Soundsmith - Thank you to everyone.

@best-groove yes :-)

You have a German-sounding last name and your first name, I don’t need to tell you, is not one common to us Jews

I have eight 'Peters' just amongst my close Jewish circle of friends.
And I think the 'Jewish' Apostle St Peter knew his name was more popular in the ancient lands of Canaan than that of St Paul (Saul) or even Joshua (Yeshua)...Jesus himself 🤪

I was hanging around in the room he helped sponsor and sitting next to him and he looked at me at some point and asked "so what kind of name is Tallan?". I told him it was Russian (true) but I couldn’t help wondering what prompted his question.

I am Russian, never ever hear this name "Tallan" and never met anyone with this name in Russia. 

@retipper Dear Peter, here is an interesting question:

Some people always recommend a cartridge for certain genre of music, i always thought it's a nonsense, because a good cartridge must be neutral.

But we often read "this is a cartridge for rock" and "that is a cartridge for classical" or "this is for jazz" ...

Would be nice to read your opinion.

Thanks

So many questions......so little time or room. First; my preamps. They are very high end designs, but we don’t make much $$ on them. Why, you may ask, do we make them. For the same reason that I do many things that don’t translate into money. It is for the music and my customers. In a way, I am glad it’s not too popular. I would start losing lots more on them. Fremer and Holmes BOTH got what I did when I designed them and in their reviews of the original Sussurro and MCP-2 said the same thing: "If you have X $ to spend, don’t split it on a cartridge and preamp, buy the Soundsmith Sussurro and MCP-2 - you will be far ahead of the game". I made our preamps high end but low cost them so folks COULD save $ and move up the food chain in our line of carts and get far more result. I listen to and demo the Hyperion with the MCP-2 ($1199) - which has compared favorably to preamps costing 4X as much. I also introduced continuously variable loading - on the fly - from 10 Ohms to 5K - so you can tune it by ear to what sounds good to you.

Now on the point of different cartridges for different music. MOST cartridges are not neutral. Neutrality however, is my design goal always, above everything, regardless of products I make - speakers, amplifiers, preamps, cartridges, etc..... . The technical. reasons for LACK of neutrality are many, but let me put it this way. If you were to take a Grace F9, and look at the "sine" wave produced, you would be shocked. It is NOT sinusoidal. How does it sound? Great. One must separate the wheat from the chaff.

When I was director of engineering at Bozak, Rudy Bozak taught me an important lesson regarding loudspeaker design. He said "There are 10 things you’d like to do when designing a loudspeaker - you’re only going to get to do 3 of them. You’d better pick the right things".

So linearity in and of itself is not the whole key to sonics, but does cause coloration when its bad. Many people don’t know HOW to listen to a cartridge. The same could be said for me in the sense of art - I LIKE art, and own some, but I don’t know how to look at it - NOT like an artist. A cartridge has it’s WORST moment when things get busy. That tells you about transient performance, and certain aspects of the design. So you have to look at the whole elephant. Good for riding through a riotous crowd, getting rid of excess peanuts, helping you wash your car, not good as an indoor pet. The Grace is like tube gear. If you do a harmonic distortion analysis on tube gear, you see LOTS of distortion. What kind? even order (2nd, 4th, 6th, etc....). Many solid state designs? ODD order. Even order is MUSICAL, and adds pleasant harmonics. Odd order? Horrible. Is a tube amp/preamp "accurate"?

No.Is it nice to have as a pet?Sure.

I am the last one to tell folks what to own - that they MUST own something "totally" accurate. I made an audio discovery 45 yeas ago of a device that puts you in an alpha state after 60 seconds of listening to music with it. It is "linear"? No. Does it make you smile? You bet. Will I ever bring it to market? No - I don’t have the resources. It, like over a hundred inventions I have, will go with me to the next world, IF they let me take any baggage. You know how airlines keep changing the rules.

Because I do what I do, and have the philosophy I do, I am compelled to yearn for truth and accuracy and to discover how to accomplish that. That requires years, much thought, experimentation, failure, intuition. Is extreme accuracy always the best? Hard to answer. In life, one often needs to find out what it’s NOT, before one can know what it is. Same for engineering. So what happens when you play a less than perfect record with a very accurate cartridge? Well, it’s the same as getting too close to a fallen goddess. You will be awash with imperfection. What happens if you were up front and close to her before she fell?~
It would take your breath away.~
Peter Ledermann