progress?

The laws of physics relating to acceleration and inertia essentially make playing records always an exercise in compromise. The highest quality and most dynamic recordings are inherently also the hardest to get to playback accurately! A true dilemma! That is why so many (including myself)were so excited when digital came along.....a different set of problems in the digital and electronic (not physical) domain to solve that seemed more solvable and in fact has been pretty well shaken out by now over the years.

Those early Telarc records were the first indicators for many (including myself) that vinyl playback technology had progressed about as far as it could/would and a new and better way was needed to move things forward.

Modern tables and cartridges may be more technologically advanced than those from years ago, but they still have to deal with the same laws and limitations dictated by physics to work well. Proper setup/matching of components in a vinyl rig is pretty much what its all about to get best results. A lot of the rest may be nice but do not matter nearly as much. The same rules and limitations hold today as back then, which might explain why the progress made in fact may not be so great as one might expect given some of the modern price tags in many cases.

I wish I still had my old $200 Philips 312 table from back then. One of my all time favorites. That low mass tonearm with the right high compliance mm cart tracked pretty well and sounded way better than it should have. I recall it doing way better than most Japanese table setups of the day with the Telarcs. I still have some old cassette recordings I made back in the 70's that still sound half decent and give a decent hint of its charms. A gorgeous and utilitarian design as well.

So when does the new and improved 45 rpm re-issue version of the classic Telarc 1812 recording come out? That might be the new King Kong of record tracking challenges. BEst sound ever if anything could play it without the stylus getting launched all the way to some prehistoric island in the process. :^)

Dear Mapman: Your posts are right as a theory, unfortunatelly in audio for some " unknow " reasons not always is acomplished.

This is an example and I already experienced several other that gone against theory:

In 1984 Audio magazyne made the review of one of the greatest LOMC ever, the Ortofon MC2000 ( that I own. ). This cartridge weight is 11grs and its compliance is 20cu.

The reviewer was the regarded B.V. Pisha whom mounted the cartridge in the technics EPA 250 through the SP-10MK2 TT.

The measured compliance was 30cu and the resonance frequency was 5.0 hz. Well trhough measures of the cartridge traking ability ( to many numbers to shows here ) Pisha writed: " this is the best tracability I have ever measured at low frequency.

The MC2000 tracks cleanly: even the level 6 on the Shure Era V. He continue: " as I had expected, the MC2000 reproduced very the very high-velocity cannon shots on the Telarc 1812 with no apparent difficulty ".

How that could happen?

Regards and enjoy the music,
R.

Not surprising that the cartridge could track low freq better with a system natural at 5Hz; because that is further away from the 20Hz+ musical frequencies. It could be ideal if not for the other parameters that must be addressed, ie. warps in records, runout, external vibrations such as foot falls and rumble. The author of that article looked only at one parameter. I also think that stylus design/shape is a factor too for both low and high frequency tracking. Some stylus shapes definately work better than others.