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Any truth to my feeling that MM carts are possibly better than MC on rock recordings?

I have an Ortofon Red on a Project Debut Carbon and a EAT C Sharp with an MC Ortofon Quintet Black. I have two systems and I've switched the tables between the systems and tried a few different scenarios and I hear a little more punch with the Ortofon Red. I know all things aren't equal here but I'm trying to explain this somehow. One system is Dynaudio Evidence Temptations with JC 1 Monos and JC 2BP Pre. PS Audio Stellar phono or a little Project MM phono. The other system is PrimaLuna 400 Evo Integrated with same phono stages and Salk Sound 3 speakers. The Project and Ortofon Red sound great to my ears. More punch and solidity of sound.
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mikechivy
3 posts
 

zero truth to OP's question. If you like muddy bass from a cheap cart, it will sound better to you

kingharold
304 posts
 

I find that my Ortofon Cadenza Bronze MC plays rock quite well with good impact and dynamics. In addition it is wonderful with well recorded voices.  Come to think of it it is great with all genres of music.

pesky_wabbit's avatar
pesky_wabbit
1,183 posts
 

no

mulveling's avatar
mulveling
1,913 posts
 

I think this is just a quirk of the Ortofon MC line. Some 12 years ago when I "upgraded" from Ortofon Kontrapunkt "c" (Cadenza Bronze) to Jubliee (Cadenza Black), I definitely did not feel as engaged in the music - and yes, rock music fell flat. Then I upgraded to Windfeld MC and it helped but did not mitigate all my issues - the lower Kontrapunkt "c" was a better all genre listen. That Jubilee uses a Shibata like your Quintet Black, btw. I definitely stayed away from the Cadenza Black (Shibata) because of my past experience here.

But that is NOT at all representative of MCs!! I now have many other MCs (Koetsu, Shelter, Benz) which all sound beautiful and satisfy completely with rock and heavy metal. I borrowed a VanDenHul Colibri XGW and that was great too. I even now have a higher-end Ortofon that I love too: the A90.

To be fair also, part of the problem back then was certainly in my phono stage. As you move up in the Ortofon MC line, the output level also tends to go down, and going from a heathy 0.4mV output to 0.26 can be trouble if your MC phono stage or SUT is not well suited to that. My old phono stage back then (Sonic Frontiers Phono 1) definitely lost punch and dynamics below 0.4mV.

avanti1960
1,480 posts
 

Not for me.

I had one of the best MM cartridges in an Ortofon 2M Black.  Sounded very good compared to other MM cartridges I had but compared to my LOMCs the black was left in the dust for all music but especially rock.  It lacked dynamics, sounded clear but anemic and was unrefined compared to my MCs which added more distortion to compressed rock recordings. 

The best MC i had for rock was the Audio Technica ART9 which had amazing bass, a huge sound stage and explosive dynamics.  

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