Showdown: Your Favorite Cart for Classical?

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.

Hi Raul. You single out Koetsu, but I couldn’t really understand what you mean. Are you saying the other cartridges more consistent with different types of music?

I use a Koetsu and have been for many years now; most definitely enjoy the Koetsu family sound. I listen mainly to opera and jazz (mostly afro-cuban but other types – swing, smooth, big band also) and acoustical. I found the Koetsu to keep its character with all the music I listen to.

Admittedly I have not had the opportunity to listen to the cartridges mentioned by Caspermao in any level of depth, only at shows or at an acquaintance for short periods. Hence my question.

Also, what part of the Koetsu ‘sound’ do you feel gets lost on some music types?

Thanks
Paul

Dear Paul: +++++ " Are you saying the other cartridges more consistent with different types of music? " +++++

Not more consistent but with a better ( top to bottom ) overall tonal balance specially at the frequency extremes range.

The Platinum ones are a lot better than the other Koetsu's in that regard. Now if you are hearing the Koetsu cartridges over time then your ears/mind are already " equalized " to that quality performance ( that is a good one ) and only through a " shoot-out " against other cartridges in your own audio system could explain what I'm saying about.

Regards and enjoy the music.
Raul.

I think that many of us are saying essentially the same things but using different words. I agree with the common theme here, which is that large scale classical music is perhaps the most difficult style of music for an audio system to convincingly reproduce. An audio system has to "do it all" in order to get this style of music right. As Atmasphere said, you need full range frequency extension, you need wide dynamic range, and you need very accurate tonal balance to capture the natural timbre and harmonics of all those acoustic instruments. In addition, the system needs to have a very low noise floor and a high degree of transparency in order to present pianissimo passages at something approaching the level of quiet and nuance you experience in a concert hall. On top of all that, all the components in the system have to be able to handle the complex, peak passages with a sense of ease (i.e., lack of strain) that is faithful to the sound of live acoustic music

That's a very tall order. Once you have a music system that is doing all these things at the highest level, you have a system that should do well with literally anything you can throw at it - whether that be chamber music, a cappella vocals, jazz, rock, etc.

However, as we all know, audio is about compromises. And the reproduction of large scale classical music is not at the top of all of our lists when it comes to system priorities. My SET audio system is an example of a system that I specifically designed for small scale music, knowing that complex, large scale music does not play to the strength of simple MTM two-ways or low-powered SET tube amplification for that matter. Similarly, there are a lot of systems out there that do a great job with rock music but quickly expose compromises/shortcomings when you ask them to reproduce subtle acoustic music that demands timbral accuracy and many of the other attributes cited above.

Coming back to cartridges for a moment, I agree with Raul that all the cartridges mentioned in the original post that started this thread and most other top-of-the-line cartridges are capable of the ultimate challenge if the rest of the system is up to the task.