vintage with a Sumiko Starling mc cartridge gives amazing sound..
This is another "John Madden" topic. If you put a good cartridge on a a good turntable you'll get good sound. No doubt. BUT...If you put a GREAT cartridge on a a GREAT table....Well..well...That's a GREAT sounding system !
I'd agree and not, depends on the turntable! Take an essentially transparent turntable/arm (i.e one that doesn't generate it's own cacophony of resonances and doesn't have an arm that dynamically 'fights' the cartridge - e.g Well Tempered Versalex) and it's remarkable how much performance a mid-price cartridge can give. Stick a £500 - £2000+ MC cart Rega Planar 1 or Pro-ject T1 and you'll struggle to hear what the cart is capable of.
My experience with more expensive cartridge on a turntable went like this. I bought a Rega P6 turntable with a pre fitted moving magnet cartridge and was happy for some time, later on I wanted to upgrade and upgraded to a Rega Apheta2 moving coil cartridge and a new phono preamp. and was somewhat happy, having hum issues I found out that the tonearm wiring could be a issue, so out went the stock tonearm to a new one and the difference was like night and day. I swear by it that changing the tonearm was a bigger difference than only changing the cartridge. Now would it have been better for me to only change the tonearm and stick with the MM cartridge? No probably not I guess the new tonearm helped the MC cartridge to shine. So these all go together. once we start upgrading its hard to stop.
Keep in mind the table and arm has to be able to allow the cartridge to do its job well. A cheap table/arm won’t be a good partner for a very good cartridge which will sound better on a better table/arm.
That sounds scary, I'm not into vinyl, yet I seen some ludicrously expensive turntables, so they have even more expensive cartridges to go in them..... Yikes
The price of vinyl is way up there. If I didn't already have a collection. Well, I have gotten pickier. I will stream an album before I spend that kind of money. I has to pass the sound test 1st. Back in the day, I would comb through racks and take chances for $3.50. Got a lot of great music that way.
I buy cartridges that if broken by me, my children or pets won’t wreck my day. Right now I’m enjoying a Nagaoka MP110. It cost about $170 dollars. Joe Collins has in depth UA-cam videos about cartridges, stylus shapes, cartridge sonic signatures and tone arm matching.
When you say the better cartridge, cheaper turntable is better - what is better, the sound? How is it better? Please discuss why and what sounds better. The whole thing is completely subjective. I have a Linn turntable with Krystal MC cartridge and I doubt whether upgrading the cartidge to the next level would make any diff. If it does I'll let you know as I've just bought the Linn Kandid.
Had a moving coil cartridge about 20 years ago and I still remember how good it sounded. All the others were forgettable. I should probably go buy a new one..!
It is a shame that Denon does not sell the DL-160 anymore. It was great and affordable at 250 euros. I would not spend a couple of grands (if) one mistake and the money is gone, with a cheaper cardridge you can replace it more easy. That people really spend that much money to me 100 to 300 euros feels like a good budget and has great quality.
I've yet to see proof that High output MC's have a reduced effective moving mass over a good MM like Shure, Ortofon, Empire, etc. To me they're not worth it, at all
I have a Shure v15 type iv cartridge with a JICO top of the line needle. I will take the Pepsi challenge with any turntable out there! That cartridge and needle combination is BEYOND AMAZING SOUNDING!
Well... i dont have that much money for cartidge. But the more i dig and find unique tables and setups. And find deals... eventually ill be there. But for now im finding better equiptment.
The turntable is actually far more important than the cartridge. Surely a lesser cartridge being tracks on a turntable running at the correct speed with minimal wow, surely has to be better than a high end cartridge fitted to a turntable suffering from the latter!
My experience is that older cartridges usually have cheaper replacement stylus than new ones. Make shure you have an elliptical or hyper elliptical stylus (not spherical) to get the most out of the grooves. I have Shure M75 MkII type 2 cartridge with an elliptical stylus for my original Lenco L75 turntable. I feel it's a jungle out there and it's hard to decide for a cartridge. RIAA is also important. My Holfi Ellipse died, sadly, because it was a great RIAA. I got a quick replacement with a Schiit Mani which isn't as good as the Holfi. I hope to find someone who can repair my Holfi RIAA. I replaced the battery, but that wasn't the fault.
There’s so much nonsense talked about in vinyl replay. A turntable and arms job is a well defined one, spin at the exact speed, and hold the cartridge in the exact position it needs to be in, with the correct forces, alignment and tracking. This can be achieved remarkably cheaply, and at its peak can be easily guaranteed with something like a technics 1200gr (or if you prefer the more inconsistent belt drive, maybe a project extension10). Once you have these properties in place, the rest is cartridge and it makes the single biggest difference in any part of vinyl replay. When you play a record, the cart can’t tell if your platter is 2kg or 20kg and neither can your ears. Invest in a good, well made cartridge and get a turntable that is fit for purpose. It costs less than you’d think.
1:00 Paul, I can't really fully agree with this. Some matches are just grrreat. I got a good deal on an EMT 938 but I really don't have the cash for an EMT cart. I'm not using it in my audiophile setup, that already has a nic eplayer. I had to install something extremely, extremely low compliant cart as that 938 has a ridiculously heavy (35 grams effective mass) arm. Also barely any carts fit, physically. So we remodeled my AT-VM95E so it at least fit the shell and yes, that works. But man, you can tell that heavy arm is messing with the stylus suspension. So I bought a stiffer AudioTechnica AT-XP5. It's an elliptic DJ cart. It was a guess and holy moly, in that arm, that cart sounds infinitely better than I'm sure AT thought it could. Now, would I recommend this combo on anyone who has the disposable income to buy an EMT cart? Of course not. But it's shocking how much youc an get out of a cartridge with the right combo of turntable/arm/cart. Is the cartridge most important? Probably. Does a good cart on a meh table always sound better than an okay cart on a great table? No, not always. Cheap pro-jects being a prima example. I'll prefer a good old Pioneer PL112D or so with an AT-VM95E over a Pro-ject Debut with a Nagaoka MP200 any deay. The Pro-ject may measure better but musicality is not a thing.
My two cents ...... As both the turntable AND the cartridge are the "source," I would assign equal importance to both! ...... But hey, what do I know? I've only been a Hi-Fi enthusiast for 44 years! 🤣
My experience: Same cartridge and tonearm on two very different tables in the same price point yielded V E R Y different results. I think your cartridge and arm have to complement each other and the cart/arm combo have to complement the table. This assuming the pre didn't come from Walmart.😂
I had a turntable many years ago. My cat loved it. I would turn it on and the Cat used as a cat toy. Sit and spin or use it as a Walker around and around. Didn’t get to play many records on it.🥹🙄
$130 for a decent cartridge, $3000 is stupidity combined with idiocracy and greed. Turntable should be around $600 to $1000 cartridge up to $200. My budget Dj equipment Will beat anything he’s talking about for decades.
