|
Audio Asylum Thread Printer Get a view of an entire thread on one page |
For Sale Ads |
99.166.174.206
In Reply to: RE: And let's not forget the phonostage posted by John Elison on January 04, 2017 at 11:01:03
I do share your sentiments on his John , well until recently when i had the opportunity to listen to a really high dollar analog rig ( 150K +) the difference is in the refinement not in the bells and whistle, Much darker back ground from the CD silent needle to groove , no timbre change with increased volume and a level of refinement so easily noticeable its surreal....
Manny ,
my 2C take on this , TT/Arm / phonostage , with phono stage being the most important then Cartridge to match arm , TT combo . Arm quality and adjustability is everything with cartridges , the setup is everything in hearing Any cartridge , many high dollar analog rigs fail to impress due to poor tonearm setup..
Phono cartridges , all of them have their own house sound , very rare to find anyone involved in analog with one cartridge , some of us may have "settled " on a particular Brand after trying many others , mostly this settling comes from our maturing fixed system and not from one being better than the other , recessed sounding speakers will require a more forward or bright sounding cartridge for eg , selecting "your" one cartridge to purchase could turn out more difficult than you think , take up Bills offer , you will learn alot from the comparisons , take your table too if allowed ...
Regards
Follow Ups:
Where did Manny go ... ?
In my opinion, the ultra expensive high-end is all about ego and status. It has nothing to do with sound quality.
You say you've listened to a $150k+ analog front end. Well, so have I! I've listened to several in that price range and I even made hi-res digital recordings of a Rockport Sirius III with van den Hul Colibri cartridge and darTZeel phono preamp. I still have those recordings and I don't think they necessarily sound any better than my own $20,000 analog front-end.
Therefore, in my opinion, it all depends on what we want to believe we hear and how much value we place on the differences we want to believe we hear. As for me, there is no turntable, cartridge and phono stage worth more than $20,000 based on sound quality alone. But, that's just my opinion based on comparing my own equipment to other much more expensive playback systems. That's not to say I haven't heard a vinyl front-end that sounds better to me than my own. I have, but it didn't cost more than $20,000.
I've been making hi-res digital recordings of vinyl since I bought my first DAT recorder in 1991 and I fully understand and appreciate how accurate hi-res digital can be in capturing the sound of vinyl. Therefore, I have no doubt that Michael Fremer's needle drops in his comparison test of nine cartridges are accurate and representative of the actual sound quality of those cartridges including his own ultra expensive vinyl front-end. Of course, your opinion may differ from mine, but it's not because I don't have direct experience with other ultra expensive vinyl front-ends.
To each his own! YMMV, etc, etc.
Thanks,
John Elison
Regarding MF's 9-way shootout, one would have thought that if the mantra that "source is king" applies, regardless of the expense/cheapness of the downstream ancillaries used, then the Caliburn/Anna combination needledrop would have been an automatic winner, idiosyncracies of the respondents systems notwithstanding.
In other words, "quality will out". The fact that it didn't in this case is perplexing (for MF at least...) ;^)
Regarding the OP's question it's often been said that MM or MC, cheap or expensive, it matters little provided the cart is mounted on a first-class, well set up, platform, (admittedly with a commensurate phono stage) which is why you'll often see cheap classic Denon's etc performing in ridiculously expensive tonearms.
Interestingly, ultra high end MC carts are still available as med-high output (needless to say they've covered the bases by having low output variants of the same cartridge for hardy souls who enjoy the quest for 20K phono stages ;^)
Post a Followup:
FAQ |
Post a Message! |
Forgot Password? |
|
||||||||||||||
|
This post is made possible by the generous support of people like you and our sponsors: