Origin live Cartridge Enabler - a review

Another really good example why sophistry got such a bad rap. The Sophists used rhetoric and reasoning. Problem being, once you set aside tangible results and experience it turns out you can talk yourself into just about anything. 

Myself, I find the explanations and theories of manufacturers and just about everyone else to be at best interesting but more often than not distractions, and often misleading ones at that.

So lewm and lastperfectdaymusic, if you're looking for the typical audiophile banter as to why you can just go look elsewhere. There's reasonably likely explanations as to why this stuff works (dither) but the last thing you guys want is to have it proven. Also, seems to me, not all that interested in results either. Or you wouldn't be contesting it. You'd be reading all the threads already posted by the many people who have heard this stuff and know how effective it is.

All I can say is no lewm, I do not "think" SR PHT makes a "significant" improvement- I KNOW it does. Why, is what I do not know. WHAT however there is no doubt. It is significant.

My reviews were posted months ago. There are 4 versions of PHT. Purple Haze is indeed hazy and the only one I did not care for. Blue Velvet was okay but not worth it to me. Black Widow opened up the stage and improved dynamics and layering in a very neutral way across the board. Green Dream did the same only with an intoxicating borderline seductive liquid quality that really draws me into the music. I was able to get Betty at HighEnd-electronics.com to work with me and so now have one Green Dream and one Black Widow right on the Koetsu, with another Green Dream on the Origin Live Conqueror tone arm tube. There are also two ECT on the arm base, and one on my motor pod. The ECT are a similar effect to the Black Widow, improving dynamics and inner detail and very across the board neutral.

No one else includes these because no one else knows how to make them. The Origin Live Enabler is inexpensive, until you factor in the time it takes to install, and the hardware, the need to re-tweak everything, and the fact this winds up being a massive waste of time in the event it turns out to not be all that great. Let's face it, for $25 almost nobody is gonna go to all that trouble and then turn around and remove it, unless it actually makes things worse. PHT on the other hand can be installed and moved around wherever you want or removed literally in seconds.

Practical results and considerations. Or theoretical gobbledygook. Choose wisely.

Thank you for the enlightenment, analogue is certainly a complex interest. I really have to go by what my ears tell me, and I will certainly listen to more LP`s that I am familiar with tonight to get more ideas on how the Enabler performs. But up to now I can certainly notice an improvement as reviewed.
If I may ask mijostyn, how would I go about increasing the mass of my SME IV tonearm to make it more compatible with the Koetsu.
Secondly, I am really sold on buying a Hana SL to replace it as it (the Koetsu) must need refurbishing. How will the Hana fit with my tonearm?
Thank you.

Millercarbon the last thing I am going to do is trust yours or any one else's hearing who I do not know personally. That says nothing against you it is just that human hearing is extraordinarily biased because there is an amazing complex brain attached to it. If I present 100 people with an ink blot I will get 100 different opinions as to what it looks like and our vision is much more accurate than our hearing. 

I am really sold on buying a Hana SL to replace it as it (the Koetsu) must need refurbishing.

Why don’t you just buy a high resolution neutrail MM cartridge for your tonearm ? At least you could compare two different worlds of sound. The Koetsu Black is the lowest in Koetsu line and does not represent the "magic" of Koetsu sound as you can read online. Your cartridge is refurbished and no longer a Koetsu, and if you want it to be refurbished again you’re probably going to extreme, here is the thread. Hanna looks nice, but do you think it is a good MC ? Read this article, maybe you will change your opinion about MM.

This is from the TAS article:

"Everyone is entitled to personal tastes, but truth is truth. If you want to hear something like the truth, I still say-no matter what everyone else is using-that you should buy a flat-top cartridge like the AT-ML170 and avoid all MC cartridges with a rising top-end. If the sound of live music is your goal, why would you want to hear sound which is not only untrue to its source but also is something you are "seldom conscious of live.

What cartridge could have the "lowest distortion of all," "uncanny" resolution, better than master tapes?

Kavi Alexander, auteur of the remarkable Water Lily Acoustics series of analogue vinyl discs, is monitoring disc production by comparing test pressings to the master tape. What cartridge is he using? Another moving magnet, this time the TECHNICS EPC 100 mk4. But he describes the AUDIO-TECHNICA AT-ML170 as very similar, and very close to the actual sound of the tape. In this comparison, he says, virtually no moving coil does so well; most have seriously apparent colorations.

The contrast between these views of moving magnet cartridges and usual audiophile opinion is striking. On the one hand, we have assurances of these leaders of the High-End recording industry that the best MOVING MAGNETS are very close to the master tape (or live mike feed, for direct to disc) and that they are capable of "uncanny" resolution. On the other hand, we have the prevailing perception, amounting almost to a shibboleth, of the High-End listening community, that only MOVIN COILS are realistic in some sense of that word and that moving magnets are incapable of sonic truth."

This is the AT-ML170 and it’s just one example of the decent MM that killing most of the MC up to $3k retail. There are more amazing MM cartridges, the benefit is that you can avoid refurbishing or retipping as you can simply change the stylus replacement by yourself. 

P.S. Hanna (aka Excel Sound Corporation) tried to steal its design from the legendary Miyabi cartridge, but Hanna is just an entry level MC cartridge.

Chakster, correct me if I’m wrong but the subject of this thread seems to be the OL cartridge enabler, not your personal obsession with certain MM cartridges.

If the OP switches to the Hana, which is said to be excellent by those who have heard it, we’re back at ground zero.  The enabler may help it or not. And please forgive me for expressing my surprise that the Koetsu is helped by the enabler, for reasons I carefully outlined. That did not mean I was doubting the testimony. I’ve never heard either but there’s a good chance that the SL is superior to the Black, even a new Black.

mijo, since the resonant frequency is inversely proportional to the square root of effective mass times compliance, I would indeed expect RF to go down when mass goes up. That was the genesis of my first comment.