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