mijostyn-
There goes that stylus jitter again. Millercarbon, can you name me one reviewer who uses a Sound Smith as his primary cartridge? You see the occasional Grado but I have never seen a Sound Smith. This is not to say they are a bad cartridge. I can't say that as I have never used one. But I sure have yet to hear stylus, "jitter."
I would name you one, except it wouldn't change anything. At best it would be an appeal to authority, which being one of the more common logic errors I tend to discourage.
Mike is trying to personalize this but its not a personal thing its physics and common to all cartridges ever made. Mike you have been hearing jitter every record ever played. There is no avoiding it. Jitter can only be reduced, never entirely eliminated.
What is jitter?
Look real close at the stylus. Notice it sticks out down below the cantilever. So when the groove comes along and hits the stylus its not only a sideways force its also putting torque into the cantilever. Both the complex twisting torque and the sideways inflection create vibrations that run up the cantilever, through the suspension, and some of it gets dissipated as heat but a lot travels all the way to the other end.
Now about the other end. In a MC its a coil. In a MM its a magnet. Either way its pretty massive. A whole lot more massive than the stylus, for sure. Which matters. Because once that mass starts vibrating that vibrational energy has nowhere to go but right back down the line and all the way back to the stylus. Which being very low mass has no way of dissipating all that energy except to bounce off one side and into the other.
That bouncing around is jitter.
This isn't even all that new. Its not just a Peter Ledermann thing either. He merely happens to be the next best explainer to me. So until I make a video I refer people to his. Go watch it. Really. Its awesome.
But Onkk Cue turntable designer Paul Beckett knows all about jitter, as does another couple guys whose names I forget but have heard discussing it. But I really do not want to get into the same faulty appeal to authority reasoning. The physics speaks for itself. Anyone can understand it. New concepts do tend to take a little effort to understand. People do tend to have questions. So if there's anything above that's the least bit unclear, especially after watching Ledermann, just let me know. Happy to help.