I think he's got the project X2 it's important you keep compliance low for that tonearm it weighs 13.5 grams, the compliance should be between 10 to 17 um the Ortofon is 20 um what is a bit high. if you want a good cartridge look at the Goldring 1022 GX moving magnet,or the 1042, work well with that arm. And put you in the compliance window around 12 Hertz excellent sounding cartridges can't go wrong. Stick a dime on the bottom of the counterweight will help with the cartridge you've got, I mean you can bring the weight in more to the centre helping it's compliant with heavier compliance cartridge like the 2m silver. Another thing to be aware of VTA tracking angle if it's not adjustable the arm just put some pieces of newspaper underneath the platter mat that's is if the cartridge is not as deep vice versa the other way around I think they're about the same the two cartridges something to check on if you can't adjust or you don't know how to adjust I should say because any arm is adjustable. And an arm is just an important as the cartridge it's just the extension of the cartridge cantilever Another good thing is get yourself a transformer means conditioner type, don't have to be expensive by a cheap one second hand 50$ Used in telecommunications 1 amp to drive the motor of the turntable give you a big improvement.
I'll add my 2 cents to the input. Certainly the cartridge is a critical part. There is synergy with all audio. I think if you compare a 1000, 2000, 3000 dollar cartridge with any turntable there will be improvement. Will they sound as good as they would on a premium table? I believe the answer is no. There is a matching performance for all gear. If the table is $1000 it makes little sense to me to put a $3000 cart with it. Then you need to ask what is the phono cable like and the phono preamp? The puzzle starts to get crazy. This is the world of audio. I have a 20K table and arm and a 4K cart. I am happy. I'm waiting for the Perfect Wave Phono stage.
I have been messing around with cartridges and there's a level of snobbery i think with this subgect i have phoned its total done to your ears i have found i sometimes prefer a cartridge that might not be very expensive is what sound you like
There's a lot of snobbery in the cartridge world, for sure. A basic Shure M44 has an effective mass of around 1.2mg, the Ortofon SPU has 1.0mg. The M44 costs around 60-80€ with a JICO replacement, and the Ortofon SPU costs 700€
If you can live with a 1600 dollar Pro-ject, don't overspend on the cart. The record player is 'good, but not great'. In that price range second hand is honestly a better way to go. I'd stick below 600 dollars for the cartridge. Look at a Nagaoka MP200, look at a Goldring 2400, look at a Dynavector 10x5. And ask yourself what REALLY is your weakest link. Because even though the cartridge may be the 'most important', it won't shine if you put it in a record player that's notably worse than the cart, right? Same goes for the phono preamp. Spending a ton of money doesn't mean you also have good sound. You could have a horrible combination of amp and speakers (for instance; extremely bright speakers with an extremely bright sounding amp, or vice versa). You could've bought brands that are valuable, but not great (For instance, you could've bought a pair of Bose 901 with a modern-ish McIntosh amp). Just the value of the setup doesn't mean it's great sounding, or balanced. My personal audio rig has some really expensive parts, but also some cheaper parts (for instance; the streamer is only 350 bucks, the DAC makes the sound. My cartridge is a Goldring 2400, but my preamp is an Ayre, etc.). Also keep in mind there's loads of series of carts (like the 2M or the OM, or virtually any Shure) which just are not great, even though many people push you to buy one. I don't think you can just do this with numbers, you're going to have to do it with your ears, and maybe talk with people who have experience in the field (and ask yourself; is their rig actually good, or do they just brag? :D). My two cents; Look at Sumiko, look at hana, look at dynavector, nagaoka, even audiotechnica, and stick below that 600 dollar mark if you are still happy with the pro-ject. It's an easily beaten record player, especially if you want to go second hand, and you may want to change that one up sometime soon.
Wow!.. For a $1600 unit? I’m thinking his best is to to find one (that’s a good match to the tonearm is key) somewhere in the vicinity of around $700-800 max. The existing cartridge is at the low end end of the range and cost around $250 I’d guess. He didn’t mention an external phono preamp, bit I’d say probably around the same price as the cartridge. I don’t think that turntable is at the level of considering MC. Sorry Paul, but your advice is silly on this one. If someone told you they had a $400 set of tires on a Honda Civic and asked what price is get better performance, the right answer prob around a $1000 set, as a $4000 set would be a waste on a Civic without massive upgrades in other areas .. get the picture?
Not really Paul's advice is sound! On this one! no he can run an MC cartridge fine but yes phono stage might be an issue?? that doesn't mean you have to spend a lot of money on one far from it.
I will respectfully disagree with your admonition or conclusion. While I agree a high budget turntable offering the greatest speed accuracy and best isolation of vibration would deliver relatively poor performance with a poorly designed or built cartridge, the same is true of reverse. The low budget turntable will often deliver high wow & flutter and most importantly would offer minimal tonearm setup ability. Lacking ability to properly setup cartridge will result in poor channel separation, lots of groove noise and limited soundstage. The most important aspect of vinyl playback is cartridge alignment and setup. Unless your arm allows full adjustment and the cartridge is properly aligned, it’s going to compromise the playback, regardless of cartridge-turntable-tonearm combo. I’m also a big advocate for choosing cartridge based on music. I have 3 cartridges that I routinely cycle through, depending upon music. I have a lot of older mono lp’s and nothing is better on mono playback than a mono cartridge. Because a mono album has its entire music cut in bottom of groove, get a mono cartridge. It’s vastly quieter than using a stereo cartridge where stylus is designed to pickup sound from walls of groove. Fwiw, I use a medium output MC type mono from Lyra. Because I too listen to lots of live blues and jazz stereo recordings, I use a Grado Epoch on those as nothing comes close to reproducing the live ambiance of those recordings, imo. For the balance of our listening; opera, symphonic and 60’s-70’s rock, I have a DS Audio optical cartridge. If you don’t have mono albums, I would recommend any DS Audio cartridge as the most versatile cartridge imo. It however will require a special and unique phono preamp, which is another large expense the op may find unpalatable. If that’s the case, do some listening at your local store with music you primarily listen to. Consider the output of your phono preamp, a low output MC for example is non-starter if your phono amp gain is 50db or less. The most important factor however is cartridge setup. If you lack the tools, knowledge and/or skill, make certain your local shop you purchase from offers professional setup. It’s in fact quite possible your dissatisfaction w/current Ortofon is due to improper setup of that cartridge.
Forget the $$$ you must look at compliance. If cartridge has a high compliance and arm is low. You get a case where the stylus is pulled sideways before the arm moves. They must be matched. Do i have a favourite? No.
Yeah Chuck, the problem is people keep saying the more expensive cartridge’s are better, well yeah it’s possible that a more expensive cartridge will sound better, but it really needs to be matched to the rest of the system and they seem to be focusing on sound only and missing facts about the physics; what you combine the cartridge/stylus assembly with and how you set it up are a big part of “best operation.” Seems they only understand “the more expensive cartridge, the better the sound, much bigger difference than the player” which is very short sighted. You’re dealing with a lot of ignorance here. It really doesn’t seem like it should be a hard concept to grasp. I’m always amazed at the stupidity on audio forums. When I was young, there used to be a saying, “If you don’t know what you’re talking about, it’s better to keep your mouth shut and have everybody think you’re stupid, than to open it and remove all doubt. 😉
That's not true. A great table and arm can make an okay cartridge sound great. That said, you can get a great MC cartridge for $1,200-$1,500. Look at Van Den Hul DDTII and MC10 carts. Best bang for the buck.
wuaaa still people using vinyl lps. yeah my granfather still uses his crystal set radio from his father.. he insists it sounds better warmer and musical haaa he loves that euphonic distortion, low signal to noise ratio and noise... sounds familiarr?.. it is.
