Hear my Cartridges....🎶

I posted about the Victor Z-1 in my first month at Audiokarma(look at the date in the post #8):

http://audiokarma.org/forums/index.php?threads/the-best-moving-magnet-cartridge-opinions-please.10418/

I posted about the Victor Z-1 in my first month at Audiokarma(look at the date in the post #8):

That's a while ago Theophile......
I hope you still have that Victor Z1 cartridge as you won't believe how it sounds with a SAS stylus?

There are many more vintage MMs from my collection that you will hear on this Thread.
You apparently have the same desire for the 'realism' of MMs over MCs that a lot of us also share 🤗

Regards

Interesting insights once again Frogman....
I'm a little surprised by your thoughts on the Victor's 'lacking' in the frequency extremes as this is not noticeable to me in reality....?

For me.....this Joan Armatrading track shows a cartridge's ability (or not) to convey the 'emotion' buried in the vinyl.
Does the YouTube reproduction allow you to comment on that aspect?

Regards

@chakster 

as I read in all posts you do not miss anything really eh?  LOL

Halcro, I listened again a few times. Acknowledging the limitations of listening to music this way, the Palladian still sounds more extended at both ends to me. I get more of a feeling of air up top even if the Victor has that very seductive clarity in the midrange (particularly vocals) that perhaps makes it sound “brighter”. The initial impression given by the Victor is of more bass, but the Palladian sounds to me like it goes lower and is tighter with better pitch definition. The Victor sounds tubby in the mid bass range and I wonder if that obscures some bass extension. But I still don’t get as much of that deep foundation that I hear hints of with the Palladian. Re “emotion”:

For me the emotional component is expressed primarily in the area of dynamics just as it is in live music. I find that some listeners associate tonal warmth with emotion and I do acknowledge that tonal naturalness plays an important role; but, ultimately, expressive nuance is mostly about (micro) dynamics. Example:

The tune “Willow” starts with the drummer (on brushes) playing a four sixteenth note lead-in into the bass player’s downbeat, who then plays the bass line mentioned previously. The drummer doesn’t just play four “notes” into the downbeat, he plays each one progressively louder and with a sense of urgency, of going somewhere...the downbeat. To my ears, with the Palladian that dynamic crescendo by the drummer is more obvious, impactful and with more musical intent. By comparison, with the Victor it all sounds a little polite and when the bass enters the tubbiness dulls the impact of the arrival of both drummer and bass on the downbeat and the following bass line also sounds a little bloated in comparison. Same thing happens when the guitar enters in the fourth measure. I find that the Victor’s tubbiness dulls the musical impact of the guitar’s entrance which signals the entrance of the vocal and should sound more dramatic as with the Palladian. Likewise, the sound of the slapped bass which follows is rounder and not as incisive. All things that determine musical impact (emotion). Of course this is all a matter of degree and by comparison, and in no way am I suggesting that I think the Victor is not good in those areas. Of course, then you have that beautiful Victor midrange naturalness; and that beautiful midrange definitely adds to the vocal’s expressive quality.  There really is something special about these cartridges and I hope to find one.

Thank you for the posts.

Btw, what is that single very high frequency ring, like a very high pitched triangle, that one hears at :07 and again at :22, but only on the Palladian version?