"AZ Nomad" wrote in message

On Thu, 16 Mar 2006 21:21:59 +0000, Ian Bell
wrote:


Serge Auckland wrote:

My question is why Moving Coils should be thought to be
better than moving magnets. I can think of several
reasons why they should be worse, lower compliance and
higher mass, but not why they should be better.
Trackability should be better on a MM, as should record
wear due to lower tracking weights.


I am surprised there has been so little development of
cartridges beyond the two basic magnetic types and good
old ceramic. What about an optical cartridge for example?

Are you talking about bouncing a laser off the record
groove? It was a failu it was too expensive and
worked worse than traditional methods as it was best at
reading the crud in the groove instead of just pushing it
aside.

I heard and saw an example of that failure producing music at HE2005 about a
year ago. AFAIK its still on the market. If you have the money - they have
the product!

"Ian Bell" wrote in message
news:4419d747.0@entanet
Serge Auckland wrote:

My question is why Moving Coils should be thought to be
better than moving magnets. I can think of several
reasons why they should be worse, lower compliance and
higher mass, but not why they should be better.
Trackability should be better on a MM, as should record
wear due to lower tracking weights.


I am surprised there has been so little development of
cartridges beyond the two basic magnetic types and good
old ceramic. What about an optical cartridge for example?

They exist. One example is the ELP laser turntable.

In article , Serge Auckland wrote:
My question is why Moving Coils should be thought to be better than moving
magnets. I can think of several reasons why they should be worse, lower
compliance and higher mass, but not why they should be better. Trackability
should be better on a MM, as should record wear due to lower tracking
weights.

When they first appeared on the market they could easily be made out to be
better just because they were different so that they would sell. There are
plenty of people prepared to assume anything new and different must be better.

But that was a whole generation ago, and even then most people had stopped
worrying about such controversies as acoustic versus electric pickups,
clockwork versus electric motors, or steel versus fibre needles. In the 21st
century there's no need to worry about moving coils, magnets, or anything
mechanical, because now we just have moving light beams, or solid state memory
with no moving parts at all.

Rod.

"Serge Auckland" wrote in
message

My question is why Moving Coils should be thought to be
better than moving magnets. I can think of several
reasons why they should be worse, lower compliance and
higher mass, but not why they should be better.

Good question.

Trackability should be better on a MM, as should record
wear due to lower tracking weights.
The quality of the stylus may be better on an expensive
cartridge, but in my own case, I have a Goldring 1042 and
a Shure V15IIIMR. The stylus in the Goldring is the Gyger
S, I understand similar to the VdH, the Shure MR is a
Namiki profile, so they are as good as anything available
on a moving coil.

Similarly, frequency response plots of moving magnets and
moving coils don't show any particular benefit to the MC,
nor does stereo separation or harmonic and
intermodulation distortion. So why *are* MC cartridges
throught to be better?

MC cartridges seem to be harder to make, so they can be priced higher and
provide more profits for their makers and sellers.

They also are more critical of the electronics that they are used with -
more opportunities for snob appeal and more profits.

If anyone knows of any good engineering reasons why this
should be so, I would be most interested to hear.

Don't hold your breath for anything believable.