I haven't touched a turntable since the late 1980s. But I will agree with Paul that improving the transducer (cartridge) makes a lot more sense than worrying about the physical mechanism. Unless there are rumble, speed control or arm related problems, the mechanism isn't going to make a lot of difference in the quality of transduction in the cartridge.
@ Douglas Blake. More bad advice from Mr. Bad Advice himself. Is Douglas Blake your real name. Is Mr. Walthers on here, who compliments you on here, really you? Do you actually believe that a better turntable and arm won't improve the sound quality of a cartridge? Wrong! It can make a HUGE improvement. Just about everybody knows that; who have "ears" and have taken the time to listen. Type in "pic of Goldmund Reference turntable", and look at the pics for awhile. Do you seriously think that the cheap turntables you have experience with would let a phono cartridge sound as good as that? It's a rare bird that comes on somewhere, who's never had really good equipment, and tells audiophiles with 4 times better sound quality than them, that major improvement isn't possible. If you listen to this guys advice and follow it al the way through, you should be able to put together a really really perfectly putrid system. Douglas Blake (if that isn't an alias), why don't you expand your horizons beyond the audio field, and make pretend you're an expert in other fields too? Here are some suggestions. Go up to a group of race car drivers, yourself never having driven a race car, and tell them the ins & outs of driving and maneuvering their cars in a race. Go up to a large group of Fine Wine Conoisseurs and tell them there isn't hardly any difference between the taste of wines and that Wild Ir*sh Rose, not only tastes just as good, but gets you drunk faster with it's high alcohol content. Go up to a large group of stunt pilots, having never flown a plane yourself, and give them some advice on aerial acrobatics and barnstorming. This is ridiculous. I find your bad advice one of the most ridiculous things ever. It goes against so many peoples experience and common wisdom. And you still haven't realized that your two ears only belong to you.
@David Whoever you mean, having competent perception/evaluation and trying to steer people the right way is not trying to be a hero. But I do get applause many times a day. I just think that people who think they can be an armchair quarterback with audio, and don't have virtually any meaningful listening experience with the real good stuff, is still on their own 1 yard line, whether they realize it or not, no matter how many technical facts they have in their mind. Experience always before theories, is the number one rule of Science, that Science is based upon. "Armchair Evaluators" who've never even been in the same room with the stuff they're putting down and crying snake oil, are squirming up the wrong tree. Their opinions on something audio, no matter what technical knowledge they possess is not one iota better than someone else who's never heard said thing either. Someone can take a piece of chalk and fill an entire huge blackboard with equations and theories and theorems with it, but that doesn't mean they know a thing about chalk, what it is or what it's made of. Theories (thinking) and perceiving (hearing), are two totally different things. I do not look forward to the day (if it ever comes), where measurements and listening impressions jibe consistently and support each other. Liking what I hear is enough for me, and that's the only important thing anyway. I'm not a robot and I don't need a robot or a measuring machine to tell me what sounds better to IT.. I think most people who've heard real acoustic instruments in real life often enough, like myself, can tell which equipment is doing the better impersonation of the real life instruments, and we can hear when there's better clarity too.
@@sidesup8286 _" Whoever you mean, having competent perception/evaluation and trying to steer people the right way is not trying to be a hero. But I do get applause many times a day. "_ Liking your own comments doesn't count.
@Douglas Blake. My original post got 20 thumbs up, and yours got zero thumbs up, and one thumbs down. My comment about myself getting applause each day was referring to something else outside of audio. Does that make an even one million bad inferences by you? People should try to get along on here. Otherwise avoid me and I'll avoid you. This whole thing is not so important anyway. Put things into perspective for yourself.
I beg to disagree. It's the sum of the whole, decent turntable with decent tonearm ans decent cartridge. And you don't have to spend thousands. $2000 to $5000 will destroy any digital audio gear.
I've extensively experimented for decades with cartridges, turntables and tonearms, and if someone asked me that question, I would not know what to say, and I would not answer it, because it would involve too much of an overgeneralization. Moving coil over moving magnet (no problem). As long as you got the right arm, moving coil is generally the way to go. If you put an MC cartridge on a cheap turntable that doesn't have a great suspension, it's clarity, openness and all those good qualities will go away when there's lots of bass and drumming going on. So an expensive cartridge might sound great on a cheap turntable, when there's only an acoustic guitar playing or someone singing, but as soon as the impactful instruments like bass and drum come in, it will lose it. So an expensive cartridge on a cheap turntable will sound like an expensive cartridge only "part" of the time.
More consistent sound quality can be had with a cheaper moving coil or moving iron on a really good, more expensive turntable that has better isolation. And they usually have better tone arms too, and I'm tempted to say that the tonearm is the most important of the three. Tonearm resonances and other problems with it, can really bring the sound quality down. The other REAL benefit of a really good tonearm is that the ticks and pops go way down in number. It's holding your cartridge steady in the groove; your cartridges stylus is not laterally bouncing around in the groove to pick up every tick and pop it can find. The ticks and pops can go down by 200% or more with a really good tonearm. I've seen really good tonearms from the 1980s for under $700 on the used market. When buying a cartridge, make sure to get some nice Litz headshell wires for it, and a good tonearm cable. It makes all the difference in the world.
People who are stuck in a rut, who've never owned a really good cartridge/tonearm combination will be unbelieving how much better a good moving coil cartridge can sound, if your setup and synergy is right. Some medium output moving coils can be used straight in without a step up transformer. The moving magnet stage is usually the better stage of the two. A simpler signal path is usually the best sounding.
This is solid info, thank you. I would add, that I have a couple of set ups for different listening tastes. Some combinations I have put together are great for orchestral and jazz, but not so much for rock. Part of the fun (should be) of going down the rabbit hole with vinyl is discovery... finding what you like, what works with your set up, each can be very different. Cheers!
Interesting. I can see why this pursuit could be addictive.
I do think a cheap but good cartridge on a great ultra expensive turntable, will for sound quality, beat an expensive phono cartridge on a cheap mediocre turntable over much of the record. It will sound more sure footed (providing the cartridge has good tracking). Phono cartridges do not have a bunch of expensive parts in them, so that makes it possible that someone could build a great phono cartridge cheaply. But a good Moving Coil will almost always make a Moving Magnet sound slow and sluggish, lacking a bit of transparency and openness. A regular mis-understander on here implies that it all comes down to moving mass. There are obviously other factors. The tiny coils at the end of the cantilever being much lighter than a much heavier magnet, gives the stylus more freedom of motion. Like running in running shoes versus running in combat boots.
One thing that hasn't even been touched on is headshells. Finding just the right headshell for your cartridge, can make as much improvement as a cartridge upgrade. Some arms have removeable headshells.
Having two very different sounding systems is smart. I would never want to listen to Jethro Tull or the Steve Miller band on my solid state gear. They sound so much better with tubes. But other artists and types of music beg for solid state.
The ticks and pops missing are solely due to vastly superior cartridge tracking and setup allowed by a quality tonearm.
