Turntable matching to MC or MM cart.

Practically it’s subjective, we have different systems and you have no idea who is a person who will answer your question (and his/her experience with different tonearms/cartridges).

Of course it’s subjective, I don’t try to reach some dogma or universal solution. The question is theoretical, no intention to solve an issue or make a decision here. Other people experience in this matter that exactly what interesting. 

our experiences say. 


even though it's compliance match. that's only one part of whole puzzle. 

Mc is a different animal. due to low gain. noise. vibration. isolation. inherant resonant.. much more expensive and effort to get it optimized. it will just sound fake detail, digital.or even anemic. otherwise. Alot of people think and say this unoptmised Version is an improvement of MM, better speed. Bass. slap. but annoying.. but why bother play with turntable if it's sounds worse than cd.? might as well get an R2R dac and get it over with.

But a well executed Mc is wonderful. just very rare in our case. 

my bud just called in morning and rant .. why he used triplaner and Lyra titani it sounded like crap. blah blah.. the best one he tried is pushma and delos. and so on. still discussing about how way easier to get MM system sounds great with just a vintage Sony direct drive. this fella had tried Alot of things in Mc.. alot.. of high end tt and cart has pass through his hand.. so we are not simply parroting. he paid real school fees

When the second of my B&O RX2 turntables gave it up, after a fair amount of research, I ordered a Mofi Studiodeck because I knew I would need complete adjustability to mount the Soundsmith SMMC1 B&O cartridge on another turntable.  In that price range, the Studiodeck seemed to fit the bill.  Only after the turntable shipped did I learn about potential compliance issues, and that the total 1.5 grams of my Soundsmith high compliance cartridge and adapter were an impending catastrophic mismatch for the heavy arm on the Mofi Studiodeck.  Certainly just waiting to happen is some horrible sonic way.  I read forum threads I did not understand about resonant frequencies, analogies to car suspensions on trucks, or vice versa, and debates about physics and formulas, without figuring out how the mismatch was supposed to manifest in the sound I would hear.

I closely followed the cartridge alignment instructions on the Soundsmith website, paying particular attention to anti-skate (had to remove some of the weight from the thread) and azimuth, and tinkered with VTA with some albums suggested on these forums so that the highs were not sibilant and base not flabby.   I have yet to hear any ill effects of the guaranteed mismatch.  In fact, I would not have believed that a change in turntables could have made such a difference, particularly in surface noise.  I am listening to albums I had pretty much given up on.

There might be sonic gremlins that my system is not resolving enough to uncover.  If that's the case, fine.  Meanwhile, I'll let the Ohm Walsh 4's and REL subs kick some Talking Heads throughout the house.

Steve

Practically it’s subjective, we have different systems and you have no idea who is a person who will answer your question (and his/her experience with different tonearms/cartridges).

Of course it’s subjective, I don’t try to reach some dogma or universal solution. The question is theoretical, no intention to solve an issue or make a decision here. Other people experience in this matter that exactly what interesting.

Well, I have tried more than 60 cartridges and probably over 10 different tonearm. I have no problem to use my cartridges correctly according to their compliance and my tonearm mass, I can fine-tune everything with different heardhells as it can add or deduct mass (or heavy mounting screws for tonearms with non removable headshell). 

Hi-Fi News Analog TEST LP is the only tool to measure vertical and lateral resonance (online calculators always off). 

I think it's nice to have 3 tonearms (light mass, mid mass, and very heavy).  

There is no need whatsoever to match turntable and cartridge.  Matching tonearms and cartridges is worth doing and requires experimentation, which is why some of us crazies own so many tonearms. Where the tonearm(s) use a detachable headshell, having a lot of different headshells, constructed of different materials and of different weights, is also handy for getting the most out of a cartridge.  This is not purely about achieving some magical resonant frequency, in fact that is a very secondary consideration in my experience.