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.
Dear @lewm : " even more endless and unresolvable debate about analog vs digita " Unresolvavle? really ? certainly could be " unresolvable " for you and the full biased subjectivists but not for me and other gentlemans with real/true open mind/unbiased.
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I am fine, as long as we can keep this a forum with friendly echange of opinions. We are all a combi of subjective and objective experience. Subjective sometimes lies before objective - look folks, this is what my ears tell me. Endless and unsolvable debate - no, I dont agree. Even if not always interesting. Isnt this the nature of a forum like this? We do our best, to arrive at a better sense of the truth. It always avoids us, of course. Our muse is only partially there. But the free debate in itself is a rich source of information, we are better informed, not just "sheep" to use the term in Pink Floyd: Animals (which btw sounds good, more clear, from the new 2018 mastering on vinyl, in my system). |
Hereby Resolved These Resolutions: Resolved The best cartridge will be the one that matches the tonearm in use, in this case the Triplanar, since the ability of the tonearm to track the cartridge is paramount to the cartridge, which is penultimate. Resolved Analog vs digital will be on-going until digital is so much better that LP production ceases. Resolved These statements will make no difference to anyone entrenched in their arguments per human nature. |
I was listening to a Radio Programme the other day, where a recording was played from an Interview with a founder of the CD Technology as the World knows it. The Interview went from the breakthrough to the Music Medium it was used for and how it compared to its predecessor the Vinyl LP. The interviewee was biased to the core for CD 's superiority, making bold claims for how it was technically much improved over the capabilities of the Vinyl LP. On Paper it might have been and on Paper as a medium for recording all different data it was much more versatile than the Vinyl LP. 40 Years in the debacle continues, there are still multiples, with an interest in replaying recorded music, that are not too sure of the Superiority of the CD as a Source, and who vociferously reject the notion, and remain with the tradition of using the Vinyl LP. I wonder, if those who were at the forefront of the Vinyl LP Medium being produced, were as critical of the predecessor Shellac, and kept the putting down Shellac as a Medium for 40+ Years throughout the heyday of the Vinyl LP.
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