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Ortofon Red/Pro-ject Carbon Debut combination; rolled off hi-frequencies. Solutions?

Hi there.

I just bought a Project Carbon Debut SB with a factory equipped Ortofon Red. After 30 hours break-in the mids are fine (smooth, rich and full), bass is a little fat but tolerable but the highs, as I expected were rolled off; but more than I expected and not acceptable to me. Obviously, there will be compromises in a "bargain" turntable but mechanically and sonically I think it's good basic platform to start with.
 
The TT is playing back through the inboard phono stage of my Musical Fidelity A3.2 integrated. I've swapped interconnects, starting with Audioquest Diamondback (nice mids, darker top end) and Wireworld Equinox 6's (brighter top but not much inprovement in air, and surprisingly a bit grainy and obscure in the mids).

I'm thinking my 1st step is upgrading the cartridge to either the Ortofon Blue, Shelter 201 of the new Audio Technica VM540ML; the replacement for the old AT400ML which was a bit too bright but otherwise highly musical and faithful in reproduction (I had one in my Music Hall MMF5.1) but there aren't any reviews of it to be found on the web or in hi-fi mags.

I am on a budget and before I start throwing hundreds of bucks around and burning months of experimentation on swapping out cables, outboard phono stages and cartridges I thought I'd throw this subject open to discussion to my brothers of the cloth who have the same high fidelity point of view as I.

Any recommendations or opinions are welcome. 


morbius2130aol
noromance's avatar
noromance
9,853 posts
 
The 540 should help. Try a granite shelf on brass cones. I found MF amps a bit dull. I swear by a $10 Belkin IC. No longer made but available on Ebay. Highly detailed and balanced.
https://m.ebay.com/itm/BELKIN-Pure-AV-High-Quality-Dual-RCA-Audio-Cable-AV20302-06-39-ft-M-M-NEW-/281133593466?txnId=1762771702018


mattmiller's avatar
mattmiller
1,497 posts
 
The Ortofon 2M red should not be the problem...Are you using a record mat? Felt and cork ones tend to diminish highs. What is the capacitance set at? MM’s are sensitive to this. The 2M wants 150-300 Pf. Also, long cables add to the capacitance as much as 50-250 Pf! Keep them short (2 ft) to prevent this being added to the total the cartridge sees. Finally check your SRA and make sure the back of the cartridge is not tilted down (sitting) towards the record surface (sitting up more forward is better to bring out highs).

http://herbiesaudiolab.net/ttmat.htm



Matt M
chakster's avatar
chakster
6,144 posts
 
Your Ortofon 2M Red is the problem! It’s mediocre cartridge, what else do you expect on such cheap turntable? One of my friend has replaced his 2M (on the same turntable) with Stanton 881 MKIIs and he never looked back since that day.

Find yourself a better MM cartridge and stay away from the modern MM cartridges, buy the best MM from the 80s or 70s. Then you will undergstand why they are so good and why it was a choice for disc mastering engineers over the years. You will not find anything better than AT-ML170 VM OFC or OCC and btw Stanton 881 MKIIs is also great, read this article first.

Another great high compliance Audio-Technica cartridge is AT20SLa (it’s my link, but there you can read some info i just don’t want to copy paste here).

What else you can do to improve the sound quality ?
Change load resistors inside your phono stage to 100k Ohms (Vishay Naked Foil resistors available on ebay from texas components - this is the nanufacturer). You will get a better top end compared to 47k Ohm.

You can not make a mediocre cartridge sounds good by changing the cables or mat or anything, except the cartridge itself if you really looking for something better. Everything starts from the cartridge.

But load resistance is important for MM. 
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