peterr@utcsrgv.UUCP (Peter Rowley) (09/25/83)
Recently, I've become displeased with the ability of my turntable to track
difficult passages. Asking in stereo stores (probably a major mistake!) has
provided me with some interesting stories, if not hard facts, which I'd like
to ask the net about.
1. A worn stylus tracks as well as an unworn one -- True or False?
This was said to be true by someone at a store and false by someone else
at the same store.
2. A "good" cartridge doesn't track well -- True or False?
Having just checked my stylus for wear with a microscope at a different
store (a small white disk at the tip, which was said not to be severe;
true?) I then explained to the salesperson about my tracking concerns.
I was told that my turntable/cartridge (Dual 606, Ortofon ULM55e) was
considered very good (true?) and when I asked if the Shure V-15 would
be better, I was told that it would TRACK better but it wasn't as good
a cartridge. Being intimidated at this point, I neglected to ask what
was meant by a "good" cartridge. Do people out there understand this?
It was implied that a cartridge that tracks well simply "plows through"
the grooves. Of course, I want a "good" (accurate?) cartridge (doesn't
everyone?) but I don't want to hear distortion either.
3. When one hears distortion, the record is being damaged -- True or False?
I'd like to be able to track the last 20 seconds or so of side one of Mike
Oldfield's "Crises" -- is this asking too much?
peter rowley, University of Toronto Department of C.S., Ontario Canada M5S 1A4
{cornell,watmath,ihnp4,floyd,allegra,ubc-vision,uw-beaver}!utcsrgv!peterr
{cwruecmp,duke,linus,decvax,research}!utzoo!utcsrgv!peterrleichter@yale-com.UUCP (Jerry Leichter) (09/26/83)
Designing a cartridge, like designing almost anything, is a matter of tradeoffs. One has to look at tracking force, frequency response, channel separation, distortion, etc., etc., etc. "Trackability" - an actual physical measurement that Shure came up with, which summarizes in one number how well a cartridge will track - is influenced by many things. Result: There is no simple, one- to-one correlation between "how well a cartridge tracks" and its "quality" - whatever THAT means. As it happens, Shure has been very big on "trackability" for many years, and they try very hard to come up with a cartridge that will track everything around. I don't know about Ortofon - was that the cartridge you said you had? - but they may have chosen to optimize something else. Note that it is not necessarily a terrible thing not to track as well as "the best tracking cartridges". Any good-quality cartridge today will track 99% of all records made. At the margins - particularly with digital or direct-to-disk records, which are sometimes recorded with very extreme groove modulations - the differences between cartidges will start to show. So, YOU ultimately have to make a tradeoff: Do you listen to enough such records that you are willing to consider "trackability" as an essential characteristic of your cartridge? (Of course, you MIGHT find that you like the sound of a highly trackable cartridge anyway, in which case the tradeoff is easy.) As to distortion and record damage: If the distortion is, indeed, due to an inability of the cartridge to track the groove, then you are almost certainly doing damage. The "loss of tracking" involves the cartridge literally leaving contact with the groove, and then regaining it - a process certain to damage the groove. One way you might check if this is indeed the cause would be to increase the tracking force slightly (staying within the range recommended for your cartridge) and seeing if the problem goes away. (One of the dangerous myths around is that lower tracking forces necessarily do less damage than higher ones. All other things being equal, this would be true; but running a cartridge at a gram, say, and having it mistrack will do a LOT more damage than running the same cartridge at a gram and a quarter, or even a gram and a half, and having it track cleanly. What ultimately matters is the force on the groove wall, not the force on the cartridge...) -- Jerry decvax!yale-comix!leichter leichter@yale