dynavector 20x or grado sonata

It's only a 6dB drop and depending on where your volume knob currently is rotated, this might be an advantage.

Some of the issues related to gain requirements are dependent on how quiet your phono stage is.

If things get noisy with your volume control at 1 o'clock, then your solution may differ from that of someone who's phono stage is quiet with their volume knob in this position.

In general, you get the best sound out of your system when you burn off theleast amount of signal - having a system gain structure that allows you to keep the volume knob position turned up fairly high when listening at your perferred volume.

There's a lot more to it than that, but you should consider the above as a part of making an informed decision.

For anyone who's interested, I have some information on my forum on understanding the gain structure of your system. You can browse over here if you're interested:

http://www.galibierdesign.com//phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=35

Cheers,
Thom @ Galibier

I missed your 1 o'clock comment, even though I used this volume position as a baseline assumption for the discussion.

Acoustic feedback is a separate issue from whether you have enough gain.

It sounds however that 1 o'clock is your "rock the house" listening setting. I'd guess that you're at the margin of being able to halve the output of your cartridge and still play as loud as you like.

If you feel as if you have enough headroom for all of your listening needs (e.g. 3 o'clock is noticably louder than 1 o'clock), then you might just squeeze by with the Dyna (a very nice cartridge, if I do say so myself).

Cheers,
Thom @ Galibier

thanks that what iam wondering if iam going to run out of headroom this table is much more noisey than my old one there are so many factors in changeing my cartige i lost head room with this rm5 project it is even on a graint shelf i could go to the 3oclok on the knob with my old table