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Finding Vinyl hard to fall in love with

I feel this depends on budget and quality of phono stage. I wouldn't own an MM cartridge and it wouldn't come anywhere near the last two carts I've owned in performance.

I agree phono stage is very important (I own a Verdier valve pre stuffed with >£500 of vintage Mullards). I’ve enjoyed owning both types of cartridges, the highest I got with MCs were Lyras and Dynavector XX1L. I never liked spending LOLprice on something that wears out in a couple of years. I’m currently running a Nagaoka MP-500. It isn’t worse, just a different character. I love the low running costs too (styli are only about £200-250 if one goes direct to Japan).

Again I view much of this as fashion. The now stone cold classic SPUs, Neumanns etc were superseded by high compliance MM exotica in the 1970s (back when people really understood loading etc, sadly a lost skill today), then in the ‘80s the fashion swung to a simplistic view of “rigidity” and the market filled up with heavy metal-bodied MCs. We’ve largely stayed there, but I’d argue mainly thanks to groupthink and lack of innovation.

Best cartridge I’ve ever heard regardless of cost? Almost certainly a Decca SC4E. Not perfect, but it makes everything else sound half asleep. I guess that is an inverted MI design.

PS I’m not knocking MC at all, I’ve enough experience and understanding of the technology over a long enough period to filter out the marketing and grasp there are many valid approaches to vinyl replay.
 
One thing I've never really got along with is high output MC. Give me MM at half the cost or a normal MC at twice the cost any day.
 
MM cartridges are hopelessly misunderstood IMO. Take a good one, put it in the right mass tonearm, and load it correctly and it should perform superbly well. There is no inherent advantage to MC, both are perfectly valid technological solutions with slightly differing strengths and weaknesses. We are just in a MC fashion place at present IMO. If one lives outside the fads of the current marketplace that can be ignored.

Rega's (MM) Exact was their flagship cart until they discovered the superior performance of MC which was borne out by the Apheta. Superb as the Exact was the Apheta bettered it in every way in a Cursa3 pre-amp (swapping the on board phono input from MM to MC). Further improvements came later with Rega's Ios phono stage.
 
Rega's (MM) Exact was their flagship cart until they discovered the superior performance of MC which was borne out by the Apheta. Superb as the Exact was the Apheta bettered it in every way in a Cursa3 pre-amp (swapping the on board phono input from MM to MC). Further improvements came later with Rega's Ios phono stage.

That is but one company playing in the current market place. It has no impact on an SC4E, Grace F9E, Shure V15V wood bodied Grado or any other highly rated cartridge of a differing technology.

Rega are unquestionably one of the most intelligent and out-of-the-box thinkers in the current audio market, but even they would likely struggle to sell a really expensive MM against the prevailing groupthink of today’s marketplace.

I’d love to see a lot more choice, e.g. I would really like to see some competition in the low-mass/high-compliance arena. Modern vinyl replay is remarkably uninteresting IMHO. Just endless variations on 35 year old designs.
 
Just get rid of it and stick to digital. Save yourself the cost and misery of getting it right.
 
One thing I've never really got along with is high output MC. Give me MM at half the cost or a normal MC at twice the cost any day.

Funnily enough I was just thinking about my ancient DL-110 and wondering if I should spend the money to get it retipped as they're £250 new now. I remember rather liking it at the time.
 
I think you should. Denon do HOMC better than Dynavector, for example, IMO, and I’m a DV fan.

My only caveat would be who does the retipping. I went through a retipped Troika phase and none of them sounded like the original (in a bad way).
 
Whilst I agree that you can get great results from MM, I've yet to hear one that can compete with the MCs I've got here which include Hana ML, Hana Unami Red, Lyra Titan, Audio Technica ART1000.

I think the point is that there is significant overlap in performance between MM and MC and how they sound depends on the context. A lot of people buy relatively expensive MC carts when they could get better sound by upgrading their arms for instance. I regularly see people using expensive MC carts in an Akito for instance when a cheaper MM cart in a better arm would beat it.
 
Funnily enough I was just thinking about my ancient DL-110 and wondering if I should spend the money to get it retipped as they're £250 new now. I remember rather liking it at the time.

I tried a DL110 against a Rega Exact last year expecting each cart to have strengths and weaknesses. To my surprise the Exact just hammered the 110 into the ground. It was better in every respect, much better in some.
 
I think the point is that there is significant overlap in performance between MM and MC and how they sound depends on the context. A lot of people buy relatively expensive MC carts when they could get better sound by upgrading their arms for instance. I regularly see people using expensive MC carts in an Akito for instance when a cheaper MM cart in a better arm would beat it.

I get that and agree. However there are limits to what even the best MM carts can achieve, albeit in a transparent system set up to enable you to appreciate the difference.
 
I think the point is that there is significant overlap in performance between MM and MC and how they sound depends on the context. A lot of people buy relatively expensive MC carts when they could get better sound by upgrading their arms for instance. I regularly see people using expensive MC carts in an Akito for instance when a cheaper MM cart in a better arm would beat it.
You'd love my setup: DV xx2 on a shitty Technics arm (and deck).
 
The main reason I bought a Technics is I genuinely preferred it to the Well Tempered and made some money. The main reason I bought a Well Tempered is I genuinely preferred it to the LP12 and made some money. The main reason I bought the LP12 is because people told me to and I didn't have a record player.
 
A chum with ATCs and rather impressive headphones brought round his Merging NADAC, which turned out to be seriously good. If I didn't already own NDX2 +XPSDR, a second-hand NADAC might give me pause for thought.

He borrowed an LP12, his first turntable, after 25+ years of digital ownership. He listened carefully and (like the album says) 'without prejudice'. Slightly to his surprise, he is now buying vinyl and wondering what turntable to get. Without prompting, he is also reporting back on several albums (not all recent) that sound as good or better from Qobuz, and a similar number (not all 50 years old) where there is simply more music in the grooves.

Simple answers to complex questions don't seem very enlightening, though they can give a warm feeling to the person delivering them. I think that applies to LP versus CD, CD versus streaming, MM versus MC, solid state versus valves, ported versus un-ported, stand-mounts versus floor-standers - and most of the other A versus B debates that take up so much space here. Of course, that may just show that I and those I know are all deaf or secretly being paid by a man called Tiefenbrun...
 


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