Lower quality tonearms rarely offer VTA, even when setup as best as possible, lower quality arms due not allow the cartridge to track as accurately and efficiently across entire groove arc. Even a really high quality tonearms and cartridge must be setup properly, requiring precision tools, skill and experience. Once VTF, VTA and azimuth is properly set, then and only then are we able to extract the maximum performance from that cartridge
I respectfully disagree with that..at least sort of. I don't follow the current turntable scene, but EVERY turntable I bought from 1978 through the 1980s, even the cheaper ones, had anti-skating controls. I notice you don't see turntables with sophisticated spring suspensions as much anymore. Have they taken both suspensions AND anti skating adjustment away from the consumer? I almost said taken away from us, but I'm more cd, than lp now, as my cd reproduction has come within 15% of the sound quality of my analog, and it even surpasses it in a few ways. 15% isn't that much or as much as the added convenience of playing cds. As for cartridge tracking. The worst tonearm I ever had was on a Dual 506 tt, and the cartridges tracked perfectly. Same thing on a budget Phillips tt, before that. Cartridge tracking isn't so dependent on quality of arm. "Sound Quality" is dependent on quality of arm. Even cheap turntables with mediocre arms let cartridges track wonderfully. The tick reduction has nothing to do with mistracking. It's because like I said, the stylus isn't extraneously moving around in the groove as much, because the better arm is letting it have a less troubled run through the groove by firmly holding it in place.. When I went from the arm on my Dual to a Sumiko arm, my cartridge tracked the same as in the Dual; perfectly. But my ticks and pops lessened audibly by a factor of 3.
The folks at Linn would disagree. Many years ago, I replaced my very unreliable Bang and Olufsen 8000 turntable with a Linn Sondek with Basik arm and cartridge. The B&O cartridge cost $200 separately, the Basik $50. Even thru my mid fi system, the Linn was very obviously superior.
A phone cartridge generates as much psi as a jackhammer. The tone arm and turntable have to manage all of that kinetic energy. And think about the platter and arm bearings. They have to have no resistance AND zero play. These two things are pretty much mutually exclusive. Oh, and the bearings have the energy not damped or dissipated by the arm and platter pass thru them.
My humble experience is that good matching is the most important factor.
In cartridges there are certainly make/models that sound awesome, yet do not cost an arm and a leg. Ortofon, Hana, Grado, and Sumiko come to mind when it comes to considering products that hit way beyond their price point.
Gold ring?
Nagaoka MP110
Damn, 2 grand on a cartridge only to have grandkids or the cat pounce on it
Lol ....and the whole system is at $7k? No touch with reality.
It can happen in a flash! Environment can dictate a lot. My Grandson took out a Goldring Elite in 3sec. Just put it up until you can get a new one, then go again. I came home one day and my RH Speaker was blown. My Son really didn't like telling me he was showing off to his friends. Repaired and went on.
I have a ski place in the mountains. A neighbor was asking me about LP sound quality. I had kept my vinyl and 2 turntables at my main home, so I decided to take the lesser of the two tables up for him to listen to: a 44 year old Rega Planar 3 fitted with a Denon DL-103. The mountain preamp did not have a phono input so not wanting to spend much money I read some reviews, one of which said that the Schiit Mani worked well with the Denon. The end result was a weird sound - really bad. I hadn't used this turntable for years, so I was inclined to blame it or the cartridge, but before throwing in the towel, I got an Emotiva XPS-1 and lo, the sound was decent. My neighbor was so impressed, he rushed off and bought a turntable and is scavenging thrift shops for LPs. It reminded me that sound reproduction is a chain dominated by the weakest link.
Fully agree. I constatnly see super expensive turntables just because they have exotic design or materials used with cartriges that are maybe 10% of total price and always wonder why people are buying those.
As a peace of art - OK, as a something that looks nice and exclusive - OK if you can afford it, but that doesn't define the best performance at all.
If turntable is silent and spot on with cycles no matter how "cheap" it is, that's by definition excellent turntable. That's what we need turntable for: spinning a record so cartridge can create signal that goes to the rest of the gear. Period.
I sold audio in the '70s to pay for college. We were not audiophile quality (think Marantz, Pioneer, Infinity, JBL, etc) and the typical guy walked out the door with a turntable, receiver and speakers. I always counseled to spend the most time and money on the cartridge and speakers, because both were responsible for the hardest part of reproduction. Just getting gain out of a signal was relatively easy, so the amplification was not as critical.
This sounds a lot like the "A great cassette deck will make a bad tape sound good, but a bad deck...." argument. And having a brushless direct-drive vintage Pioneer (PL-300) that surpasses the current breed of "entry-level" turntables--All of which are belt driven--in terms of Rumble, as well as Wow & Flutter, I can certainly see how investing in a quality cartridge is worthwhile.
While I do agree with the sentiment that the cartridge is more important than the turntable, I was surprised how much of a difference I heard upgrading from a Pioneer PLX-1000 turntable with a Denon DL-A110 cartridge to a new Music Hall Stealth turntable with the same cartridge (I moved the cartridge over myself). They were both also using the same Hegel V10 phono preamp. It was not a subtle difference.
Ivor Tiefenbrun just choked on his haggis.
The fella that sent the question yeah I hate ortofon cartridges go for a goldring E3 or a nagaoka or sumiko
Hi from Glasgow Scotland, it's not that the project turntables are truly beautiful yet they fall short upon the cartridge but hey a lot of others are guilty also, I fell in love with the thorens TD 201 gloss white yet rather a cheap audio technica cartridge had it upgraded to goldring E3 sounds truly great now
Hey Paul we don’t need fancy looking HI-Fi, we need reliable HI-Fi.
Yes! Carts matter most. Going from (say) $2,500 for a competent table to $10, $30, $30k for an exotic table is results in near zero incremental sonic return IMO.
I agree 100% with Paul.
Please keep in mind the cartridge must match your arm! Also important that your phono stage can match the cart.
The phono cartridge makes more difference than the turntable. I ran into this on occasion.
My TT came with an Ortofon 2M Black. It was a good sounding rig. Then I moved up to a Soundsmith Zephyr MMIC Star which is their entry level low output cart. The sound quality improvement was very noticeable and well worth the cost of the cart.
Two items:
1a) Turntable set-up is critical. I cannot emphasize enough how much of an improvement you will get out of any cartridge, when you dial in your turntable, professionally.
You must dial in each of the following vectors / settings:
-- the effective length of the tone-arm
-- the cartridge's weight
-- the vertical tracking alignment / rake angle
-- the anti-skating
-- the overhang
-- the offset
-- the zenith angle
-- the cartridge's azimuth.
It is a complete package tuning.
Like a smooth running car's engine. If one thing is out of tune, you will know it. The same is true for anything being out of whack with your turntable's set-up. However, if you have always had it out of whack, your ears will not know. But once you tune everything, professionally, then you will be rewarded with musical bliss (well, it will sound far better than you image).
Even a mid-level cartridge will sound better or be competitive with a cartridge 3x its price, if the former is professionally dialed in, and the latter is not.
