Cartridge impedance loading question

Fleib, I recommend you do some design work and see if you still say that. You might also do a search on some of the comments by the Jonathan Carr (Jcarr) who is active on this forum.

If a circuit does not have RFI problems then loading can still have a beneficial affect.

Loading of LOMC cartridges has no effect whatsoever so far as the cartridge is concerned. There is a slight benefit to loading as low impedance terminations of cables reduces cable artifact, particularly with high capacitance cables. This is better realized if the cartridge is operating in the balanced mode (as it is a naturally balanced source) and the signal is carried through a balanced line. Then the cable will have no artifact at all. 600 ohms will be sufficient to eliminate the cable artifact.

Novel way of looking at a generator, or is it a transmitter? The oscillation or ringing occurs in the preamp because of the extraordinary amount of gain needed.

The cartridge/cable combo acts as both. It does not matter that the phono section has no bandwidth at the resonant frequency, which is usually several MHz. The gain has nothing to do with it.

The tiny voltage of a LOMC still has inductance, which combines with cable and preamp capacitance and can cause HF ringing, but is only a problem with extremely low output carts with high resistance/inductance. I think such occurrences are beyond the bandwidth of your phono stages.

I wonder if there is a semantic issue underpinning this conversation. In the above quote you are correct in almost every way except that there are no LOMC cartridges with high inductance... if it is assumed that by 'tiny voltage' you are referring to about 1.0mV or less. The inductance you thus refer to is the inductance in question, the frequencies are those in question, and no phono section I know of can go that high, but they don't have to- they only need to have an RF sensitivity and then you suddenly hear loading making a big difference.

Saying RFI is generated by the cart is misleading. It is not. There are other loading considerations with MC's, none of which are about noise or tonality. You assume the higher the load, the better. I beg to differ. Such things as imaging, stage, dynamics, detail, and focus can all be affected by load, while tonality is unchanged.

But here in your next paragraph you seem to contradict the earlier paragraph in the first sentence. I did not nor do I assume that the 'higher the load the better': I said the correct load and most designers design for 47K.

I agree that loading affects these things if your preamp has RFI problems! I don't know if you have ever heard what RFI can do to an audio circuit outside of a phono situation but the effect it can have on soundstage, background noise, detail and the like can be profound. As a result all I can assume from your reactions here is that the phono sections where you have tried different loading options are all having trouble with RFI; that is why you heard a difference! RFI has big effects on audio gear if not tamed.

I do however agree with your closing statement as loading has a lot to do with both the cartridge and the individual preamp, for the reason that the inductance of the cartridge and the resulting RFI affects different preamps differently. In our case since we got a handle in this some years back it has almost no effect which is good- its more plug and play. But we originally included the loading strip on our preamp (which is still there) because in the old days we heard differences with nearly every preamp we auditioned.

Here are some links that you may find interesting:

http://forum.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/fr.pl?eanlg&1281468389&openflup&18&4#18
and further down on the same thread:
http://forum.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/fr.pl?eanlg&1281468389&openflup&22&4#22
pay attention to post number 3 at this link:
http://www.whatsbestforum.com/showthread.php?15077-Cartridge-Loading-A-Misnomer

Atmasphere,
I see you brought back up. The LOMC I was referring to are some of those coreless designs with very low output and high inductance/resistance relative to other MC. It was J Carr who told us about the HF oscillation/noise that could occur.

Regarding the notion that higher value loads are necessarily better, consider this:
If 500 ohms sounds good, and one tries 47K and it also sounds good but different, and both loads seem equally quiet, why is 47K better?
You're saying it is and you're wrong IMO.
Regards,

A LOMC cartridge without a core is going to have a lower inductance value as compared to one that does have a core. A core has a way of increasing the inductance, all other variables being equal.

As Jcarr points out in one of the links I provided, and IME, as you load the cartridge more and more the output goes down, which makes for more noise from the phono section. Generally speaking, the greater amount of noise the less low level detail due to the ear's masking principle.

In our preamps you really don't hear any difference with 500 ohms or 47K; our preamps are pretty immune to RFI. I've not been contesting that you don't hear an improvement- in fact I am quite sure you do. All I am saying (and all I have ever said in this thread) is that if so this indicates that your preamp has a problem with RFI. So in your case loading is important. But what works for you is not going to be the same for someone else with the same cartridge if they have a different preamp and tone arm cable. That was brought out in the links I provided.

I load everything at 47k these days as I now use an Atma-Sphere MP-3. I have tried different loading for my MC cartridges but hear no difference. I remember talking to Keith Herron several years ago at a RMAF show. I asked why his phonostgae did not have loading options. He pretty much gave the same answer as Ralph. Ironically though the next version of his phonostage did come with load options, but While he never admitted as much to me I think he did that for marketing reasons.

Atmasphere,
A coil with a magnetic core is more efficient so air core coils must be larger to get a usable output. The newer AT air core designs are the exception, probably using stronger magnets. Older designs like the DL-S1 have very low output and relatively high impedance/inductance.

OP has a Black Box, not a Herron or MP-1, and I would guess that some of what you say about to the higher usable value, might be appropriate, but it's not a rule.
One of my solid state phonos' has a much higher S/N, and it's obvious your loading "rules" are not always correct.
Regards,