A GUIDE FOR THE DEDICATED ANALOG AUDIOPHILE
We know of none better, outside of our own humble attempt to enlighten that portion of the audiophile community who love hearing music reproduced with the highest fidelity and are willing to go the extra mile to make that happen.
An excerpt:
Whatever the number of hours our cartridge will last, and however long we can expect it to perform well, I’d say most of us who do avoid breaking it will run it too long. Which is completely understandable and not totally without its merits. Great cartridges are expensive and the degradation of their sound is often gradual and not necessarily universal across every record in our collection. Plus it’s really not all that easy to know exactly when our cartridge is starting to sound audibly worse.
So how do we know when it’s time to replace our cartridge? Before I answer that question I need to point out that audiophiles are too focused on stylus wear and not enough on degradation of the cantilever assembly, which plays a sizable role in the quality of sound our cartridge delivers.
As Robert makes clear in his piece, a properly setup, fresh-sounding cartridge is fundamental to achieving high quality playback.
In both his system and mine, it starts with this little fellow right here.
If you are interested in acquiring what we consider to be the best sounding cartridge on the market, please contact us. We are dealers for Dynavector and can get you a 17dx at a good price, and typically in short order.
Vintage Vinyl
As long as vintage vinyl is the only vinyl with sound worth pursuing, as is clearly the case these days and will be the case for the forseeable future — we have ample evidence to support this statement for this who are interested in that lamentable reality — a quiet cartridge and a very high quality arm are essential to high quality playback.
Our Dynavector 17Dx gets down deep into the groove, where vintage used records have the least number of problems created by their previous owners.
And we run it nude — something I discovered was a possibility more than a decade ago, how I cannot remember — for even better sound.
Further Reading
Dialing in the Anti-Skate with Massed Strings
Here we discuss one of our favorite test records. Strings are one of the hardest elements in any recording — including pop and jazz records — to get right. They also make it very easy to spot when something, somewhere, is off.
Azimuth, VTA, Anti-Skate and Tracking Weight
Way back in 2005 we discussed the four major imputs that go into setting up tonearms and cartridges.
Cartridge Tweaking and Turntable Setup Advice
Advice for tuning and tweaking your table, arm and cartridge.
