Cartridge frequency response specs

Specs are ADVERTISING. (Sorry to shout.) There are many ways to measure a component, and you can assume that manufacturers use whatever method makes their products look best--and that may mean using different methods, or reporting results in different ways, for different items in their line. Specs don't exist to help you choose among different products. They exist to make each product look good (and a little better than the products in the line that cost less).

So stop reading spec sheets and start listening. I know that's hard to do with cartridges, but it's the only way.

They are giving you the overall fequency response (wideband) in one spec(with no db tolerance shown)and also the linearity in the audio band(with db tolerance shown)with the other spec.
Whether the wideband response is significant, is a matter of debate.
As an information retrieval transducer, the audio band linearity of a cartridge is important. But it gives no insight into the sound characteristics of the cartridge. Or tracking ability, or resolving of detail, or many other things.

Hey,

Anyone remember "Quad" sound from the 70's? They had to come out with super high freq. cartridges to pick up the rear channel data which was encoded in ultrahigh (beyond hearing) freqs. At least in one scheme. Response specs without dB's to tell you the max. variations can be misleading or useless. I guess it is nice to go up to 50k, like on my Grado, it may hint at some refinement, but what exactly it proves is a mystery to me. But analog master tapes can go higher in freq. response than CD's so maybe that is a good reason to go beyond 20k, whatever harmonics are there, maybe it will delight housepets. Maybe transient response is enhanced by HF extension beyond 20k in a ctg?

The frequency response of most cartridges vary DRASTICALLY as the load in the phono stage, tonearm cable and interconnects are altered. IAR covered this in Journal 5 to a very great extent. Moncrieff went so far as to take 54 high end cartridges and actually chart the frequency response and noise floors with various terminating loads. In all but a very few cases, the manufacturers recommended loading ( in terms of resistance and capacitance ) did NOT produce optimum results. By optimum results, i am talking about the most linear frequency response and / or noise levels. He did provide recommendations and charts for those cartridges tested though, so knowing this info can help one to extract the best performance from them. Only problem with this is that most of those cartridges are no longer made and nobody else is going to put forth the time and effort to do this with newer offering. Not even "analogue guru" Michael Fremer. For all the good that he has done trumpeting the benefits of the vinyl groove, i just don't think that he has the know-how or test equipment to undertake such a task. Sean
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That is a very good point, Sean. Just out of curiosity, in low ouptut MC carts, did the high end roll off with higher ohm loads than specified, or lower ohm loads? I was thinking about experimenting with different loadings for my DL103, and would like some initial info on this before I start. I have read that in many cases listeners preferred much lower ohm loadings than spec'd by the mfr. I currently load my DL103 at 40ohms at the step-up transformer. Any advice on this?