What is the “World’s Best Cartridge”?

@atmasphere : You was in recording studios from the 70’s and maybe you knew or meet J.Renner or S.Ricker both were involved in almost all the Telarc digital LP recordings, the former as the sound engineering and Stan at the mastering job.

A few years ago FIM label made a re-issue of the 1812 where were as advisors S.Ricker and J.Blloomenthal. This one member of the Telar recording team as digital recording and editing job along that Jules was the co-designer of the Soundstream digital recorder.

Obviously that I would like to know what all those elarc team members think about the analog tape vs digital recorders.

Btw, even that the FIM re-issue comes in a 200grs. vinyl ( I think the original came in 120grs. vinyl. )  and that was mastered trhough an " ultra high definition 32-bit mastering and with D.Sax as mastering engineer differences in between the original LP and the re-issue is way difficult to really say: here is better than there, at least in my room/system. The original 1812 LP is part of my whole evaluation/comparison proccess tests so I really know it as the fingers of my hands. The comparison sessions tells me that the Telarc original recording team were truly excellent.

If you don’t own both LPs try to buy it and listen to it, a fun and good experience. I'm sure that the experience could be a challenge even for the most demanding audiophiles as @mikelavigne  and ceratinly a full challenge for any room/system speacially for the cartridges/tonearms.

Anyway, what I still can’t get on your statement:

"" big difference between digital, tape ........ is cost, not sound. ""

Yes, my poor knowledge level but how comes that if the digital signal recorded is immutable to all the tape drawbacks and compared vs an analog recorded signal that is affected/degraded for each one of those drawbacks differences is " not sound ", how comes?

R.

Yes, I've met Stan. He was very nice, liked our room and Canto General which I played for him.

If you think digital is 'immutable' think again- why do people endlessly talk about which site has the better file to stream, which CD is the better version, the different sound of DACs and so on. Stan and I both sought out when mastering LPs the digital source file that lacked the DSP for the digital release because the DSP messed up the result- you could make a better sounding LP without it.

I remember that when I posted that a difference  in digital recording for the better was that bass range can be recorded stereo due that digital has no limitation as analog that always needs the bass range mono  and you posted that even that it could be that way normally digital comes in mono too due that the cost goes to high and in the other side engeeners are a little lazy to do it in the rigth way.

I missed this earlier.

@rauliruegas Emphasis added. This is a common myth. Tape is analog and does not need any mono bass. The reason it can show up on LP is to save time but you don't need to do that if you simply spend time with the project and look into ways to prevent out-of-phase bass from knocking the stylus out of the groove.

There's a number of ways to do that: rest set the groove depth to be deeper, perhaps cut the passage or project about 1dB lower- that doesn't sound like much but 3dB doubles the amount of modulation in the groove so 1dB less modulation can have an enormous effect!.

FWIW where this is really a problem if you are in a hurry to master the LP is below 80Hz- in most rooms its of no consequence. At that frequency the bass note is 14 feet long, and it takes several iterations of the bass note for the ear to know what the bass note is- by that time, the bass in most rooms is entirely ambient so mono bass is inaudible. Subwoofers take advantage of this fact all the time. At any rate the processor that does the mono bass is a passive device. Our processor (which we found we never used) would mono the bass only for a few milliseconds.

So when you are commenting about these things, its best to be informed- keep this in mind with future posts.

Forgive me for being late to the party but such a topic is too enticing to ignore!

It’s very interesting reading about new components & people’s experiences with them. Field coil pickups especially - so many ways down our rabbit hole.

I would just like to add that I’m a fan of velocity generators over displacement types as RIAA decoding is as important to my vinyl collection as anything else.

The Grail from Van den Hul is also a widely recognized transimpedance phono stage that should be mentioned. I’m a big fan of these types of phono stages when properly used.

The Koetsu Vermilion uses different coil internals compared to their other models. With roughly 1/2 the resistance/impedance there is more current available.

Not to question or doubt any other comments - Alnico magnet Dynavector pickups (DRT XV-1s) & transimpedance phono stages are why I treasure my records!

@atmasphere : Well I don’t remember exactly your words on the miono bass but I will look to my files and if I find out I will post. I think too that even has to be with the inverse RIAA eq.. Ican't remember

Anyway, the main issue is that LP comes with mono bass and today I can’t remember your exactly words on it but sooner or latter I will find out.

Normally I don’t post something/issue just at random . To much threads and posts many of us read day after day.

R.