Highest detail cartridges

@bimasta - How can you tell?  Maybe it is just a mediocre performance.  I prefer accuracy over distortion.

How do you determine accuracy? Were you there when the recordings were being made, or is “accuracy” a subjective assessment?

I think this a more than fair question as, in the last 50 years, I have been able to determine gross colorations, but past that, I really don’t know what criteria would qualify a piece of gear as being “accurate”.

Ill go a little further. For the sake of illustration, two amps measure the same, except one has .2% more 7th harmonic distortion and the other has 1% more 2nd harmonic distortion. Objectively, the later amp has an order greater distortion and is the less accurate. However we also know from the work of Hiraga, et al, that higher, odd order, distortion is much more jarring to the ear. The higher quantity of distortion in the second amp will be more consonant with the fabric of the music and thus more accurate. This is also why small amounts of IM distortion are subjectively worse than harmonic distortion, as IM is not correlated with the musical signal, whereas harmonic distortion is.

@viridian I listen to 99%+ classical music.  Instrument timbre can expose the accuracy of the recording.  And I've been a part of blind listening sessions that used two components that were identical except for a 3 millibel difference in frequency response.  The same component could be consistently identified during the tests.  

I prefer components with a vanishingly low amount of distortion to any distortion including even order distortion.  It is why I use one particular electronics manufacturer.

@bimasta

"Is "closer to the music" a more accurate reproduction of what is in the groove or a "romantic" rewrite?"

It is more involving reproduction of music on vinyl media. May be caused by synergy of the arm + cartridge and all components. The moment when you’re there with a smile on your face, when everything is damn good.

Victor Direct Couple MC-1 is very dynamic cartridge in my system.
I was aware of the sweetness of Shibata profile on Beryllium cantilever, becuase i have tried many Victor MM cartridges before. But i think Direct Couple principle is something special in this MC design. Never tried Decca or Ikeda cantilever-less models.

Mr. Poletti, thank you I appreciate your answer. However I was not asking if you could detect minute differences in the sound of components. In my experience that is the easiest part.

What I was asking is, once you hear a difference in two components, apart from gross colorations, how can you determine which is more accurate?

I think that you referenced instrumental timbre and that it exposes the accuracy of the recording. But it can only do that as seen through the distortion spectra of the reproduction system. You can’t listen to the timbre of a recording without playing it on a stereo. The distortions in the recording chain, and those in the reproduction chain then being additive.

How can you seperate the two, and even if you could, how could you be sure that the reproduction chain was not simply adding complimentary colorations to the recording chain making it sound more “accurate” and lower in distortion?

As an example after running the mike feed though a solid state mixing board even order harmonics may be cancelled and a reproduction chain rich in second harmonic distortion may yield a waveform that is closer to the original mike feed. Or a more complete representation of the original spectra of the mike feed might be a better way of putting it.

To say that you want the lowest distortion is laudable, but is this determined by listening? If so, complimentary distortions may skew the results. Or is it determined by measurement, and if so, which distortion measurements and how do we know that we are measuring the right things? My apologies in advance for asking so many questions, I’m just interested in how each of us comes to the conclusions that we do.