Tony L
Administrator
It is also worth factoring-in history and marketing when viewing cartridges. It’s all too easy to be sucked into the pretty pictures, oligarch price-tags and endless pseudoscience marketing behind the current high-end. The reality is vinyl replay technology is ancient. Nothing of any real conceptual significance has happened in half a century or more, what we have seen is a degree of refinement and some of that being marketing-led over-engineering.
Go back to the late-50s early-60s and the three main types of cartridges (MM, MC, Decca) all existed and the better examples all costed within a few % of each other. There really wasn’t any clear winner here, the systems were viewed as having slightly different strengths and weaknesses. If you wanted the very best you’d be looking at an Ortofon SPU, Shure V15 or Decca FFSS. Each a different technology. All a fairly similar price.
Move into the 1970s and tracking/tracing became the core marketing perspective, and this obviously moved things to the MM side of the map. The one clear advantage MM carts have is lower generator mass so they can be generalised as better trackers all else being equal. There is no way around this as an MC generator has a far more complex and heavier moving element. As such things moved rather too far to the low-mass and high-compliance end of the spectrum, this move encouraged by the advent of 4 channel quadraphonic record technology which required the ability to track ultrasonic HF which was out of reach of MC technology. You just can’t move something heavy that fast.
Since then quadrophonic vanished the hi-fi marketing gods decided a child’s view of “rigid” was the thing to sell, so we went back to heavy arms, MC carts and higher tracking weights to get them through the tricky bits. This resulted in some very fine arms and cartridges, no doubt, but I feel this mindset has moved to the point of dogma now. The idea any generator technique is inherently superior is just as daft today as it was back in the 1970s. I far prefer the mindset of the 1950s and 60s where everything was assessed on its own merit and radical thinking and innovation was commonplace. Vinyl replay is a complex problem with many different yet valid solutions.
I really do find the current audio market dull as ditchwater. So much is narrow, blinkered and desperately trying to find new ways to charge ever-more absurd oligarch prices for very old thinking by adding ever more bling and unnecessary mass to everything. It is like discussing the architecture of Donald Trump. Just clueless.
Go back to the late-50s early-60s and the three main types of cartridges (MM, MC, Decca) all existed and the better examples all costed within a few % of each other. There really wasn’t any clear winner here, the systems were viewed as having slightly different strengths and weaknesses. If you wanted the very best you’d be looking at an Ortofon SPU, Shure V15 or Decca FFSS. Each a different technology. All a fairly similar price.
Move into the 1970s and tracking/tracing became the core marketing perspective, and this obviously moved things to the MM side of the map. The one clear advantage MM carts have is lower generator mass so they can be generalised as better trackers all else being equal. There is no way around this as an MC generator has a far more complex and heavier moving element. As such things moved rather too far to the low-mass and high-compliance end of the spectrum, this move encouraged by the advent of 4 channel quadraphonic record technology which required the ability to track ultrasonic HF which was out of reach of MC technology. You just can’t move something heavy that fast.
Since then quadrophonic vanished the hi-fi marketing gods decided a child’s view of “rigid” was the thing to sell, so we went back to heavy arms, MC carts and higher tracking weights to get them through the tricky bits. This resulted in some very fine arms and cartridges, no doubt, but I feel this mindset has moved to the point of dogma now. The idea any generator technique is inherently superior is just as daft today as it was back in the 1970s. I far prefer the mindset of the 1950s and 60s where everything was assessed on its own merit and radical thinking and innovation was commonplace. Vinyl replay is a complex problem with many different yet valid solutions.
I really do find the current audio market dull as ditchwater. So much is narrow, blinkered and desperately trying to find new ways to charge ever-more absurd oligarch prices for very old thinking by adding ever more bling and unnecessary mass to everything. It is like discussing the architecture of Donald Trump. Just clueless.