Rerurn to Romy the Cat's Site

Stressing Bass in my former post I would like do not overly accent the lower bass itself but rather an organic combination of bass with something that I would call “full body” sound.

It we look at many properly setups, loaded and amplified cartridges then quite many of them have that “lean sound”, the tiny, high resolution , forceful presentation of notes; the notes that punch listeners with disconnected sonic needles. I know that the Morons consider it as “high definition audio” but I hate it very much. In fact most of the people build own playbacks (speakers, tonearms, amps, digital and so on) in exactly the same was but it would be a different topic.

Surely this high definition, lean, overly-hyped presentation is not ONLY the subject of cartridges but some cartridges have generally a tendency to “lean sound” vs. “fool body sound”. The lean cartridges have tendencies to convert contralto into coloratura mezzo-soprano, they uselessly slightly more musically “sharp” and have slightly reduced the profile of parabola with witch a tone roll into its pitch. The lean cartridges are demonstrable and effective but only in context of instantaneous gratification. They are like some Asian food – easy come and easy go…

Musically the lean cartridge goes well with flashy, showy and ostentatious music: Rimsky-Korsakov’s Sherezade, Shchedrin’s Carmen, Early Beethoven symphonic works, most of Horowitz and so on… As the examples of the lean cartridge would call all Lyra cartridges, all Clearaudio cartridges, most of Denons, most likely the ZYX (thought I hear it only a few times not in my playback and I cannot generalize at this point), in a certain was the Transfigurations, the cheaper Dynavectors and a few others. The Shelters, at least the 901 that I have is nothing even close to be lean, in fact it on the very posit side – it is fat and something that I call would call “stout sound”. That stout sound characterized by a good saturation of harmonics in the “primary frequencies” (300-500Hz) and a proper parabola with witch tones roll into own pitch. The “properness” also derided not only from a good development in “primary frequencies” but a good balance if transient characteristics to the “size” and “weight” of the “primary frequencies”. Here is what I feel Shelter 901 doe superbly good.  The Ortofon SPU in my view is also have very well developed “melody range” (primary frequencies) but they are pleasantly colored and have no lower bass to support and balance out the HF extension. Here is where Shelter shine on a good glory… What I wonder if the Ortofon Jubilee is capable to break through the SP’s family characteristics…

What I very funny that that analog people refuse to talk objectively about the “lean” vs. “full body” sound of cartridges. The feel that it is some kind of highly subjective things that shell be left out of attention. Ironically it is the very first thing that I care when I ask about cartridges. For a last couple days I was posting at Vinyl Dedicated forum (http://www.vinylengine.com)  trying to get form the guys who use Blue Angel OLIVE Mantis cartridge an idea what lean vs. stout character the Mantis has. As any other audio-cretins out there they had many recommendations for me to use medications and how to behave more congenially among the horde of idiots but they did not indicate anything that might identify the lean characters vs. full body character of Mantis.

Looking further to the candidates …

Rerurn to Romy the Cat's Site