What is the “World’s Best Cartridge”?

@mikelavigne the name change actually did involve a design change as well. Ortofon’s chief designer is on record explaining about the new suspension of the MC Diamond, using nanotubes or something. In a video interview with Fremer (part of his coverage of the Munich event) he boasts about the enormous improvements or words to that effect. He also says they felt a desire to change the suspension because some owners had experienced tracking issues with the discontinued Anna and Anna Diamond.

I’m one such owner and my regular Anna sounded gorgeous but was by far the worst tracker I ever owned. I bought it used and therefore couldn’t be sure what caused the tracking problems. A factory rebuild didn’t solve the issue, so I resent it and after almost a year (!) of waiting they returned it with the new nano suspension installed. Thankfully this has improved the tracking somewhat, although it still doesn’t track everything. FWIW, sonically I don’t hear any difference with the old Anna, but perhaps things will improve after the suspension has settled.

@atmasphere ,yes, that is the cause of the brightness and I could EQ that easily in the digital realm but the real deal breaker for me was the strain gauge's tracking ability. Peter thinks he has got it as good as he can and feels it is acceptable. Generally I will only look at cartridges that can do 80um or better at 315Hz. Miss-tracking is very annoying. Miss-track a record once and it is permanently damaged.

@edgewear , Ortofon is very conservative with it's ratings and list's the MC Diamonds tracking ability at 315 Hz as 80um which is excellent and should easily handle any record. The Replicant 100 and GygerS styluses are the two most severe styluses out there and really have to be spot on in the groove. If you are still miss-tracking it is either a set up problem or just as likely something else you are hearing like phono stage clipping. 

When I have mine in hand I will run it through the torture course and report back what it can do. Yours should do the same.  

An interesting aside when it comes to styluses. The line contact stylus of the MSL Platinum Signature is really quite special. Unlike other line contact styluses I have looked at, the tip of the MSL stylus is broadly radiused. It's azimuth can actually be off a few degrees and the tracking would not be affected at all. Channel separation would still suffer but not tracking or record wear. I have not had the chance to look at an Air Tight stylus but given the same designer I suspect it is similar. The Air Tights were very popular for a while but it seems you hardly hear about them any more. I do think the Opus 1 is overpriced so, fewer people are willing to shell out for it.

It is also interesting to note that in spite of it's rather high voltage output the Platinum Signature's gain is about 5 dB higher in transimpedance mode than in voltage mode. It is also as dynamic as any high output cartridge I have heard in transimpedance mode. What is just as special and the one area where this set up excels over any other I have used in my system is bass definition. Marcus Miller's bass now has almost the same gruf timbre it had at the Blue Note a month ago. I still think the bass could be better but I still have improvements to make in my subwoofer system. 

@mijostyn 

The MSL's super-high ratio of output voltage to coil impedance seems to be unlike anything else out there. In fact there's nothing even close (besides Air Tight). Definitely intriguing - must be some super efficient combination of armature and magnet structure? 

The low 15kHz channel separation spec on Ortofon's MC Diamond is interesting - and it's not just the Anna that they've spec'd higher. 20dB is not impressive. Even much lower line cartridges like Kontrapunkts have been spec'd higher! Probably some of the vintage models too. Possibly an admission that measurements take a backseat to subjective sound quality?

@mijostyn you almost sound like the Ortofon distributor. Their first line of defense was ‘blame it on the set up’. Yeah right, I’ve got 40 cartridges, including ancient ones like Ortofon MC30 and real set up prima donnas like Ikeda 9 or VdH Colibri. None of these exhibit the tracking limitations of the Anna. I know the specs, but they count for nothing. I’ve tried Anna in 5 different tonearms and the issues are consistent in all cases. As said, the new suspension improves things a little, but it still can’t track some of my torture tracks. Perhaps you own the Philips recording of Messiaen’s Quatuor Pour La Fin Du Temps by Reinbert de Leeuw and collegues. It contains some extremely fierce piano and clarinet crescendo’s that all my cartridges can handle, although in a few cases with some distortion. Except for the updated Anna, who still jumps out of these grooves. I hope for you that the new MC Diamond will prove to be a better tracker.