1b) The worst case scenario includes when a cartridge manufacturer installs the stylus into the cantilever at an improper angle. This happens occasionally on multi-thousand dollar cartridges, and probably happens regularly on sub-thousand dollar cartridges. So check it, and return bad ones right away.
Most people, myself included, neither have the tools nor the skills / experience to professionally set-up a turntable. Setting the cartridge's azimuth requires a special pressing and an oscilloscope.
I was lucky enough to have a turntable guru (named Nick) at my local high-end store (Verona, NJ) where I purchased my turntable. His time was a bit pricey. It took him 90+ minutes (hard to remember). And the person doing the tuning has to have a good ear (which Nick has).
Doing it properly, even by a professional, is tedious, time consuming work. But the sonic rewards are worth it.
2) If you have money to burn, get the Clearaudio Goldfinger Statement cartridge.
I heard it in a high end store in Verona, NJ, feeding Vandersteen's System Nine grouping of equipment, and also the Aesthetix Metis pre-amp and the Aesthetix IO Eclipse phono-amp in a treated room.
I had heard that system before, with all the same components, but with other very good cartridges. None of them stood a chance against the Goldfinger Statement cartridge.
There are probably other wildly great cartridges. I have not heard them. I am very lucky that I got to hear the Goldfinger Statement.
Garth Leerer, President of Musical Surroundings, was a guest, and he brought with him the Goldfinger Statement. The store normally has the Clearaudio Stradivari cartridge (very good, but a distant competitor to their Goldfinger Statement cartridge (and in completely different price points). One is expensive. The other requires a 2nd mortgage on your home.
The more I futz with vinyl the more I appreciate high end digital. I still enjoy the physical process of playing a record and the sound of it. Unless you're talking about vintage vinyl nearly all modern records were recorded and mastered digitally most likely with Protools. It always amazes me when members of the Church of Vinyl who believe that digital ruins everything enjoy a record that wasn't analog until it hit that DAC used in the studio to create the vinyl.
@@randyduncan795 That is likely due to you not understanding 1) the digital process that happens for creating vinyl, 2) nor do you understand the function of the home gear in the process.
As to #2:
If you have a digital copy of a song, and you also have the vinyl pressing made from that digital copy, then it is up to the playback gear to decide what sounds best.
A CD player (DAC and transport) creates sound from complete and utter silence. The DAC uses mathematical formulas to create voltage to feed your pre-amp. How well a DAC does that varies wildly, from DAC to DAC (from CD player to CD player).
CD players are plagued with jitter. Turntables have no jitter.
A quality transport will minimize jitter, allowing a CD player or DAC to sound its best. Few people have ever heard digital with minimal jitter (if you do not think that you have jitter, you have not heard jitterless digital. When you virtually eliminate jitter, you will then always recognize jitter. But if you always have jitter, then you do not realize that you have it). And turntables have no jitter.
The quality of digital playback is at the mercy of your DAC and transport (or CD player, which contains both).
As to #1:
Many recent vinyl pressings were made with DSD content. That DSD content is not what you get when you play a DSD disc. Why?
The DSD disc is encrypted. Sony has the only key. That key is built in to the hardware of any player that can play DSD discs. Ergo, you will always hear that Sony chip that does the decryption. You will never hear the true beauty of the actual DSD file.
So the public hears DSD, with its diminished sound quality (due to the mandatory Sony decryption chip), and they hear the vinyl pressing that was derived from the DSD file.
The huge difference is that the record company has an unencryped DSD file. They do not have to use the Sony decryption chip. So the record company is able to create the vinyl pressing using 100% of the beauty of the DSD file.
That is why (with a quality analog front end), the vinyl will sound better.
Because the digital that the public hears goes through that Sony decryption chip, and the vinyl pressing never dealt with encryption nor that Sony chip.
The best sound quality that a customer could have is if they got a pressing made directly from the master tape (which has not converted to digital and back).
The people that say that the vinyl pressings sound better than the digital files are correct. Their digital files are hurt by that Sony decryption chip, and their vinyl is not.
The route that the digital DSD data takes is responsible for what we ultimately hear.
People are not hearing things, when they hear the better sound quality from vinyl content that was derived from a digital DSD file.
They might not understand why. But they cannot deny what they hear.
I do understand why, and I hope that you now understand, too. There are folks that still choose to make fun of people that can't explain why they hear what they hear. I hope that you are not going to be a party to that childish conduct.
Cheers!
@@NoEgg4u Well first, I enjoyed both of your posts. I do stand by my original comment in that most records are not mastered in DSD. Is there a new version of Protools that does this. Most are originally recorded in PCM, "adjusted" in PCM, then converted and pressed to vinyl. We have fine exceptions like Dave Grohl's Sound City Real to Reel. And we have vintage records that never saw any digital at all. Even through my Oppo 105 I find the Japanese SACD of Aja a bit better than my original record from the 70's. I wouldn't call it enough difference to make a difference so it comes down to convenience.
I do have an O-scope and a test record and agree that setup is paramount with vinyl. My religion doesn't involve high end audio. I love good vinyl, tape, and digital. Same for solid state and valves. Hell, might as well throw ribbon and dynamic in there. I've heard great results with all. And lesser with all. I'm sure I'd enjoy discussing any and all of this with you further.
Your comments on Sony and DSD made me wonder...what about ripped SACD? As in when we rip DSD from an SACD to a hard drive. Or buy DSD downloads. I keep meaning to rip my substantial collection of SACDs and I know the Oppo can do it, I just haven't found the time.
Cheers to you!
An AudioTechnica MC for $600-1000 will make a perfect match
Makes total sense. I asked the same question of the owner of a German TT company and he says the exact same thing.. So logical.
Going deeper down the analogue rabbit hole, where do you place importance / pricing of a phono pre amp in this never ending journey to sonic nirvana ?
I agree with Paul here. Back in the day (70s) I had a Shure V15 Type 2 cartridge, which was considered one of the best, in my Garrard turntable (although the Garrard model was their top of the line at the time). This raises the question of when you buy a cartridge and a pair of speakers (assuming all else is the same) what do you listen to first? And many stores can't A-B cartridges so you simply go on the advise of the store, hi-fi publication, etc?
I think it would be nice if Paul started a discussion with the designer of the Linn LP12.
I have a sumiko welfleet on a SL-1200GR and it sounds magnificent. One of these days I'll make the jump to a MC cartridge, but I'm afraid I'd trash it with my clumsiness during setup. I'm somewhat new to installing and setting up cartridges from scratch. My biggest question is how to properly set up anti skate. There seems to be multiple opinions on how to dial it in. Anyways...to sum up...I was blown away by even a mid range priced Sumiko.
I just went thru this. I purchased an expensive cartridge for my Music Hall MMF-7, which is manufactured by Project & at very similar price point. I am happy with my Soundsmith Cartridge, and pleased with my decision. Picking up the music from the source and playing it thru your speakers is what it's about. So, I will go out on a limb and say to spend your money according to your speaker quality. You will never make it sound any better than your speakers. If I wasn't happy I had 60 days to return it/them. And I went with the salesman recommendation and bought a Sutherland Phono Amp, too. Oh yeah, the setup was a little more difficult. Sounds Great.
Cartridges are like speakers --- they are the most variable factor in a phono setup.
