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What is the “World’s Best Cartridge”?

I believe that a cartridge and a speaker, by far, contribute the most to SQ.

The two transducers in a system.

I bit the bulllet and bought a Lyra Atlas SL for $13K for my Woodsong Garrard 301 with Triplanar SE arm. I use a full function Atma-Sphere MP-1 preamp. My $60K front end. It is certainly, by far, the best I have owned. I read so many comments exclaiming that Lyra as among the best. I had to wait 6 months to get it. But the improvement over my excellent $3K Mayijima Shilabi was spectacular-putting it mildly.

I recently heard a demo of much more pricy system using a $25K cartridge. Seemed to be the most expensive cartridge made. Don’t recall the name.

For sure, the amount of detail was something I never heard. To hear a timpani sound like the real thing was incredible. And so much more! 
This got me thinking of what could be possible with a different kind of cartridge than a moving coil. That is, a moving iron.

I have heard so much about the late Decca London Reference. A MI and a very different take from a MC. Could it be better? The World’s Best? No longer made.

However Grado has been making MI cartridges for decades. Even though they hold the patent for the MC. Recently, Grado came out with their assault on “The World’s Best”. At least their best effort. At $12K the Epoch 3. I bought one and have been using it now for about two weeks replacing my Lyra. There is no question that the Atlas SL is a fabulous cartridge. But the Epoch is even better. Overall, it’s SQ is the closest to real I have heard. To begin, putting the stylus down on the run in grove there is dead silence. As well as the groves between cuts. This silence is indicative of the purity of the music content. Everything I have read about it is true. IME, the comment of one reviewer, “The World’s Best”, may be true.
 

 

mglik
mijostyn's avatar
mijostyn
8,569 posts
 

Does anyone here remember analog cell phones? Terrible is an understatement.

There are things you can do in the digital world that are impossible to do in the analog world. Incomplete? Are you kidding me? Human brains are not near that fast. A computer can entirely remove the "pop" from a scratch and fill it in with a small section of the previous several milliseconds and you can not hear where the defect was. If I record a record digitally, scratches and all and synchronized the two, the copy and the real thing. Nobody will be able to reliably identify which version they are listening too. Nobody. 

@rsf507  , Darn, forgot to mention this one. The Seta L20 is a very rare bird. It costs $60,000. It certainly is by a long distance the quietest phono stage in existence. Otherwise, it is the very same circuit used in the Seta L Plus and should sound very much the same. It is also a very large heavy unit. I would love to hear one. But, it is probably safer that I don't:-) I would have a hard time explaining that one to the wife. A $10,000 cartridge was hard enough. I was lucky to get the motorcycle buy her.  

noromance's avatar
noromance
9,753 posts
 

@mijostyn I heard demos of the Sweetwater units with the designers and while they are excellent units, you could absolutely hear the cleaned version’s veil over the original.

A computer can entirely remove the "pop" from a scratch and fill it in with a small section of the previous several milliseconds and you can not hear where the defect was.

mijostyn's avatar
mijostyn
8,569 posts
 

@noromance , totally different ballgame. The pop removal is done before the RIAA filter is applied. The filter slurs the pop waveform making it twice as long in time. Taking it out after RIAA is applied leaves a bigger hole. The Channel D pop filter also fills in the gap with a duplicate of the preceding millisecond of waveform. All this is done in the digital world and is not noticeable. It also is removing just the big pops not the little stuff. It's sensitivity is adjustable. It can also be turned on and off on the fly. I seriously doubt any of us could reliably identify when the filter is on, I can't. Remember, this is not a stand alone piece of equipment. It is only a software program. It only requires a phono stage with a flat output. Granted, there are not many of them. I can not imagine a phono stage of higher quality than the Channel D Seta L Plus. I bought one for a reason and it was not cheap either, $10K. There are certainly more expensive units but excepting Channel D's Seta L20 at $60K there are no other more expensive units that interest me at all and this is after a decade of research. The CH Precision is a large overly complicated unit that requires an outboard power supply to function at at it's best. That is nuts to me. There is no better power supply than batteries. The unit disconnects itself from the wall in operation. Less is also more. When it comes to phono stages a lot more. 

lewm
12,971 posts
 

So if digital is now perfect and battery supplies are perfect, who needs the world’s best cartridge? (Sarcasm intended.)

mglik OP
906 posts
 

The Lino 3.3 was highly recommended as a phono stage that could stand up to any. I currently use a full function Atma-Sphere MP-1. This is a two box unit with a separate ps. I believe it was designed from its outset as a vinyl playback machine.

Half of its many tubes are the phono stage. I got lucky and scored 8 mil spec Mullard 12AT7s. Very rare and spectacular sounding.

I also save having to use another pricey IC and rack space for an outboard phono stage.

But the Lino seems like it may be something very special?

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