No cartridge is good enough.


It appears that even the very best can't extract everything from the groove. Yes, along with table/arm.
Is there any way, theoretically speaking, to take cartridge design and execution to a much higher level?
What about laser instead of cartridge/arm? I know there was/is one company that tried. It didn't sound better and required cleaning records before each play. But laser could be improved. This approach didn't take off, it would seem.
inna
^^ Vinyl is forecast by the Library of Congress to last 2-2 centuries if stored properly. I have LPs that are already 60 years old and they play fine.


It is an amazing technology that has overachieved and managed to hang around for a long time. But it ain't getting any better than possible already today, except perhaps for those few willing to devote major chunks of time money and effort in their home to try and make it better.

About that you would be incorrect. There have been a number of advances made in LP recording technology in recent years. One of them that stands out occurred at QRP (Quality Record Pressing, the pressing plant created by Acoustic Sounds). Their pressing machines do not vibrate as the vinyl is cooling within, resulting in vastly quieter surfaces. You may not know this, but the lacquer that is cut on the mastering lathe is so quiet that no known phono preamp system has a lower noise floor- in fact the noise floor of a lathe cut easily rivals Redbook.

When we have done projects through QRP the LPs we got back seemed nearly as quiet as our lathe cuts. IMO that is significant progress. Add that to the fact that all LP reproducers have greater bandwidth than digital- that BTW is a little-known fact about LP.

Finally, we have been doing cuts using our OTL amplifiers, in essence creating the world's first transformerless vacuum tube mastering system. The advantage here has to do with the fact that all mastering amplifiers make about 10x more power than the cutterhead could ever manage without burning up. As a result due to the fact that the mastering amps are push-pull, at a certain lower power level (somewhere between 2-5% with all push-pull amps) the distortion level of the amp starts to climb as power is decreased towards zero.

This means that most LP mastering occurs within that 'distortion window' of the mastering amplifier!

It happens that our amps have a distortion character where the distortion linearly decreases to unmeasurable as the power is decreased, similar to an SET (which is part of SET popularity BTW). The result is we can make a lower distortion cut, which is the same as saying we can put more detail in the grooves.

It ain't over till its over...
Speakers 'interpret' music. Cartridge is a 'stupid thing' told to extract everything there is to extract.
@Inna- Try the Limited Edition turntable by Kronos with the Black Beauty tonearm by Andre Theriault.
Dh193449, we are not talking about digital. Nor do I think your analogy with steam engine is correct.
I could say why bother with vinyl when tape sounds better, but that's not the reality that we have.
Interestingly enough, some people here try to avoid the subject, including Atmasphere.
Infection, there is a number of great set-ups, that's not the point. By the way, for that kind of money I wouldn't even bother with vinyl - I would get Studer reel deck and buy master dubs. Not an easy thing to do but good money would buy cooperation, believe you me.