Cartridge Loading.....Part II


I read last night the below noted discussion with great interest.  It's a long post but worth the effort and I found it interesting.

It started me thinking about the amount of loading on my moving coil cartridges.  Years ago I purchased my first MC Cart, a very nice Benz Micro Glider, medium output of 0.5 mV as I recall.  At that time I inquired about loading here on Audiogon.  I was convinced, via discussion, by another member, that 300 Ohms was the magic number, so I thought.

Time moved onward and my second MC Cart is currently a Lyra Delos, again medium output 0.6mV.  Both carts had Boron cantilevers', 6 nines oxygen free copper coils and line contact diamond stylis.  When I set up the Delos I did not change or even consider 'loading' changes.  That was a grand mistake.....

Well, thanks to this specific thread I started to second guess myself . (you can do this when retired and more time is on your hands....)

My take from this recent thread is as follows.  Load at 100 Ohms or at 47K Ohms with a quality MC cartridge.  I opened up my Conrad Johnson EF1 Phono Stage this afternoon.  Found it set at 500 Ohms loading.  100 Ohms is not an available setting.  Damn...All these years I've been running the wrong loading, and on two carts, back to back...  I don't recall why I set the loading at 500 Ohms.  Faulty logic.

I reset the loading to 47K, buttoned things up and called the wife in for a listening session.  Sure as heck both of us noticed the highs were crisper and more 'apparent' than in the recent past.  Not a huge difference, but yes, a difference..  Hard lesson learned!

So, you smarter folks on this site might banter amongst yourselves, but in reality there are those of us, behind the curtains, reading and listening!  I just wish I hadn't wasted all those years listening to the incorrect load setting!

Ending with a sincere thank you very much!!

Lou

 

quincy

I didn’t mention a dead short and was only referring to the two terminal impedance the coil of a cartridge sees. Any reference to ground be it real or virtual does not factor into the load seen by the coils. Surely there has to be an actual input impedance for a current amp and it has to be low otherwise the coils will not generate any current to amplify. I am not trying to get into an in depth analysis of how various transimpedance amplifiers work but address the general first order behavior of the system and believe that a cartridge operating into a ideal voltage amp behaves differently than the same cartridge into an ideal current amplifier primarily due to the fact that the loads are at opposite ends of the spectrum.

Try placing a 5 Ohm resistor across the output of any LOMC cartridge and see what happens 😁

that depends on what load the input of the following stage gives.

If it is a voltage amplifier with 47kΩ, a 30Ω cartridge loaded by 5Ω it will be 17dB down.  When you replace that 30Ω cart with a 2Ω cart the output will only be down 3dB. If it is a current amplifier with a 1Ω input impedance a 5Ω parallel load will lower the current into the 1Ω input node by1.6dB with both the 2Ω and the 30Ω cartridge. The absolute currents will be different for the 2Ω and 30Ω carts but the relationship of how the 5Ω load affects a 1Ω input impedance stays the same.

dave

I didn’t mention a dead short and was only referring to the two terminal impedance the coil of a cartridge sees. Any reference to ground be it real or virtual does not factor into the load seen by the coils. Surely there has to be an actual input impedance for a current amp and it has to be low otherwise the coils will not generate any current to amplify.

Do you see how this above does not jive with this:

that depends on what load the input of the following stage gives.

If it is a voltage amplifier with 47kΩ, a 30Ω cartridge loaded by 5Ω it will be 17dB down.  When you replace that 30Ω cart with a 2Ω cart the output will only be down 3dB. If it is a current amplifier with a 1Ω input impedance a 5Ω parallel load will lower the current into the 1Ω input node by1.6dB with both the 2Ω and the 30Ω cartridge. The absolute currents will be different for the 2Ω and 30Ω carts but the relationship of how the 5Ω load affects a 1Ω input impedance stays the same.

Transimpedance phono sections have a dynamic load whereas a resistor is a static load. This is because the so-called 'virtual ground' (which will be 0 Ohms) occurs where the feedback resistor of an opamp meets the input resistance, which in this case will the cartridge itself.

At any rate, Moncreif threw off his numbers by using a 5 Ohm load, since that is not only not a real-world value that no-one would ever use, but is also one that would significantly decrease the output of any LOMC cartridge to the point that its output would be unusable (which is why its not real world...). Keep in mind that transimpedance phono sections didn't exist back then. As I mentioned previously, if he really wanted to make his point valid he needed to show the results using real world loads that are actually in use.

That laST POST IS PART OF THE WHOLE REGARDS STUPIDITY COMING FROM THE SAME PERSON, COMING FOR HIS FRUSTRATION .

@intactaudio  audio " falls " in that person game ( because intactaudio in good faith gentleman unknow that person game. ) that when he can't win then he follows been argumentative and goes " around and around "  with different issues than the one under discussion ( exactly like here. ) makind a way deviation from the main subject.

I followed his " game " when he already bbeated and I did it for many years till I learned.

That's why JC just does not  follows that stupid game and never suported him with the IMD issue discussed for years.

Please look to what stupid levels goes his stupidity:

""" At any rate, Moncreif threw off his numbers by using a 5 Ohm load, since that is not only not a........., if he really wanted to make his point valid he needed to show the results using real world loads that are actually in use. "

Certainly it's not PM who should do that  because PM shows at 100 ohms too but more important : that stupid man not only does not shows nothing/measures to prove his point but now he ask that the gentleman that measured and proved that the IMD is developed by the cartridge loading effect still makes more measures: GO FIGURE ! ! !

 

Yes, in our world exist any kind of stupidity we could think.

 

R.

 

Now, now... let's try and keep it civil.  I've enjoyed the discussion this far and am impressed by many members knowledge base.  Which is very helpful to the lion's share of members!

Ralph,

The two statements you quoted from me seem to align well with each other and I was unaware that there was a different versions of ohms law for static vs dynamic loads

At any rate, Moncreif threw off his numbers by using a 5 Ohm load

I agree it is an interesting choice but his measured results clearly show signal and if  if anything a lower noise floor so I fail to see where the issue is or how it invalidates his results.

dave