Paul, you are amazing! Not only passionate and expert, when talking about sound, but your good humor and charismatic expression are precious. Congrats!!!
Man, you are the luckiest person, what a fantastic day, I am a vinyl record collector and I love Green Day, I would have been so happy to go to a record store and meet them. :) great video.
Now that was a great question and answer. J. Peter Moncrief passed away August 17, 2022. Along with Enid Lumley and other writers, they wrote some very interesting articles on his publication, International Audio Review or IAR. Between IAR and The Absolute Sound, I got a great education in the world of high end audio.
The resistive load of a low output MC generator can be used to add damping to the moving parts of the cartridge. The lower the load, the more the cartridge movement is reduced, especially in the treble. The load can be tuned by ear to eliminate high-frequency ringing which smears the reproduction.The MC pre pre yours truly and some friends use can adjust the load in 24 steps by the use of a selector. For cartridges such as van den hul and Ortofon the 24 steps are between 8 and 90 ohm, and for 100 ohm Denon and Dynavectors, the steps are between 90 and 130 ohms. After some minutes of playback,the rubber damper will become slightly more elastic, and we will increase the load value a few ohms to reduce the electrical damping, depending of the high frequency response. The effect is similar on cartridges with a narrow frequency range as ones that reach 70 - 100 kHz.
I'm not so sure about placing a resistor across the coils ... all that does is to suppress the output at all frequencies.. what you want is some kind impedance flattening circuit ( like the conjugate load used on mid / woofer speakers)
Such peak, rather at high frequencies is created by wiring capacity, coil capacity combined with MC coil indictance which may result in paralel resonance. Could it be that it may act as areal at radio frequencies providing more noise or even radio type reception ?
The most important reason for a low input impedance at the input of a high gain low level preamplifier is improvement of the noise performance, both the input self-noise if it is an active amplifier rather than a transformer and externally induced noise on cabling (EMI).
I run my Koetsu Urushi straight into the 47K Ohm MM stage of my Conrad Johnson pre amp. Sounds great. I tried a MC step up transformer but it sounded worse.
I have a Luxman LMC-5 MC cartridge on my turntable paired with a 1:10 step-up transformer and Luxman recommends a 10 Ohm load for optimal sound / performance, however, I can't for the life of me hear any difference what so ever between the proper loading and none at all (just the 47k Ohm at the input of my phonostage). Talked to some people about it and they just said "If you don't notice any negative impacts on the sound - don't bother fiddling with changing resistors or whatever.".
I'm inclined to agree if you don't hear any difference. The cartridge has a nominal 4.7Ω internal impedance, so 10Ω does seem severe, but they actually say 2.5 to 10Ω, so looks like they are leaning towards operating the cartridge as a current source when using a transformer. I wonder if some interaction between the cartridge and transformer was seen in lab waveform analysis, and the heavy damping resolved it?
Vinyl use same principle as your dynamo light on the bicycle! If you put a speaker on your headlight on the bicycle, you’ll hear the sound of silence, as it should be heard, possibly! 🤓🎵🎶🔊
The RIAA equalization is the inverse of the pre-emphasis and de-emphasis applied to the recorded signal, it doesn't relate to any characteristic of the cartridge. Edit: I must make clear that when I say "the cartridge", that is the cartridge under discussion in the video. An unloaded MC cartridge possibly showing a peaky high frequency response, (which Paul says he is not convinced of being an issue), is not a characteristic related to the purpose of RIAA equalization.
@@PlatypusPerspective So why make a recording where the low frequencies are reduced and the high frequencies boosted, and then on playback do the opposite?
@@PetraKann As @razisn has said, it helps a lot with some problems of using a mechanical reproduction system for music, which has a very wide dynamic range. Since a much greater amount of the energy in music is in low frequencies and a smaller proportion at the top end (as defined by human hearing), reducing the low end makes it less difficult for a mechanical stylus to trace the record groove, and since there's less high frequencies they can be boosted up so they don't get lost in surface noise in quiet passages. The initial cutting of the record master in the studio also benefits in the same way, which is actually the foundational reason why it's done that way.
Paul, you are amazing! Not only passionate and expert, when talking about sound, but your good humor and charismatic expression are precious. Congrats!!!
Surely Paul meant to say 47kΩ not 47kHz. Which is the industry standard impedance matching for MC type cartridges.
Surely you meant to say MM cartridges
@@gotham61yes ... I was going to say that too
Nope, he meant MC.
@@gotham61
Man, you are the luckiest person, what a fantastic day, I am a vinyl record collector and I love Green Day, I would have been so happy to go to a record store and meet them. :) great video.
Now that was a great question and answer.
J. Peter Moncrief passed away August 17, 2022. Along with Enid Lumley and other writers, they wrote some very interesting articles on his
publication, International Audio Review or IAR. Between IAR and The Absolute Sound, I got a great education in the world of high end audio.
