Is There An "Absolute" Best Cartridge?

While it is good and may seem logical to have your 8-9 prime demo cuts you always go to when evaluating a new component, it is also fraut with danger - "familiarity breeds contempt".

We humans can have a tendancy with very familar material to all ready have a " preferred sound" we are evaluating in our heads. We begin to somewhat stop listening to the music and listen to our pre conceived "preferred sound" checklist. As Lew said, you then play less familar/new music and the results are not always as convincing.

I fully agree with Lew. You need to live with a new component and play LOTS of different music over a reasonable period of time, then go back to see if it really was an improvement or just different.

Of course, like Siniy said - there is no perfect cartridge for all music genres or recordinds within a genre - but sweepeing statements that MM is good for ex and MC's are better for y is also not correct.

And, I feel a lot better within myself that my Technics EPC100C is back as equal " best cartrigde" :-)

cheers

Shane,
The issue raised by this new "tie" for best cartridge is that the original premise of this thread is now endangered... there is no longer one "absolute best cartridge", but now two absolute bests... which brings into question the definition of 'absolute'...

Hi Travis

I agree entirely and you for one would understand given your great collection of Japanese audio treasures. There never has been one absolute best cartridge. It is impossible for anything to be best given all the variables with equipment, rooms, musical taste and our ears.

I have found that the tunrtble to have a bigger contribution to any sound I hear than any cartridge. Especially when comparing excellently designed belt trive to DD drive tables.

Shane,
I wasn't suggesting any answer to the question per se - intellectually I prefer to stay out of discussions of 'absolute' as arguments about semantics are a favorite on this forum and accomplish little (but sometimes I just have to throw myself in the mud too :^). That said, I think you have hit on the issue with your point about musical taste and ears.

There are lots of ways to skin the cat and once one gets a fair ways down the path of quality, things are much more alike than different in the grand scheme. Where carts are concerned, if one has a canvas of excellent table/arm/isolation/setup (a big if), it allows the carts to render their individual flavors differently and thus while the base level of great carts is 'greatness', there is still quite a bit of 'personality' to many carts.

I tend to agree with Shane on the issue of 'judgement' according to 'favourite test material'.

Raul, you have assembled and refined your entire system so that it suits your tastes as precisely and happily as is currently possible.
This does not imply that everyone else will like the sound of your system or agree that it is the way music should sound.

When you listen quickly to your favourite test records on another system, you are simply correlating how the tracks 'differ' in presentation to your own system.
This is a very easy thing to do and requires very little 'training' as you seem to imply, however it should not be confused with validating the true worth of another system?