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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
pindac's avatar
pindac
3,192 posts
 

There is also present a Marketing Snobbery, where one has to protect the Old-Guard, by keeping the Riff-Raff out, keeping the product for the ownership of the well-heeled only.

This as a marketing strategy certainly lends itself to being attractive to a certain proportion of clientele, who pay oodles for the tailor-made service.

Seeing as the only places that these Types of Clienteles converge is at commercial ventures, or specially arranged presentations/demonstrations, it is not difficult to keep the clientele separated from the Riff-Raff, which really leaves the exclusivity through pricing as an attraction to a product.

Low Volume Turnover - High Mark Up for a Product that has a mysterious allure, that captures the interest, will be an ideal USP to win over a certain type of customer.

Imagine the little extras like having a one-to-one dialogue with a proprietor of an establishment, it can't get more intimate as an experience than that, and surely worth investing in.    

lewm
13,777 posts
 

I think once upon a time there WERE two versions of the Voice, one of which was low output.  There wasn't much difference in cost. Do you REALLY know that the Voice and the Sussuro are exactly alike other than coil windings?  There are at least half a dozen Soundsmith cartridges that now bridge the price gap between the two, so why would PL even need to make them structurally alike?

dover
2,353 posts
 

re Soundsmith cartridges

Same stylus, same cantilever, same suspension and chassis. The ONLY difference is larger coils. 

This is not correct.

The more expensive low output SS cartridges ( Paua, Sussuro, Hyperion ) have much better channel separation - 5db improvement - and channel matching is much better - 0.5db vs 1.0db

Of course each model also has a different cantilever material - aluminium, ruby, cactus.

It would be interesting to know whether the lower channel separation in the high output versions is direct related to the larger coils.

 

mijostyn's avatar
mijostyn
8,570 posts
 

@lewm ​​@dover , Al I can tell you was that this was confirmed by Peter. We spent 2 hours together listening to the Strain Gauge and Hyperion at his listening room talking mostly about COVID. At the time I was already using The Voice.  I do not know if they spend more time fine tuning the Sussurro. I did not ask that question. As dover suggests the variation in channel matching could well be a function of the larger coils but I do not know that for sure. The low output version of the Voice is the Sussurro except I think the Sussurro came first. 

sksos
162 posts
 

Over the last few years I've been using a Kuzzma CAR-50 then the Sussuro MKII and most recently a MSL Gold Sig. All have sounded wonderful BUT the MSL (after a minimum of 25 hrs) is just in another world "in my system."  The system hasn't changed, using a Kuzma 4Point on either a Kuzma XL or Stabi R table into a NVO all tubed phono stage. The MSL has more extension at both ends of the spectrum a more solid bass, more transparency and just sounds more like real instrumnets, it just sings and lets me forget about the gear and enjoy the music. 

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