Cartridges

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Posted by manualblock [ 69.112.69.86 ] on July 26, 2005 at 20:48:17:

A lot of people use Shure carts and I like them myself since they track very well and sound nice and articulate and smooth at the same time; for the money they can't be beat. I am asking for opinions on an aspect of cartridge design that becomes apparent with low compliance MC's. Since the stylus is integrated with the body of the cart and the response is dictated by the low inductance of an MC they can produce significant frequency output as high as 150k. If the pre-amp or input stage of the poweramp suffers from distortion caused by slew rate limitations. These ultra-sonic signals can cause distortion; even with inaudible signals.
With a MM cart there is serious bandwidth limitations starting at 20k due to electrical resonance of cart inductance and pre-amp input capacitance.
When the series impedance of the 47k input resistor shunting in series with the pre-amp input is made larger by the MM cart at resonance; around 15k there will be a noise increase of audible intensity.
That has an audible result and may explain the smooth and musical presentation of MC's.
While the presentation of good MM carts is very detailed, the MC's commonly used sound more real to me. Any thoughts?


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