Best Cartridge for my system, MC or MM ??

I would advise for the Ortofon 2m Black for live reproduction.
For about the third price: the JVC Z1S together with the amazing "Grey JICO SAS" suspension-cantilever-stylus.
Do not care about MCs.
Only if you have the will to buy a great step-up & a top quality LOMC.
Only cartridges like the VDH Colibri, Clearaudio Titanium and few others of top $$$ range can go beyond the MM limits!

Blacknoise ... I've touched many of the cartridges mentioned above, including the Clearaudio Virtuoso and Maestro, and the Ortofon 2M Black.

My recollection is that some of the cartridges are high compliance and others low compliance. Don't know much about your TT (particularly the effective mass of the arm), but whatever you decide, I suggest that you get your arms around the compliance situation before investing bucks in a cartridge.

Also, I seem to recall that the Ortofon has high'ish output voltage (> 5 mV), which was a little hot for my set-up. ARC thinks it might have clipped my linestage, which was the Ref 3 at the time. Be sure the MACs can handle the Ortofon's output voltage.

Another factor that you may want to keep under your hat is retip/exchange costs. Most people in the know who I've spoken with think 2000 hours stylus life is about it. The usage cost on a per minute basis gets expensive as cartridge and stylus retip costs go up.

I believe the Ortofon 2M series has a replaceable stylus set-up, which is good. The Clearaudios do not. Having said that, Soundsmith and Andy Chong have very good repuations re their retip services.

FWIW, I settled on a Lyra Kleos (.5 mV MC) (primary) and the Soundsmith Zephyr (2.3 mV MI) (back-up). Soundsmith has retipped my Zephyr 2 or 3 times already for about $200 a-pop. I plan to ask Andy to inspect and retip if needed my Kleos in the next week or so.


Happy Holidays,

Bruce

I own the very same TT and have been reasonably happy with it. I have tried the Dynavector 17D3 and found much to my chagrin, it is not a good combination for that turntable. With the cantilever being so short on that cartridge I could not optimize the tracking using Baerwald protractor setup. It came up short a few mm.You may say who cares, a few mm. Well the few mm it was short would cause the 17D3 to produce grainy sound, at times distorted and quite a bit of mistracking. A very startling revelation to be honest. The TT15 dose allow for much adjustment as far as cartridge positioning goes. So I opted for a few hundred dollars more a MC Benze Micro Wood S L2. Longer cantilever which allows for perfect set up. Oh yes , back to your original question. Move to a MC. Greater detail, wider soundstage, layered sound etc etc. The Virtuoso Wood, albeit a fine MM cartridge lacks the depth of good MC. The 10X5 represents the newer age of the Dynavector design so i am not all that sure of the setup. The 17D3 I owned is of an older design which will have totally different set up from the 10X5.

"Move to a MC. Greater detail, wider soundstage, layered sound etc etc"

Inexperienced comment.
Some of the finest cartridges, past and present, are moving magnets.

If you are comparing a 10X5 to a virtuso then I would say it would be a tossup. I went off on a tangent and mentioned the Dynavector 17D3 as to how is was not a good fit for the TT15. I guess I should have clarified as to what MC's. Since i do possess the same TT, the Cartridge I possess is miles ahead of the Virtuoso and the Ortofon 2M black. So yes I would agree that the 10X5 would definately not be miles ahead of the Virtuoso if its ahead at all to be honest.For the same dollar value as those, yes you are correct as a MC not being any better than the MM. If you have a higher budget for a MC, than I would say yes an MC definately would be a better choice provided you have the phono stage that can handle the Low O/P of an MC.