There are great carts that don't cost much, and at the other end of the scale you can waste a fortune on dreck.
In 2023, the least one can expect to spend on a worthwhile turntable is $1500. Add $400 or more for a cart.
Then there is the matter of aligning the cart on the arm for best tracking, and finding the optimum pressure.
No wonder I like CDs so much!
Sorry Paul my dealer said, "there is no point in putting racing tyres (tires) on a corolla." I must admit I have not had the opportunity to test this conjecture. So, like many audiophiles I cannot resolve this debate, too poor!
That would be a mistake.
If I put my spare Fidelity Research FR6SE on my old 1968 stereogram it won't work, not even with a pre-amp. The arm is just too heavy and stiff. Likewise if I took the cartridge from my gram and put it on my Zero 100 it won't work ether.
Because the arm will move and not the stylus .
Needs to be matched.
From my experience of many decades, I currently use a Lyra Delos and if you want to get a bit more harmonic structure, go for a Koetsu Black. The Delos a really good choice at $2000. There are plenty of other new cartridges from company's like Hanna and others that you may want to look into as well.
I totally agree with Paul..so if you put a really expensive cart on an expensive turntable you get really great sound…my Linn LP 12, 2000 vintage with a Sumiko Starling mc cartridge gives amazing sound..
I seldom change the cartridge on my streamer.
Rules of thumb like this are always great things to know. Thanks!
This is another "John Madden" topic.
If you put a good cartridge on a a good turntable you'll get good sound. No doubt.
BUT...If you put a GREAT cartridge on a a GREAT table....Well..well...That's a GREAT sounding system !
Don’t forget the $10K tone arm..😀
The cartridge is important but not as important as the vinyl
Garbage in garbage out. Start with the cartridge…
Nagaoka MP-200, Technics 1200GR, ifi Zen Phono (preamp) , done!
I have a LP140XP and MP110 and TEC TC 778
I'd agree and not, depends on the turntable! Take an essentially transparent turntable/arm (i.e one that doesn't generate it's own cacophony of resonances and doesn't have an arm that dynamically 'fights' the cartridge - e.g Well Tempered Versalex) and it's remarkable how much performance a mid-price cartridge can give. Stick a £500 - £2000+ MC cart Rega Planar 1 or Pro-ject T1 and you'll struggle to hear what the cart is capable of.
My experience with more expensive cartridge on a turntable went like this. I bought a Rega P6 turntable with a pre fitted moving magnet cartridge and was happy for some time, later on I wanted to upgrade and upgraded to a Rega Apheta2 moving coil cartridge and a new phono preamp. and was somewhat happy, having hum issues I found out that the tonearm wiring could be a issue, so out went the stock tonearm to a new one and the difference was like night and day. I swear by it that changing the tonearm was a bigger difference than only changing the cartridge. Now would it have been better for me to only change the tonearm and stick with the MM cartridge? No probably not I guess the new tonearm helped the MC cartridge to shine. So these all go together. once we start upgrading its hard to stop.
I think I’ll stay with my cute lil $10 MP3 player. 😂
Keep in mind the table and arm has to be able to allow the cartridge to do its job well. A cheap table/arm won’t be a good partner for a very good cartridge which will sound better on a better table/arm.
Look out Paul, the people at Linn are going to take you off their Christmas card list.
That sounds scary, I'm not into vinyl, yet I seen some ludicrously expensive turntables, so they have even more expensive cartridges to go in them..... Yikes
The price of vinyl is way up there. If I didn't already have a collection. Well, I have gotten pickier. I will stream an album before I spend that kind of money. I has to pass the sound test 1st. Back in the day, I would comb through racks and take chances for $3.50. Got a lot of great music that way.
Paul is definitely correct as usual 😊
I buy cartridges that if broken by me, my children or pets won’t wreck my day.
Right now I’m enjoying a Nagaoka MP110.
It cost about $170 dollars.
Joe Collins has in depth UA-cam videos about cartridges, stylus shapes, cartridge sonic signatures and tone arm matching.
When you say the better cartridge, cheaper turntable is better - what is better, the sound? How is it better? Please discuss why and what sounds better. The whole thing is completely
subjective. I have a Linn turntable with Krystal MC cartridge and I doubt whether upgrading the cartidge to the next level would make any diff. If it does I'll let you know as I've just bought the
Linn Kandid.
Had a moving coil cartridge about 20 years ago and I still remember how good it sounded. All the others were forgettable. I should probably go buy a new one..!
It is a shame that Denon does not sell the DL-160 anymore. It was great and affordable at 250 euros. I would not spend a couple of grands (if) one mistake and the money is gone, with a cheaper cardridge you can replace it more easy.
That people really spend that much money to me 100 to 300 euros feels like a good budget and has great quality.
I've yet to see proof that High output MC's have a reduced effective moving mass over a good MM like Shure, Ortofon, Empire, etc. To me they're not worth it, at all
I have a Shure v15 type iv cartridge with a JICO top of the line needle. I will take the Pepsi challenge with any turntable out there! That cartridge and needle combination is BEYOND AMAZING SOUNDING!
Nice, next year I'm hoping to get a Jico SAS for the M97 IV, I can't wait
Totally logical. Thanks for the great advice.
Thanks Paul!
Well... i dont have that much money for cartidge. But the more i dig and find unique tables and setups. And find deals... eventually ill be there. But for now im finding better equiptment.
Keep away from B&O. Nice machine, but the stylus replacement isn't a simple trip down to Radio Shack.
@@chuckmaddison2924That goes for 95% of vintage cartridges, sadly
The turntable is actually far more important than the cartridge. Surely a lesser cartridge being tracks on a turntable running at the correct speed with minimal wow, surely has to be better than a high end cartridge fitted to a turntable suffering from the latter!
My experience is that older cartridges usually have cheaper replacement stylus than new ones. Make shure you have an elliptical or hyper elliptical stylus (not spherical) to get the most out of the grooves.
I have Shure M75 MkII type 2 cartridge with an elliptical stylus for my original Lenco L75 turntable.
I feel it's a jungle out there and it's hard to decide for a cartridge.
RIAA is also important. My Holfi Ellipse died, sadly, because it was a great RIAA. I got a quick replacement with a Schiit Mani which isn't as good as the Holfi. I hope to find someone who can repair my Holfi RIAA. I replaced the battery, but that wasn't the fault.
Love my Grace f9 with soundsmith ocl ruby stylus.
It's a rare experience when I agree with this guy, but he got this one absolutely right!!
There’s so much nonsense talked about in vinyl replay. A turntable and arms job is a well defined one, spin at the exact speed, and hold the cartridge in the exact position it needs to be in, with the correct forces, alignment and tracking.
This can be achieved remarkably cheaply, and at its peak can be easily guaranteed with something like a technics 1200gr (or if you prefer the more inconsistent belt drive, maybe a project extension10).
Once you have these properties in place, the rest is cartridge and it makes the single biggest difference in any part of vinyl replay.
When you play a record, the cart can’t tell if your platter is 2kg or 20kg and neither can your ears.
Invest in a good, well made cartridge and get a turntable that is fit for purpose. It costs less than you’d think.
