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Here's the thing:
I'm planning some experiment that need a cartridge with BOTH higher output voltage AND good channel separation, after some research it led me to Grado. Then it sorta let down as I found Prestige 2's output are not 5mV as they claimed but close to 3.5mV actually, and it naturally made me suspect if Prestige 3 fit my bill.
All informations that I could come up relate to this discrepency goes no later than 2015, so no information I can find to whether GRADO guys had rectified this with PRESTIGE SERIES 3.
If anybody has experience with series 3 can answer if they reach 5mV this time, thank you in advance!
Follow Ups:
good luck with the endeavor . I can't help but state the obvious, that the only half speed stuff I have ever heard about of even seen were big thick recordings used to play entire radio programs to the troops during WW2.It would seem that all the complications planned might not be needed if the player lacks the required performance, and since the electronics in that deal were of the period, I hope a player with the old 16 1/2 speed can provide a good enough spin.
I assume you have checked out the other, less known moving iron supplier, soundsmith . don't know any product specs , but the owner presents himself as the accurate type.
Edits: 06/03/24
Also this one:
https://www.vinylengine.com/library/vestax/pdx-2000.shtml
Supposedly better S/N ratio than others, OOP but entry models are not that hard to find. Polarized opinions on this one, hope printed specs are more accurate than Grado...
Thank you for caring, but I think half-speed turntables are not that difficult to come by:
https://djworx.com/the-reloop-rp-8000-mk2-another-day-another-black-turntable/
https://www.thedjshop.co.uk/stanton-str8-150-m2-turntable.html
Pitch controls: +/-50% :)
I have been using the GRADO Platinum Timbre Series 2 for many years. I love the musical and balanced sound with good clarity and strong bass (I need bass ;-)), can listen for hours and hours without any fatigue.
The new GRADO Platinum Timbre Series 3 (MI (moving iron) output 4,0 mv) has improved in the higer register with more resolution.
It is soulfull cartridge and very good for classic and jazz.
I mostly listen to electronic/techno/dubstep/trip hop etc., and this cart just gets me absorbed into the music.
If you (only) listen to hard rock, this is not the cartridge for you, go for Ortofon, Denon etc.
Highly recommended!
mojul
Thank you for kind recommendation!
While I worry Prestige may not be fully "in spec", Opus 3 is still on my candidate list! :)
What exactly is the experiment you are wanting to do?
Have you considered the Ortofon 2M series? They will meet your requirement of high output of at least 5mV (5.5mV ref 5cm/s rms).
Apart from the cartridge design, the actual channel separation you achieve depends on the set azimuth. Don't just go by the published spec of 22dB. The coil configuration is capable of far higher and I achieve well over 38dB with a 2MBlue using test tones.
In my experience, Grado Prestige cartridges have rather poor quality control and they are all bonded tips right up to and including the Gold. The frequency response is also rather peculiar with a huge suckout in the brilliance band and a "smiley face" characteristic with rises at LF and HF.
Regards Anthony
"Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty.." Keats
Thank you for answer!
Since I cannot buy every cartridge and get every equipment for physical test, published spec is the only thing I can rely on, unfortunately.
My intended experiment is for some alternative method of vinyl rip:
Half speed playback (some DJ turntable can do) and capture "flat", RIAA EQ afterward.
I know that neither half speed capture nor "capturing flat" are new, but I've yet to find information about doing them at the same time.
I did find about how RIAA EQ would get screwed in alternative speed elsewhere (can't find the link now), but I guess I can use white noise test record to workout a proper counter-equalization (which should also be able to deal with cartridge's own curve), or I can apply RIAA EQ after speed the file back to normal.
Half speed playback means everything drop a whole octave, and bass frequency may sometimes drop out of cartridge's playable frequency range altogether, so wider frequency response is needed. Besides, you need wider frequency range than "target resolution" to ensure "fuller" preservation of audible-range waveform (akin to the bigger the film, the better looking phono even not printed big), thus frequency range still need to be wide "both way," including dog's hearing range. :D
Channel separation: not many music recorded with great separation to begin with, I know. But I don't want a record happen to have 30db separation get "trapped" by a sounding good but 25db only cartridge. What the point if information-to-be-ripped is simply not extracted?
And I also found that cartridge output voltage would drop with lower speed/velocity, so I would need higher native output to withstand. There are cartridges goes way up like 6-8mV, but they not much at chan. sep. and freq. res.