Wouldn't it be good to have continuously variable loading to dial in the sweet spot for any MC cartridge and system ?
The resistive load of a low output MC generator can be used to add damping to the moving parts of the cartridge. The lower the load, the more the cartridge movement is reduced, especially in the treble. The load can be tuned by ear to eliminate high-frequency ringing which smears the reproduction.The MC pre pre yours truly and some friends use can adjust the load in 24 steps by the use of a selector. For cartridges such as van den hul and Ortofon the 24 steps are between 8 and 90 ohm, and for 100 ohm Denon and Dynavectors, the steps are between 90 and 130 ohms.
After some minutes of playback,the rubber damper will become slightly more elastic, and we will increase the load value a few ohms to reduce the electrical damping, depending of the high frequency response. The effect is similar on cartridges with a narrow frequency range as ones that reach 70 - 100 kHz.
I'm not so sure about placing a resistor across the coils ... all that does is to suppress the output at all frequencies.. what you want is some kind impedance flattening circuit ( like the conjugate load used on mid / woofer speakers)
@ 2.58. surely 47 K Ohms?
I think the part you may have missed is that it seems distortion is significantly reduced when the cartridge is loaded down.
Is there any device in that circuit which may create distortion?
@@Mikexception Yes, mistracking. The resistive load has an electromechanical damping effect on the cantilever
Such peak, rather at high frequencies is created by wiring capacity, coil capacity combined with MC coil indictance which may result in paralel resonance. Could it be that it may act as areal at radio frequencies providing more noise or even radio type reception ?
The most important reason for a low input impedance at the input of a high gain low level preamplifier is improvement of the noise performance, both the input self-noise if it is an active amplifier rather than a transformer and externally induced noise on cabling (EMI).
I run my Koetsu Urushi straight into the 47K Ohm MM stage of my Conrad Johnson pre amp. Sounds great. I tried a MC step up transformer but it sounded worse.
Is your amp volume set very high though?
So the trend towards current gain for preamps is not technically valid?
I have a Luxman LMC-5 MC cartridge on my turntable paired with a 1:10 step-up transformer and Luxman recommends a 10 Ohm load for optimal sound / performance, however, I can't for the life of me hear any difference what so ever between the proper loading and none at all (just the 47k Ohm at the input of my phonostage). Talked to some people about it and they just said "If you don't notice any negative impacts on the sound - don't bother fiddling with changing resistors or whatever.".
I'm inclined to agree if you don't hear any difference. The cartridge has a nominal 4.7Ω internal impedance, so 10Ω does seem severe, but they actually say 2.5 to 10Ω, so looks like they are leaning towards operating the cartridge as a current source when using a transformer. I wonder if some interaction between the cartridge and transformer was seen in lab waveform analysis, and the heavy damping resolved it?
Yea I tried running my MM cart at 20khz...couldn't hear any music..
That’s some really good plain english!
Vinyl use same principle as your dynamo light on the bicycle! If you put a speaker on your headlight on the bicycle, you’ll hear the sound of silence, as it should be heard, possibly! 🤓🎵🎶🔊
That's why there is the RIAA equalizer at the MC cartridge pre-amplifier to correct the rising curve
The RIAA equalization is the inverse of the pre-emphasis and de-emphasis applied to the recorded signal, it doesn't relate to any characteristic of the cartridge. Edit: I must make clear that when I say "the cartridge", that is the cartridge under discussion in the video. An unloaded MC cartridge possibly showing a peaky high frequency response, (which Paul says he is not convinced of being an issue), is not a characteristic related to the purpose of RIAA equalization.
@@PlatypusPerspective
So why make a recording where the low frequencies are reduced and the high frequencies boosted, and then on playback do the opposite?
@@PetraKann To accommodate the inherent problems of stylus groove tracking. Read about it.
@@PetraKann As @razisn has said, it helps a lot with some problems of using a mechanical reproduction system for music, which has a very wide dynamic range. Since a much greater amount of the energy in music is in low frequencies and a smaller proportion at the top end (as defined by human hearing), reducing the low end makes it less difficult for a mechanical stylus to trace the record groove, and since there's less high frequencies they can be boosted up so they don't get lost in surface noise in quiet passages. The initial cutting of the record master in the studio also benefits in the same way, which is actually the foundational reason why it's done that way.
That's not true. The RIAA curve corrects the frequency inversion on the disc and has nothing to do with the phono cartridge response.
First to comment!
Cheers from Montreal.
Cheers from Shawinigan 🎉
Paul thinks he knows it all BUT HE DOES NOT.
Can you read minds? Because he never said anything like that in his videos.
so Mr. Rick Mahoney then enlighten us as to why you are here... Paul just simply summarized the article for the audience. You now have beef? 😂
2nd from Queensland Australia