My Dumb Question of the Day

Dumb answer/question: are you completely out of your mind?

Only an engineer could ask a question like that:)

It doesn't seem like such a dumb question to me. If you can hear the acoustic effects of the stylus tracking the groove then obviously some energy is being wasted that could have been transferred electrically. A more efficient transfer mechanism should, in theory, result in more information being retrieved from the groove.

Sorry, I don't know the answer, though.

I've got it! Let's burn little pits into the record and have a LASER read them. No mechanical coupling at all. This sould give us perfect sound forever. No, wait a minute, I think this has been tried and vinyl still sounds better. Go figure.

This phenomenon is known as "chatter", I believe. The less resonant your arm-cartridge system, the less you will hear it. I used to hear more of it from my RB300/Glider than I do now with an RB300/Cardas Heart (a much more expensive cartridge). This, even though the Heart has a wooden body and the Glider has none. The two cartridges both came from Benz but there are several design differences that could account for the reduction in chatter.

Naturally you do not want any chatter, since it is energy that is feeding back into the arm-cartridge-TT system and smearing the sound.

Just remember, we only hear a small section of the spectrum. Who is to say that CDs don't also make sound when the laser displaces photons.

If a CD plays in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it really make sound? :)