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RE: Thanks,

Posted by Retipper on December 12, 2010 at 06:01:04:
I would like to address a few issues, and remind some to read my English carefully. When I use the word "can", it means just that. It does not mean "always", so please don't read "can" as always. Thanks.
Thank you John for the excellent post, as always. Great to meet you at RMAF.
Regarding amplitude and phase coherence, I would point out that there is an extended blog on another site wherein after MANY posts, it is FINALLY realized that the mechanical realization of the actual design of a Strain Gauge has the final say, and personally having built many Strain Gauge cartridges (and manufactured and rebuilt thousands of magnetics over that 35 years), leaves me in the fixed position of vehement agreement.
Looking at the mechanics of a cartridge cross-eyed will modify its response. This is why that blog finally comes to rest indicating that Matsushita made many models of SG cartridges, all with different amplitude and phase responses. I will not tell you how many prototypes and how many man-hours I have spent in pursuit. But if those who speak of perfect amplitude being the only factor for perfect phase, I would argue that point, and indicate that the rheology of materials results in transient performance that conflicts with steady state performance, and therefore one "design" cannot be perfect for all waveform situations. We all know that cartridges sound differently, even those of the same model, due to differences in manufacture both within and outside of the control of that manufacturer. I am not saying that flat is bad, so I would beg you to not attribute that to me. What I AM saying is that flat is not everything by any means. If it were, all "flat" cartridges and precision preamps would sound the same. They don’t. This clearly indicates that a cartridge with a radical change in design can sound radically different. What radical change? How about moving mass....
For those who agree with me on this matter, I will say that the ultra-low moving mass of the Strain Gauge is a major factor in its enjoyment. Consider the following: If you want best statistical road contact of a tire on a sports car, you lower the mass of the tire and rim, and fine tune the suspension. The same goes for a stylus/cantilever. There are those who may not think of "analog" phono cartridges as being digital. They are. They take "samples" of the groove wall as the stylus "bangs" its way down the groove. The stylus does not stay in intimate contact, for many reasons. Lowering the moving mass helps greatly. It raises the resonant frequency, and can lower the amplitude of resonance by allowing the damping and suspension to be much more effective. This means a higher sampling rate of the position of the groove wall. More samples, more detail. Different sound.
My purpose in pointing this out is that while some are myopically focused on one or two aspects only of phone cartridge response, they must consider taking into account that everything matters all the time. Whereas one person may willingly trade off absolute flatness of amplitude and phase for errors that are smoothly spread out and potentially not as objectionable as those that are confined to small regions, another will absolutely not for religious reasons. A design that offers greater "sampling" rate may be far more acceptable to some, and not others. The tiny errors that result in perturbations that are not measurable, but highly audible, can result in loss of detail and image presentation. Look at digital, if you will, for tiny but very "listenable" differences. Often, these are the major factors that make one (product) cartridge preferable over another. Please note that one hardly ever hears of speakers being rejected due to loss of absolute phase and perfect flatness. They are accepted or rejected based on how well they behave on average to the listener, based almost solely on their preference, in their acoustic environment, with their associated equipment. Such is the life of a transducer and its potential acceptance.
In terms of why certain records sound far different, and often unexpectedly so with the SG, I can say that this has been an effect that Richard Majestic and I noted over the past 35 years. There are many possible explanations for this, but the one that makes the most sense to us is that the detail retrieval possible with the SG of some records
is desirable, and of others, at times, not. There are times when we don't want to hear the all the errors in the recording chain that made the record, and we want to gloss them over.
Then, there are other times.............

Peter Ledermann/Soundsmith