Cartridge ISOLATION; What Say You?

Snake oil

Audio as a hobby.-limitless as one's imagination. 

Looks like some leftover shipping material you find in package, and someone thought-"If I cut it to fit under my cartridge.."

If you hear "it" it works.

another comment in the article: reviewer mentioned a layer of isolation under the tonearm base (he tried blu-tac). Also against my 'instinct'.

Your instinct is correct. The arm must be as rigidly coupled to the plinth as possible, and the cartridge as rigidly coupled to the arm as possible.


The engineering issue hear is really similar to that of steering in a car. You want the wheel to stay on the ground and you need to have control over which direction its pointed. Imagine having something squishy between the steering wheel and the wheel on the road! You would not want to drive that car.

Fortunately this isn't as dangerous :)  but don't do it unless you want to hear what degraded performance sounds like.

It is not a matter of "think" that is for people who guess. It is a matter of reason, by which I mean understand and reason logically from what we know.

Everything vibrates. If the cartridge is rigidly attached to the head shell then this vibration travels through the head shell into the arm tube and so on, with the result the whole thing is vibrating. There are plenty of Peter Ledermann videos you can watch if you want to learn how big a problem this is. The best one is where he talks about how analog is like digital because jitter has the stylus jumping back and forth sampling the groove instead of tracing it like we think it does.

It is critically important to control all these spurious vibrations. https://youtu.be/WmwnN_T_wW8?t=1200  

I used to think rigidly mounted with massive stiffness was the way to go. Until it turned out my Origin Live Conqueror did sound better just sitting in the hole not bolted tightly down. A lot of things are like this. Speakers and other components sound much better on springs. In all cases this is because it is better to let each thing vibrate and dissipate energy on its own rather than excite everything around it. Because vibration blurs detail, and harmonic vibration (it is all harmonic vibration by the way) alters tone and timbre. 

So the best approach is to decouple the cartridge from the arm. The cartridge however is very low mass and has to track a violently undulating groove. It cannot just be free to move. It must be held rigidly, but yet also in a way that facilitates some vibration to dissipate into the more massive arm, while damping cartridge vibration, and all of this at the same time as not reflecting vibration right back down into the stylus.

Watch Ledermann, he clearly shows how vibration travels up the cantilever and then right back down again to the stylus, which winds up being whipped around. Vibration control is everything. Rigidly mounting is not that great a method. Too much reflection, too much smearing.

My personal experience, first thing tried was fO.q tape. This stuff worked great on the arm tube and base so I cut a piece to fit between the head shell and cartridge. Nice improvement. Seemed to remove a layer of grunge that left dynamics and detail in place making them much more clear.

Then recently tried the Origin Live Cartridge Enabler. This looks like felt and some members with zero experience claim it is felt but even just looking at it is enough to know it is not just felt. The material is engineered to have one side up. One side against the cartridge, the other against the head shell. The same material is even cut into washers. When mounted the cartridge is held securely while also effectively isolated from the head shell.

This is definitely the way to go. The reasoning is solid and equally important matches actual results heard. But as always don't take anyone's word for it. Put in the time and effort to understand for yourself and then finally when you are sure confirm it all with actual experience.