What is the “World’s Best Cartridge”?

@atmasphere 

Well... The LP has continued to advance as well. QRP (Acoustic Sounds) sorted out that vibration was the primary cause of surface noise in LPs and so installed damping to reduce it- and makes vastly quieter LPs as a result, rivaling the noise floor of Redbook in that the electronics become the noise floor rather than the LP itself.

That might well be the case but there's absolutely no denying that there were some fabulous sounding LPs made back as far as at least the 1950s.

The best sound that I have ever heard came from one such LP.

It had that spooky 'Is it real?' soundstage that I've yet to hear from any digital.

I would love to see digital finally fulfill its potential on commercial releases, especially regarding dynamic range and transference of classic analogue masters etc, but I'm resigned to the fact that market forces will never allow such a thing to happen.

The demand for sonic excellence just isn't there, and I suspect the suppliers have no stomach for putting out reference quality digital recordings of vintage material out there either.

Why would they, when they can continue to milk that cow indefinitely?

For me, as things stand, digital only really displays its forte with formats such as audiobooks where it reigns supreme.

Everywhere else it's only merely acceptable.

That might well be the case but there’s absolutely no denying that there were some fabulous sounding LPs made back as far as at least the 1950s.

The best sound that I have ever heard came from one such LP.

It had that spooky ’Is it real?’ soundstage that I’ve yet to hear from any digital.

 

I would love to see digital finally fulfill its potential on commercial releases, especially regarding dynamic range and transference of classic analogue masters etc, but I’m resigned to the fact that market forces will never allow such a thing to happen.

😀 If I want to demo the dynamic range of a stereo, the LP I put on is the RCA Soria series Verdi Requiem, side 1 track two, Dies Irae. Not a CD and not some digitally recorded LP.

The simple fact is that the LP has a lot more dynamic range than most people think. It may not be as much as the CD, but if you want to talk about undistorted high resolution dynamic range, it has more. I know people are likely tired of hearing stuff like this, but you have two phenomena for why this is so:

The first is that recordings made for digital release have a high expectation of being played in a car (unlike the LP). So due to that industry expectation, which has nothing to do with genre BTW, the digital release is usually compressed.

The second is that if you really want to hear 16 bit digital (Redbook) at its best, the recording should be normalized so that the loudest part of any track is 0VU. As the signal strength goes down, more and more bits have to be turned off. So when you get to -45dB (which is pretty quiet) there’s not enough bits for the signal to be undistorted (which, in digital parlance, is usually referred to as ’less resolution’). So to get maximum resolution the recording is normalized.

Of course the LP has noise so its a bit of a tradeoff. Anyway, that Soria series recording goes from a whisper with which the noise floor competes to putting your amps in danger of extreme overload if you try to play it at a lifelike level. Lots of fun- big bass too 😁

@atmasphere

Sure, vinyl advances… but it is a loosing battle. Increasingly it becomes a question of your playback choices… and a question on your time frame. Adding the convenience… more and more people will put their money into digital… especially the MP3 folks… they will try better digital before attempting analog. All this amounts to a diminishing market for analog.

If I had an extra $100K right now I would definitely throw a good portion of that at analog. No question that will buy me the best playback… but I am 70 years old. If I was 45 years old or younger… I would invest in digital… it will just keep getting better and not require me personally collecting stuff that takes up space.

@ghdprentice I agree on all counts. I would prefer to not have all that space taken up by so many LPs, but OTOH I'm also a bit uncomfortable with having all my music on the cloud, since this means a server farm (which can take as much power as a small city) has to be running 24/7 to maintain my music collection. If something were to happen to my online account, all of a sudden that music is gone. I don't like the idea of wasting all that energy when I'm not at home or when I'm asleep; with all the different hacks that keep showing up (and outright online attacks) I just feel better having the LPs available. Old school, I know.

Also its fun to put the LP on and have guests think that is really a CD because they play without 'surface artifacts' which I found out 35 years ago are often caused by the phono preamp rather than the LP surface.

I had some guests over this last weekend and I noticed that they were all about the sound and didn't have any thoughts about the media. That's how it should be.

@atmasphere 

It is fun putting on an LP. Mine have almost no surface noice.

I have storage space on my streamers. I use it for about an hour a year. Wifi is only likely to get more reliable. 
 

I am pretty sure the single file on the cloud serving tens of thousands or millions of users. It consumes many times less energy than the same thousands of users, buying the vinyl albums or CDs… and having built space to store them. 
 

Server farms are able to store stuff at a fraction of the cost and energy of manufacturing and distributing physical media. One of the many things driving their build. Finally the distraction of forests for paper… oil for plastic disks is reduced by online stuff.

Data storage is becoming a utility. If something happens to your Qobuz account, in a couple minutes you can be up and running with a free month of Tidal. Besides, you have your vinyl. So, you are set.