Cartridge ISOLATION; What Say You?

Dear @millercarbon : Agree to disagree on the nude cartridge body designs because nude helps to low a normal developed cartridge body resonances and at the same time lower the cartridge weigth. Nude is an advantage over not nude designs. Have you first hand experiences about?

I remember the Ruby 2 LOMC cartridge ( I owned. ) and on the same times Cardas marketed exactly the same Ruby 2 ( made it by Benz Micro. ) with only one change: the Cardas wood cartridge body came with small holes around and guess what: every owner like it more than the original BM one.

I remember too what I did it ( tested. ) with my Allaerts MC2 Finish Gold where it performs with better quality levels in nude/naked version.

I own and owned the Colibri cartridge that if I remember was the first nude design and the Colibri performs really good ( specially the lowest output samples. ).


Regards and enjoy the MUSIC NOT DISTORTIONS,
R.

These record grooves by the way, they are at right angles to each other which means each side is 45 degrees to vertical, which means Ralph is wrong all the vibrational energy is not in the plane of the platter.  

When I made this comment I was not referring to vibration of the stylus in the groove. I was referring to vibration from elsewhere- airborne, from the motor, etc.


What we are looking for with respect to the cartridge is that the cartridge body is held in locus so that the cantilever transfers the maximum energy to the coils within. If the cartridge body is able to move in anyway during that process it will be causing a coloration. Its only means of being held in locus is the tonearm. If it is able to move with respect to the arm, its a coloration. Therefore it must be coupled to the arm and the arm in turn must be competent so that it actually does its job.

FWIW I use LPs I recorded myself and also LPs that I mastered myself... I recommend doing the same for anyone who really wants to establish a reference.

I found this, makes my head spin, especially with short term memory issues.

https://forum.audiogon.com/discussions/tonearm-damping-damped-or-not-useless-welcomed

Raul is referring to damping the movement of the arm, rather than the arm tube. These are different topics.

In any case, I gather you do not advocate adding a soft layer under the tonearm base, or adding a soft layer above any cartridge, correct?

IOW, these 'soft' treatments can only be an improvement if they are solving a problem that could/should be otherwise avoided/eliminated, correct?

@elliotbnewcombjr

Exactly!

Pink Triangle or Funk Firm...chief designer Authur Khoubessarian. He had many firsts in the analog realm. These days, he's not widely recognized. Surely not a "fringe company"

In locus sounds impressively Latin and gives an air of certainty, which is unfortunate since in this case that is the last thing we have. The phono cartridge is moving around like all get-out. It isn’t even "in locus" with respect to the head shell, which is the one thing it is most "in locus" with of them all.

To understand this it helps to understand, neither is the cartridge body. In fact, not one speck of any of it is "in locus" that is the whole point! The instant the stylus moves, the other end of the cantilever does not instantly move exactly 1:1. Quite the contrary.

What happens instead? A wave travels down the cantilever to the other end. Whereupon reaching the end it is reflected and travels right back down to the stylus. Don’t take my word for it either, watch the darn Ledermann video!

This same concept of vibration does not stop here. The whole cartridge body is vibrating. Upon reaching the head shell a lot of this energy reflects back into the cartridge, and all the way back down into the stylus. This is what we are trying so hard to avoid. This is where the Enabler comes in.

But it does not stop at the head shell either. The same process continues on down the arm tube to the bearings, base, plinth, and on and on. Each and every one of these interfaces is an opportunity for vibrational energy to either be absorbed and dissipated or reflected back down to the stylus.

The generator of course cannot distinguish one vibration from another. It sums them all together and away we go. This is what we hear when we play a record. Not some academic theoretical "in locus". A whole bunch of stuff vibrating around like mad. As far from in locus as you can get.

amidst all of this 

whole bunch of stuff vibrating around like mad

MC ignores that cartridge/tonearm compliance is a spec having any relevance, particularly if you have an Origin Live tonearm.  Why focus on some vibrations and not others?  Cognitive dissonance at its finest. So bizarre...cherry picking science.