So, you see: frequency range (which Ortofon is a bit conservative), separation, high output, Grado heppen to be the rare one that fit all the bill on published spec, until I came across with the fact that they are not quite "in spec" a while ago. :(
Half-speed rip may have some benefit in my blind guess, and actual experiment is the only way to find out, if skewed EQ can be dealt with:
~A more complete and accurate preservation of higher-frequency, obviously.
~Reduced WOW & flutter: I know, I know! WOW & flutter would increase with slower motor speed, but it would not increase TWICE in half speed unless it's REALLY bad motor! Thus when the file speed back to normal, the "relative" WOW & flutter may actually be reduced.
~Better overall channel separation: You know the drill, the higher the frequency, the worse the separation for nearly every phono cartridge. By reduce the speed to half, 2khz would be pulled down to 1khz, where it can get better separation, and 4khz down to 2khz, and so on so forth...
~More neutral and "correct" result overall (hopefully): This is the most blind faith part here and the whole half-speed fuss is for.
EVERY SINGLE PART OF ANALOGUE SIGNAL CHAIN HAS ITS OWN SOUND NO MATTER WHAT! It's where the fun is for most audiophile but utter nightmare for compulsive archivists! This fuse or that internal wire might be obvious bottleneck, but which "alternative" counts?? Every and any upgrade can potentially introduce new "flavor" to something already impossible to be "correct", and you just can't find solder for a specific resistor to be "exact opposite" to its sound signature!
By playing back in half speed, the "main body" signal get stretched, while all other harmony/distortion/whatever may stay the way they were; as digitized file speed back to normal, all those "flavors" would be pushed an octave upward, and hopefully into inaudible realm, and erased when file down-sampled into proper resolution (which is why Grado can be candidate for me, and their "smiley" curve could be dealt with by digital EQ).
It may be possible to get benefit from some upgrade (S/N ratio and such) without unneeded "flavors", thus more free hand in choice of upgrading tweaks...?
If you want fidelity, you are best to look at a better cartridge and a better phono stage/ADC if you want the best result.
For my recordings, I do a flat transfer and apply digital EQ which eliminates the phono stage colouration whilst achieving "perfect" EQ of the signal without input overload limitations and a superior transient response. If you want neutrality, that's what I would suggest!
In theory it might sound like a good idea, but in practice it will be no more than a fun experiment unless you have a 78rpm cut and you only have a deck that does 45 (as I do). I have done this for a record that had a short 78 track cut into the label area (Jack White Lazaretto) so I played back at 45 and pitched up the file. It worked well.
Do you set up and align your cartridge with test discs and accurate jigs? If not you are wasting your time. Particularly with your second experiment when you try to isolate vertical and lateral modulation and recreate the individual channel signals.
Azimuth has to be exact for the L and R channel balance relationship to be correct for both vertical and lateral modulation. When the azimuth is off, the relationship changes for both planes. If you set azimuth optimally for normal stereo decoding there will be zero advantage to recovering the modulation separately and recreating the sum and difference results to extract channel information - don't forget that wow and flutter will cause subtle differences in the recovered time domain waveform between the lateral and vertical data when you come to combine the data so the resultant channel information will not be the same as originally cut.
Don't be fooled by the specs on the Grado - they look impressive but they aren't claiming it is flat to 55kHz. The tip resonance occurs far lower in the range than that due to the effect of the brass bushing adding tip mass. The low inductance is what enables them to make that lofty claim. However, this is irrelevant if you are doing half-speed. For half-speed playback you only need a (flat) response to at least 10kHz which the Ortofon 2M Blue achieves far better than the Grado. You also want a high quality, highly polished tip with accurate zenith alignment if you want best quality. The 2M Blue has a nude jewellery grade Ogura vital stylus which has a superb polish and accurate radii compared to the bonded industrial grade diamond on the Grado. I have had to return multiple samples to Grado due to quality issues including araldite blobs on the tip rendering them unusable!
As I mentioned before, the Grado has a suckout with a minimum output at 10kHz (see the image which I measured for a Grado Green) which means at half speed, you will have a bottom heavy response with a downward slope (almost like pink noise characteristic) all the way up to HF. The 2MBlue will be much flatter to 20kHz as it is flat to 10kHz at normal speed. The other issue is that the LF resonance will impact further up the audio spectrum than normal and this will be heard as a flutter given that the LF resonance shifts up closer to 20Hz when you pitch up the data.
I'm not trying to put you off trying, but I am pointing out that you are unlikely to get any advantage in half-speed playback and certainly not if you are going to strap the cartridge in order to separate the vertical and lateral modulation on separate playback passes
Regards Anthony
"Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty.." Keats
Thank you again for unexpected meticulous answer!
