Telarc 1812 revisited

Hi Raul:

>If a tonearm always is important the main actress is the cartridge and in specific: the cartridge self tracking abilities.

That doesn't describe my experiences. I can take the same cartridge and install it in different tonearms, and get different tracking performance. In fact, I can take the same cartridge, install it in the same tonearm, change the effective tonearm mass (through the judicious application of blu-tak), and get different tracking performance.

The match (or mis-match) between tonearm mass and cartridge not only affects the fundamental resonant frequency, it also changes the tracking performance.

While it isn't possible to reduce the effective mass of a tonearm, it certainly is possible to increase it. I suggest that users experiment with the effective mass of their tonearms before concluding that a cartridge's tracking limits are what they assume they are.

Hi Boofer:
>other one said that the industry in the last 20 or 30 years has been concentrating on sound and neglecting tracking ability.

While the quote isn't completely correct, there is some truth to it. Back in the late 1970s and early 1980s, practically the entire Japanese analog industry plunged in the direction of tracking ability above all, and preferably at lighter and lighter vertical tracking forces. Very low-mass tonearms became all the rage, and cartridges were designed for ever-lower mass (employing plastic bodies and the then-new samarium cobalt magnet compounds) and ever-softer suspensions. Efforts to make more compliant cartridge suspensions included, deleting the tie-wire that normally prevents the signal generator from being pulled for and aft by the LP groove, making the suspension from multi-stranded non-springy metals rather than springy metals, and in extreme cases, making the suspensions from non-metal fibers and plastics.

Some of the new suspension efforts resulted in heightened failure rates in the field, but more importantly, after a few years of high compliance cartridges and low-mass tonearms, an increasing number of reviewers and audiophiles began saying that the new design direction sounded worse; that the "tracking above all" movement was forgetting about the sound quality.

Some of the analog engineers seemed to think so too, and while most Japanese cartridge manufacturers did not revert to SPU compliance levels (many Japanese audiophiles did), medium-mass tonearms and medium-mass medium compliance cartridges of more solid materials became more popular.

It is as though the pendulum started at one extreme (SPU, DL-103 etc.), shifted to the opposite extreme (Denon DL-1000a, Highphonic MC-A6 etc.), and settled somewhere in the middle.

The takeaway message is probably that a well-balanced approach tends to work better than anything too extreme (smile).

hth, jonathan carr

If the stylus does not track groove modulations accurately, the resulting signal cannot be an accurate reproduction of the original. No argument there.

That said, it's conceivable that the ability to track the Telarc 1812's extreme amplitudes, velocities and clipped waveforms may only be achieved by compromising other performance parameters. I'm no cartridge designer, but as Raul well knows, improvements in one area often impair performance in others. In some instances, every solution may involve compromises.

If such is that case here, if better performance on most records can be achieved at the cost of not being able to perfectly track rare and unrealistic extremes, my own choice would be in favor of the music I actually listen to.

Heh... I was writing my post while Jonathan was posting his. We're saying the same things, though as usual he says it better and with more authority.

Hi Jonathan, maybe you can answer my question. Do you think my set-up, using the Kleos, could handle the Telarc??

That Telarc is analogous to a trick...it has no relevance to real music on a real record. If your cartridge/arm can track it fine, if not so what. Its the music that counts.