A must watch YouTube video on stylus in the groove!!!

hahaha, it's even more fun now

My name is Tom. No harm has yet come to me due to this thread.

Now, what are you guys going on about? :~)

I watched the video of Peter’s talk at RMAF end to end. Very interesting. I have a lot of respect for his knowledge, expertise, humility, and kindness. He is really exploring the dynamic interface between stylus and groove in a meaningful way. He makes a compelling case for MI designs but at the end of the day I wonder why there are so many MC designs that sound at least as good as one of Peters cartridges. Case in point—owned an AT ART9 that was at least as good to my ear as the twice as expensive MIMC Star—in some key parameters better. If you accept Peters thesis this should not be the case. 

Ledermann is just selling his stuff and distorting reality to do so. Like any good salesman he has made it look.....compassionate. I love how he takes the biggest old antique moving coil assembly to compare with his moving iron. A modern one is significantly smaller and lighter. Moving mass is important, moving effective mass is even more important. Since the masses we are talking about are right next to the fulcrum they are much less important than the mass at the end of the lever (the stylus).
The best manufacturers have gone to great lengths to minimize the mass at the end of the cantilever by creating new ways to bond a naked very small diamond to the cantilever removing as much mass a possible. Of course Peter does not mention this. It is far more important than what happens at the other end. As far as "Jitter" is concerned it is just a marketing term for miss tracking. 
Name me one reviewer that uses a Soundsmith cartridge as their reference. I have not seen one. I have never owned a Soundsmith cartridge because I have never seen a series of reviews that get me interested. Peter's BS is certainly not getting me interested and the condition of his office really scares me away. Sorry MC, you loose me on this one. Go get yourself a Lyra or an Ortofon. Even a Clearaudio or a Koetsu if your tonearm is big enough.

Name me one reviewer that uses a Soundsmith cartridge as their reference. I have not seen one. I have never owned a Soundsmith cartridge because I have never seen a series of reviews that get me interested.

Who cares about reviewers who trying to motivate us to buy a $5000-20000 MC cartridges to use them for 2500 hrs and then to pay at least 60-70% of the retail cost again to get them factory replaced ? If you have unlimited budged for your analog toys then you’re lucky, but i don’t care about reviewer for whom a $30 000 tonearm and $200 000 turntable with $15000 cable is normal. It’s insane, it’s a part of luxury life of reach dudes with very bad taste in music.

Most of them have no clue about great cartridges from the past, so i doubt about their knowledge.

There must be honest reviewers as well for sure, but you can’t trust them, because in your system it can be completely different.

Peter’s BS is certainly not getting me interested and the condition of his office really scares me away. Sorry MC, you loose me on this one. Go get yourself a Lyra or an Ortofon. Even a Clearaudio or a Koetsu if your tonearm is big enough.

Koetsu is extremely expensive cartridge, some Ortofon models also extremely expensive. Service is very expensive.

SoundSmith offering the best service and great price, for normal people this is much more important that those luxury cartridges promoted by reviewers. Some of them will ship their broken luxury cartridge to SoundSmith after all. Who Peter looks like a guy with great experience with all those cartridges, he’s the one who fix them himself.

In my opinion each audiophile must have all types of cartridges (old and new, MM, MI, IM, MC).

Some MI cartridges are great and some MC cartridges are very bad.