Anyone Heard the New Soundsmith Sussurro Cartridge

I heard them both at RMAF. Got to spend a quiet 40mins in Peter's room at the end of the show sunday. I agree it is hard to tell on small 2 ways and unfamiliar equipment but I felt it was the best vinyl sound I heard that weekend and tended toward the Strain Guage.

At RMAF Sussurro was used on a Hanss TT with Lamm & The Lotus Group's Granada open-baffle Feastrex uber-speaker. Many variables at play, but this was among the best vinyl at the show.

i heard the Sussurro on three different tt's at RMAF.

i was in the Soundsmith room three different times. i heard the Sussurro both on the TNT HRX/JPW arm and the Teres Centrus/Illios arm. it was just another cartridge on the HRX; it was something very special on the Teres. i agree that the system in the Soundsmith room is not really up to the potential level of the analog sources in that room.....but i like what i heard on the Teres. nice top to bottom balance, good clarity and boogie factor.....good refinement. a bit opaque on the HRX in comparison.

i also heard it on the Hanss tt in the Lotus Design room (twice) thru the Joe Cohens new speakers. here the Sussurro was not as well behaved as the Teres in the Soundsmith room, but it was still very nice. i would say that this vinyl setup needed some tweaking.

overall i like the Sussurro and i think most people would be very happy with it's performance. OTOH i just got a new cartridge, the Ortofon MC A90, which retails for about the same price. my opinion is that the A90 is in another league or 2 above the Sussurro.

Dear Wurp: The SG does not conforms with the RIAA eq. with what almost every recording was made, so what reproduce is not what is in the recording but something different.

Slowlearner, first than all I'm a music lover and an audiophile. It is true that I have/own my self Phonolinepreamp design ( José and I. ) and that a few other people own it but I'm not on audio commercial business with.

My opinion on the subject is a simple/plain fact that IMHO I don't think that people who cares about music/audio need to hide it but to understand it.

Regards and enjoy the music,
Raul.

Raul, the SG does conform to the RIAA EQ. But perhaps not as accurately as you think is necessary.

The beauty of the SG setup is that the mechanics of the transducer naturally produces EQ that is nearly the same as the RIAA curve. So the preamp only needs to do minimal EQ. This keeps the phase response intact. I suspect that not requiring heavy RIAA EQ is one of the reasons that the SG sounds good. A little amplitude error is far more favorable than the big phase errors you get from the RIAA EQ.

For the record I do not know if or how much the SG may deviate from the RIAA curve. I do know that it sounds excellent.

To the topic of the thread, I spent a lot of time listening to the Sussorro at RMAF. It is a superb cartridge, that is at home with the best. I have not heard it in a direct apples to apples comparison so I can't comment further.