Showdown: Your Favorite Cart for Classical?

I thought the same as Stringreen, that cartridges at thia price, should be able to do it all and make the coffee, answer the phone. It seems though the higher you go into the high end, the more specialised, the more optimised, for a particular source, genre of music etc, a system becomes. A tad depressing really. Having said that, having used a Koetsu Rosewood signature and Zyx Airy 3, the latter has a greater neutrality, that seems to suit classical better, though both are woberful.

Stringreen me and you think a lot alike in many issues. I could not agree with you more here..

Roger

I have a few carts that sound wonderful on small combo acoustic recordings but dont deliver on large scale orchestral recordings or really slammin big band. That is why I would characterize some cartridges as being better for classical. Obviously solo piano and string quartets would sound good on these other carts as well. Mabey the thread should ask "favorite cart for orchestra" although issues of tonality are also at play.

David12,

It seems though the higher you go into the high end, the more specialised, the more optimised, for a particular source, genre of music etc, a system becomes.

My experience is that it has to do with intention, not cost. IOW if you know what you are doing you can do very well on a budget, and if you don't know what you are doing it can be a disaster if you **don't** have a budget, you have to know what you are doing. Loading the cartridge, doing a proper tone arm setup and all the little details done right can have a profound effect. In my comments I assume that these things are taken care of.

The sonic objectives may be very different for classical and rock or jazz music playback. Reproduction cannot better (or even come close to) original music event. So, everyone has to choose his own set of compromizes. Any particular combination may be good/acceptable for rock and unbearable for more copmlex kind of music and vice versa. More details may be pleasing for rock, but it is very annoying combined with inadequate timbre rendering of individial instruments within symphonic orchestra. I much prefer my walkman over main system CD player for clasical beacause it gives you at least general idea about music/performance, while complex symphonic music on "big" CD is a complete lie. The same walkman just drives me mad with "glassy" cymbals playing jazz. Generally, so called "classical" music is more demanding for playback system. It's more difficult (by order of magnitude) to reproduce more or less adequately painting of Velasquez, than Matisse's picture. I like Matisse very much, but things shall be put in right perspective. To my mind the main goal of any playback system is simple: reveal as much emotional/intellectual content of the musical performance as possible. More "content loaded" music demands sometimes painfull compromizes (like sacrificing attractive colorations/excagerrations), in order not to loose the main musical idea.