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.
@mikelavigne the name change actually did involve a design change as well. Ortofon’s chief designer is on record explaining about the new suspension of the MC Diamond, using nanotubes or something. In a video interview with Fremer (part of his coverage of the Munich event) he boasts about the enormous improvements or words to that effect. He also says they felt a desire to change the suspension because some owners had experienced tracking issues with the discontinued Anna and Anna Diamond. I’m one such owner and my regular Anna sounded gorgeous but was by far the worst tracker I ever owned. I bought it used and therefore couldn’t be sure what caused the tracking problems. A factory rebuild didn’t solve the issue, so I resent it and after almost a year (!) of waiting they returned it with the new nano suspension installed. Thankfully this has improved the tracking somewhat, although it still doesn’t track everything. FWIW, sonically I don’t hear any difference with the old Anna, but perhaps things will improve after the suspension has settled.
|
@atmasphere ,yes, that is the cause of the brightness and I could EQ that easily in the digital realm but the real deal breaker for me was the strain gauge's tracking ability. Peter thinks he has got it as good as he can and feels it is acceptable. Generally I will only look at cartridges that can do 80um or better at 315Hz. Miss-tracking is very annoying. Miss-track a record once and it is permanently damaged. @edgewear , Ortofon is very conservative with it's ratings and list's the MC Diamonds tracking ability at 315 Hz as 80um which is excellent and should easily handle any record. The Replicant 100 and GygerS styluses are the two most severe styluses out there and really have to be spot on in the groove. If you are still miss-tracking it is either a set up problem or just as likely something else you are hearing like phono stage clipping. When I have mine in hand I will run it through the torture course and report back what it can do. Yours should do the same. |
An interesting aside when it comes to styluses. The line contact stylus of the MSL Platinum Signature is really quite special. Unlike other line contact styluses I have looked at, the tip of the MSL stylus is broadly radiused. It's azimuth can actually be off a few degrees and the tracking would not be affected at all. Channel separation would still suffer but not tracking or record wear. I have not had the chance to look at an Air Tight stylus but given the same designer I suspect it is similar. The Air Tights were very popular for a while but it seems you hardly hear about them any more. I do think the Opus 1 is overpriced so, fewer people are willing to shell out for it. It is also interesting to note that in spite of it's rather high voltage output the Platinum Signature's gain is about 5 dB higher in transimpedance mode than in voltage mode. It is also as dynamic as any high output cartridge I have heard in transimpedance mode. What is just as special and the one area where this set up excels over any other I have used in my system is bass definition. Marcus Miller's bass now has almost the same gruf timbre it had at the Blue Note a month ago. I still think the bass could be better but I still have improvements to make in my subwoofer system. |
The MSL's super-high ratio of output voltage to coil impedance seems to be unlike anything else out there. In fact there's nothing even close (besides Air Tight). Definitely intriguing - must be some super efficient combination of armature and magnet structure? The low 15kHz channel separation spec on Ortofon's MC Diamond is interesting - and it's not just the Anna that they've spec'd higher. 20dB is not impressive. Even much lower line cartridges like Kontrapunkts have been spec'd higher! Probably some of the vintage models too. Possibly an admission that measurements take a backseat to subjective sound quality? |
