cart measurement vs quoted spec

Dan,

I'm just a little puzzled by the results and wanted to respond to Axel's request:

Has any one got some explanation for how such a major variation can be the case?!"

Hopefully, the information and my thoughts to his request is helpful to him.

Dre

Well, if you can't help him with these measurements, I don't think anyone else could. ;-)

What is valid is that I get distortion at high vinyl levels with massed instruments / orchestra / fortissimo, and it *seems* to tie in with the channel imbalance. At medium level, and less complex music it can not be easily noted, if at all.

AHA! Finally we get to the core of this thread, which I've tried to drive at from the beginning - namely, why are you measuring channel balance and crosstalk?

I've heard exactly the distortions you describe in at least 50 systems, and I've eliminated it in at least one or two. ;-)

It would not occur to me to tackle this common problem by o'scoping a cartridge to check channel balance and/or crosstalk. These distortions are vastly more likely to be caused by resonance behaviors, distortions in the amplification stages and/or speaker problems than by crosstalk or channel imbalance in a cartridge.

99% chance this was a wasted effort, IMO.

Axelwahl,

Thanks for the further information. I think there is a good possibility that your cartridge is "slightly" defective. The "buzz" on Ortofon is that quality control is not one of their strong points. A misalignment of any of the generating components could account for the channel imbalance (not necessarily related to the cantilever being canted slightly to one side).

An audio shop once leant me a table while mine was in for service. The table had the then top of the line Dynavector. At first, nothing seemed amiss. It was smooth, extended, beautiful sounding, with a huge soundstage. But, to me, it sounded phasey and the images, while large, were quite diffused. I don't have your kind of test gear, but I did experiment. I have a Yamaha DSP-1 ambience synthesizer/recovery system which feeds four channels of ambient information (in addition to the two unprocessed stereo main speakers). One setting recovers out of phase information (Hafler circuit). Playing mono records, this Dynavector had massive amounts of out of phase information where my Lyra cartridge put out virtually none. A cartridge can have "problems" which are not immediately evident.

I wonder if your problem with orchestral crescendi has to do with your channel imbalance issue. It seems like you have correlated these variables because this was the "problem" for which you have a measurement. It sounds more like a mistracking or resonance issue more than anything else. If it is somehow directly related to channel imbalance, I would expect it to be more of an issue with stereo records than mono records. Has that been the case?

Yep, and there is a legitimate method for measuring crosstalk while taking into account the channel imbalance. I haven't read all of the details on what Axel is doing here. Having been through a few such discussions with him I know it is just not worth the effort. :-)

No offense Axel, just please find another way to interact with the other inmates.