1:00 Paul, I can't really fully agree with this. Some matches are just grrreat. I got a good deal on an EMT 938 but I really don't have the cash for an EMT cart. I'm not using it in my audiophile setup, that already has a nic eplayer. I had to install something extremely, extremely low compliant cart as that 938 has a ridiculously heavy (35 grams effective mass) arm. Also barely any carts fit, physically. So we remodeled my AT-VM95E so it at least fit the shell and yes, that works. But man, you can tell that heavy arm is messing with the stylus suspension. So I bought a stiffer AudioTechnica AT-XP5. It's an elliptic DJ cart. It was a guess and holy moly, in that arm, that cart sounds infinitely better than I'm sure AT thought it could. Now, would I recommend this combo on anyone who has the disposable income to buy an EMT cart? Of course not. But it's shocking how much youc an get out of a cartridge with the right combo of turntable/arm/cart. Is the cartridge most important? Probably. Does a good cart on a meh table always sound better than an okay cart on a great table? No, not always. Cheap pro-jects being a prima example. I'll prefer a good old Pioneer PL112D or so with an AT-VM95E over a Pro-ject Debut with a Nagaoka MP200 any deay. The Pro-ject may measure better but musicality is not a thing.
My two cents ...... As both the turntable AND the cartridge are the "source," I would assign equal importance to both! ...... But hey, what do I know? I've only been a Hi-Fi enthusiast for 44 years! 🤣
My experience: Same cartridge and tonearm on two very different tables in the same price point yielded V E R Y different results. I think your cartridge and arm have to complement each other and the cart/arm combo have to complement the table. This assuming the pre didn't come from Walmart.😂
I had a turntable many years ago. My cat loved it. I would turn it on and the Cat used as a cat toy. Sit and spin or use it as a Walker around and around. Didn’t get to play many records on it.🥹🙄
Paul, I like your brutal honesty comments…😀
$130 for a decent cartridge, $3000 is stupidity combined with idiocracy and greed. Turntable should be around $600 to $1000 cartridge up to $200. My budget Dj equipment Will beat anything he’s talking about for decades.
My setup is LP140XP, MP110 cart and TEC TC 778 preamp
Every turntable manufacturer would say the opposite - and in my view they are correct and it's also logical.
I think he's got the project X2 it's important you keep compliance low for that tonearm it weighs 13.5 grams, the compliance should be between 10 to 17 um the Ortofon is 20 um what is a bit high. if you want a good cartridge look at the Goldring 1022 GX moving magnet,or the 1042, work well with that arm. And put you in the compliance window around 12 Hertz excellent sounding cartridges can't go wrong. Stick a dime on the bottom of the counterweight will help with the cartridge you've got, I mean you can bring the weight in more to the centre helping it's compliant with heavier compliance cartridge like the 2m silver.
Another thing to be aware of VTA tracking angle if it's not adjustable the arm just put some pieces of newspaper underneath the platter mat that's is if the cartridge is not as deep vice versa the other way around I think they're about the same the two cartridges something to check on if you can't adjust or you don't know how to adjust I should say because any arm is adjustable.
And an arm is just an important as the cartridge it's just the extension of the cartridge cantilever
Another good thing is get yourself a transformer means conditioner type, don't have to be expensive by a cheap one second hand 50$ Used in telecommunications 1 amp to drive the motor of the turntable give you a big improvement.
I'll add my 2 cents to the input. Certainly the cartridge is a critical part. There is synergy with all audio. I think if you compare a 1000, 2000, 3000 dollar cartridge with any turntable there will be improvement. Will they sound as good as they would on a premium table? I believe the answer is no. There is a matching performance for all gear. If the table is $1000 it makes little sense to me to put a $3000 cart with it. Then you need to ask what is the phono cable like and the phono preamp? The puzzle starts to get crazy. This is the world of audio. I have a 20K table and arm and a 4K cart. I am happy. I'm waiting for the Perfect Wave Phono stage.
I have been messing around with cartridges and there's a level of snobbery i think with this subgect i have phoned its total done to your ears i have found i sometimes prefer a cartridge that might not be very expensive is what sound you like
There's a lot of snobbery in the cartridge world, for sure. A basic Shure M44 has an effective mass of around 1.2mg, the Ortofon SPU has 1.0mg. The M44 costs around 60-80€ with a JICO replacement, and the Ortofon SPU costs 700€
If you can live with a 1600 dollar Pro-ject, don't overspend on the cart. The record player is 'good, but not great'. In that price range second hand is honestly a better way to go.
I'd stick below 600 dollars for the cartridge. Look at a Nagaoka MP200, look at a Goldring 2400, look at a Dynavector 10x5. And ask yourself what REALLY is your weakest link. Because even though the cartridge may be the 'most important', it won't shine if you put it in a record player that's notably worse than the cart, right? Same goes for the phono preamp. Spending a ton of money doesn't mean you also have good sound. You could have a horrible combination of amp and speakers (for instance; extremely bright speakers with an extremely bright sounding amp, or vice versa). You could've bought brands that are valuable, but not great (For instance, you could've bought a pair of Bose 901 with a modern-ish McIntosh amp). Just the value of the setup doesn't mean it's great sounding, or balanced. My personal audio rig has some really expensive parts, but also some cheaper parts (for instance; the streamer is only 350 bucks, the DAC makes the sound. My cartridge is a Goldring 2400, but my preamp is an Ayre, etc.). Also keep in mind there's loads of series of carts (like the 2M or the OM, or virtually any Shure) which just are not great, even though many people push you to buy one. I don't think you can just do this with numbers, you're going to have to do it with your ears, and maybe talk with people who have experience in the field (and ask yourself; is their rig actually good, or do they just brag? :D).
My two cents; Look at Sumiko, look at hana, look at dynavector, nagaoka, even audiotechnica, and stick below that 600 dollar mark if you are still happy with the pro-ject. It's an easily beaten record player, especially if you want to go second hand, and you may want to change that one up sometime soon.
(you may have forgotten just how bad cheap turntables get in 2023, and how good a simple, belt drive, suspended chassis turntable was in 1978)
Its a balancing act.
Wow!.. For a $1600 unit? I’m thinking his best is to to find one (that’s a good match to the tonearm is key) somewhere in the vicinity of around $700-800 max. The existing cartridge is at the low end end of the range and cost around $250 I’d guess. He didn’t mention an external phono preamp, bit I’d say probably around the same price as the cartridge.
I don’t think that turntable is at
the level of considering MC.
Sorry Paul, but your advice is silly on this one. If someone told you they had a $400 set of tires on a Honda Civic and asked what price is get better performance, the right answer prob around a $1000 set, as a $4000 set would be a waste on a Civic without massive upgrades in other areas .. get the picture?
Not really Paul's advice is sound! On this one! no he can run an MC cartridge fine but yes phono stage might be an issue?? that doesn't mean you have to spend a lot of money on one far from it.
I will respectfully disagree with your admonition or conclusion. While I agree a high budget turntable offering the greatest speed accuracy and best isolation of vibration would deliver relatively poor performance with a poorly designed or built cartridge, the same is true of reverse. The low budget turntable will often deliver high wow & flutter and most importantly would offer minimal tonearm setup ability. Lacking ability to properly setup cartridge will result in poor channel separation, lots of groove noise and limited soundstage.
