Cartridge ISOLATION; What Say You?


another good read, it does go against my 'instinct' of a rock solid cartridge/arm connection. (non-removable headshell) 

Who thinks what?
Who tried what?

https://www.tnt-audio.com/accessories/isolator_e.html

btw, has anyone tried a Len Gregory cartridge (with or without the isolator)?

another comment in the article: reviewer mentioned a layer of isolation under the tonearm base (he tried blu-tac). Also against my 'instinct'.
elliottbnewcombjr
@tomic601 , Do "Prime Directive" or "Not for Nothing" If you like them you can go in either direction. Back 30 years ago his music could get....difficult. He was with Miles from 1968 thru 1970. The Quintet is my favorite. It features Robbin Eubanks on trombone and Chris Potter on sax. These two play off each other brilliantly. 
@mr_m , If you are talking about either of the two records above I beg to disagree. Both are nicely crafted studio recordings with no over tubs or fake sh-t.  They are just like you hear them in person. 
Well, I recently bought an Audiomachina 3.8g anti resonance shim. 

However it gets mounted above the headshell. And above a Miyajima Zero. 
With the cartridge we want some combination of materials structured so as to hold the cartridge firmly in a fixed relationship to the head shell, and yet at the same time have just enough flexibility on a micro level to dissipate cartridge vibration and not reflect it all right back down into the stylus.
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.



It’s one or the other, your 2 stated goals are mutually exclusive. Either it is firmly fixed or it is not.

In an ideal world the cartridge body would have infinite mass so all movement would be the stylus/cantilever. Since that is impossible we have a variety of designs that approximate this by holding the body as rigidly as we can so the body does not move in response to the stylus/cantilever movement.

inserting some material between the cartridge and the head shell allowing the cartridge to vibrate in response will definitely affect this relationship so it will definitely affect the output of the cartridge. Declaring this change to be universally better is sort of silly if you think about it.

If this device is the panacea some of you declare then why don’t the cartridge designers build this into their devices? If their goal is the best sound they can get why ignore this very simple and inexpensive "enhancement. ?

The simple answer is the device may compensate for some design flaws in lesser arms/tables and may change things in a way that some find to be better. While it may be a universal truth that it changes things, it is not a universal truth that it makes things better


In my experience anybody spouting universal truths like below can generally be ignored.

Speakers and other components sound much better on springs. In all cases this is because