No worry for sounding like put me off, such advice is helpful in decision making and know what else to evaluate. I wouldn't have thought that Ortofon 2M can potentially perform better in term of chan. sep. due to coil design without you bringing up. My guess is that since not everybody can make optimized adjustment, Ortofon print spec as what most people can/would likely get out of. I guess it may also explains why DS Audio's optical cartridge, whose chan. sep. should easily reach 30+ realm with its physical nature, only next to a laser turntable, is officially published at "merely" 27db!
I'm still willing to try out whether half-speed can "neutralize" captures as this factor is not really seen eveluated. Even if it works, it's still the more neutral the components the better.
As for mid/side separate capture, whilst wow/flutter discrepancy may go against my "accurate" intention, how it would result in audio "image" is still worth a try as separate topic (and can half-speed as well, or trying out whether basic post-processing before or after re-matrix into L/R and see how each flow works). It may be even more fun to try replace "mid" with mono "version," as many records in 60s are available in both stereo and mono, of which many are differently mixed and not just "downmix as mono."
And I'm guessing "replacing mid with mono" would not be quite like "overlap mono onto both L/R," which may likely over-emphasize native "mid" within original L/R.
With mid/side experiment (in which mid/lateral would be delibrately ripped with mono cart even for stereo-only source), physical resemblence for mono and stereo carts is still needed , and with Ortofon 2M line, the one with close price range to 2M Mono would be 2M Bronze. But from published spec, Blue seems to be the one relatively "closer" to Mono than Bronze expect output voltage.
If things don't work out even when mono/stereo carts are similary spec-ed, then there's no need to try further different combinations. :)
My current plan is not just half speed flat-rip but also without flat pre-amp altogether, sorta treat it as mic signal.
I also want to find out how it would workout with DSD capturing, as high-band noise has partly to do with how steep up-down "slopes" are, and I can't find how it would fare better or worse in low signal volume(google always mix result with typical "recording volume").
Capturing with Sony PCM-D100, OOP I know but not quite unobtainium, and it got mic-in impedance at 22Kohm, which most other mic-in capturing device either lacked of or are at much higher price, plus it even got internal mic-amp. Not as optimal as 47Kohm but far better than none (yes, I know about potential S/N ratio issue w/o proper impedance).
D100 can only do DSD 2.8mhz, but as far as half-speed concern it can be de facto DSD 5.6mhz.
Economic-wise I would first try half-speed thing with a cheap high-output without concerning chan. sep. & etc. (most DJ cart would do in my knowledge), and get a Graham Slee Accession to try again if it didn't work out, then I can get carts for "real works" :)
A related ripping experiment is inspired by mid/side process sometimes used in professional realm:
It's possible to get lateral-only (mid) or vertical-only (side) signal with intentional wrong pinning:
https://pinkfishmedia.net/forum/threads/making-mono-when-two-become-one.267642/#post-4676902
So the idea is to rip vinyl with 2 takes: one with lateral output, the other with vertical output, then matrix them back into L/R signal, sorta imitating Y/C separation back in analogue video days.
But "lateral output" from stereo cartridge wiring means potential voltage overload, so for that part I'd use mono cartridge with right voltage (close to stereo ones for "vertical take"). Ideally a true mono cartridge would output "average" of L&R (signal-wise, we need vertical compliance nowaday), which is different from L+R that "mid" should be, but THAT'S exactly why it worth a try!
As far as proof-of-concept goes, this mono cartridge need to be some sort of close "counterpart" to stereo-one-for-vertical-take. And again, only Grado seems fit the bill, Denon and Audio Technica's monos barely resemble their stereo ones spec-wise, Ikeda are MC and price way too high for me.
As for stereo-cartridge-for-vertical-take, channel separation obviously matters.
So, again, Grado...and, again, that's before I find they (at least Prestige line) can't truly output 5mV... :(
Another candidate, SUMIKO, they don't even make mono!
On this Canadian site they quote 5.0 mV.However, some other sites suggest 3.5 mV
I have the red on my Thorens and love it.
Edits: 06/02/24
Thank you so much! You saved me a lot of spend and time! :)
Heard some good things about Grado, I can agree that spec doesn't need to be that accurate when it comes to just "listening", but for my need I have to go on for a new quest...next level: find out if Grado wooden series is really 4mV :D
I do have a Grado Sonata 3 on another TT, in another system. Sounds very nice.
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