The most important aspect of vinyl playback is cartridge alignment and setup. Unless your arm allows full adjustment and the cartridge is properly aligned, it’s going to compromise the playback, regardless of cartridge-turntable-tonearm combo.
I’m also a big advocate for choosing cartridge based on music. I have 3 cartridges that I routinely cycle through, depending upon music. I have a lot of older mono lp’s and nothing is better on mono playback than a mono cartridge. Because a mono album has its entire music cut in bottom of groove, get a mono cartridge. It’s vastly quieter than using a stereo cartridge where stylus is designed to pickup sound from walls of groove. Fwiw, I use a medium output MC type mono from Lyra.
Because I too listen to lots of live blues and jazz stereo recordings, I use a Grado Epoch on those as nothing comes close to reproducing the live ambiance of those recordings, imo. For the balance of our listening; opera, symphonic and 60’s-70’s rock, I have a DS Audio optical cartridge.
If you don’t have mono albums, I would recommend any DS Audio cartridge as the most versatile cartridge imo. It however will require a special and unique phono preamp, which is another large expense the op may find unpalatable. If that’s the case, do some listening at your local store with music you primarily listen to. Consider the output of your phono preamp, a low output MC for example is non-starter if your phono amp gain is 50db or less. The most important factor however is cartridge setup. If you lack the tools, knowledge and/or skill, make certain your local shop you purchase from offers professional setup. It’s in fact quite possible your dissatisfaction w/current Ortofon is due to improper setup of that cartridge.
Forget the $$$ you must look at compliance. If cartridge has a high compliance and arm is low. You get a case where the stylus is pulled sideways before the arm moves.
They must be matched.
Do i have a favourite? No.
Yeah Chuck, the problem is people keep saying the more expensive cartridge’s are better, well yeah it’s possible that a more expensive cartridge will sound better, but it really needs to be matched to the rest of the system and they seem to be focusing on sound only and missing facts about the physics; what you combine the cartridge/stylus assembly with and how you set it up are a big part of “best operation.” Seems they only understand “the more expensive cartridge, the better the sound, much bigger difference than the player” which is very short sighted. You’re dealing with a lot of ignorance here. It really doesn’t seem like it should be a hard concept to grasp. I’m always amazed at the stupidity on audio forums. When I was young, there used to be a saying, “If you don’t know what you’re talking about, it’s better to keep your mouth shut and have everybody think you’re stupid, than to open it and remove all doubt. 😉
That's not true. A great table and arm can make an okay cartridge sound great. That said, you can get a great MC cartridge for $1,200-$1,500. Look at Van Den Hul DDTII and MC10 carts. Best bang for the buck.
wuaaa still people using vinyl lps.
yeah my granfather still uses his crystal set radio from his father.. he insists it sounds better warmer and musical haaa he loves that euphonic distortion, low signal to noise ratio and noise... sounds familiarr?.. it is.
It's a free country dude, you can do whatever you want! Nobody is making you listen to records . . . just move along . . . nothing to see here
@@redmondjp free country??? which one? where? when?? haaaa dont tell me you believe that haha
@@redmondjp se ve que lo que dije te llego hasta el fondo del orto. tangalanga siempre tenia razon.
@@endrizoWhen it comes to your own audio system, it still is . . .
👍🏼
I haven't touched a turntable since the late 1980s. But I will agree with Paul that improving the transducer (cartridge) makes a lot more sense than worrying about the physical mechanism.
Unless there are rumble, speed control or arm related problems, the mechanism isn't going to make a lot of difference in the quality of transduction in the cartridge.
@ Douglas Blake. More bad advice from Mr. Bad Advice himself. Is Douglas Blake your real name. Is Mr. Walthers on here, who compliments you on here, really you? Do you actually believe that a better turntable and arm won't improve the sound quality of a cartridge? Wrong! It can make a HUGE improvement. Just about everybody knows that; who have "ears" and have taken the time to listen. Type in "pic of Goldmund Reference turntable", and look at the pics for awhile. Do you seriously think that the cheap turntables you have experience with would let a phono cartridge sound as good as that? It's a rare bird that comes on somewhere, who's never had really good equipment, and tells audiophiles with 4 times better sound quality than them, that major improvement isn't possible. If you listen to this guys advice and follow it al the way through, you should be able to put together a really really perfectly putrid system.
Douglas Blake (if that isn't an alias), why don't you expand your horizons beyond the audio field, and make pretend you're an expert in other fields too? Here are some suggestions.
Go up to a group of race car drivers, yourself never having driven a race car, and tell them the ins & outs of driving and maneuvering their cars in a race.
Go up to a large group of Fine Wine Conoisseurs and tell them there isn't hardly any difference between the taste of wines and that Wild Ir*sh Rose, not only tastes just as good, but gets you drunk faster with it's high alcohol content.
Go up to a large group of stunt pilots, having never flown a plane yourself, and give them some advice on aerial acrobatics and barnstorming.
This is ridiculous. I find your bad advice one of the most ridiculous things ever. It goes against so many peoples experience and common wisdom. And you still haven't realized that your two ears only belong to you.
Everyone wants to be an expert. Everyone wants to be a super hero. Not me, I couldn’t take the strain of the stress. 😀
@David Whoever you mean, having competent perception/evaluation and trying to steer people the right way is not trying to be a hero. But I do get applause many times a day.
I just think that people who think they can be an armchair quarterback with audio, and don't have virtually any meaningful listening experience with the real good stuff, is still on their own 1 yard line, whether they realize it or not, no matter how many technical facts they have in their mind. Experience always before theories, is the number one rule of Science, that Science is based upon. "Armchair Evaluators" who've never even been in the same room with the stuff they're putting down and crying snake oil, are squirming up the wrong tree. Their opinions on something audio, no matter what technical knowledge they possess is not one iota better than someone else who's never heard said thing either. Someone can take a piece of chalk and fill an entire huge blackboard with equations and theories and theorems with it, but that doesn't mean they know a thing about chalk, what it is or what it's made of. Theories (thinking) and perceiving (hearing), are two totally different things. I do not look forward to the day (if it ever comes), where measurements and listening impressions jibe consistently and support each other. Liking what I hear is enough for me, and that's the only important thing anyway. I'm not a robot and I don't need a robot or a measuring machine to tell me what sounds better to IT..
I think most people who've heard real acoustic instruments in real life often enough, like myself, can tell which equipment is doing the better impersonation of the real life instruments, and we can hear when there's better clarity too.
@@sidesup8286
_" Whoever you mean, having competent perception/evaluation and trying to steer people the right way is not trying to be a hero. But I do get applause many times a day. "_
Liking your own comments doesn't count.
@Douglas Blake. My original post got 20 thumbs up, and yours got zero thumbs up, and one thumbs down. My comment about myself getting applause each day was referring to something else outside of audio. Does that make an even one million bad inferences by you? People should try to get along on here. Otherwise avoid me and I'll avoid you. This whole thing is not so important anyway. Put things into perspective for yourself.
🙂👍
I beg to disagree. It's the sum of the whole, decent turntable with decent tonearm ans decent cartridge. And you don't have to spend thousands. $2000 to $5000 will destroy any digital audio gear.