Dear @daveyf : It's absolutely clear and useless to follow with the same specific issue that almost no one of us can listen in our own home system the cartridge loaned/borrowed by a dealer.
As @lewm said: that possibility just gone for ever.
Now, in the last years i listened in my own system cartridges from 4k to over 10K. Some I own and some coming from my audio friends.
In those last years no single of those high price LOMC cartridges performed bad or that definitively I did not like it. All sounds good but different and some of them sounds more alike than different.
We can't make that new top LOMC cartridges can goes at lower prices but in reality over the next times prices will follows the trend: higher prices. So is useless try to fix this issue.
Then what can we do about?, some premises to explain my way of think in the whole regards:
- true music lovers/true music audiophiles are more alike than different: at the end what we want is to listen MUSIC at its best in each one home audio system.
- true music lovers/true audiophiles are gentlemans that have as a reference: live MUSIC because attend to live music events. So all of them know for sure how MUSIC sounds, how instruments performs at near field seat positions.
- if those two premises are true then our home audio system are builded according those premises and this means that we already took care to choose each single link in the home audio system chain very carefully, especially our analog rig: TT, TT plattform, Tonearm, PhonoLinePreamp, IC cables and deep knowledge level to cartridge/tonearm alignment set up.
So, in some ways we are: " experts " about and we know what we want it and how achieve it. We know for sure all the " problems/degradations " of the recorded signal and playing signal proccess and can distinguish between sound and sound+added distortions.
- we read cartridge reviews and knows the tonearms where were mounted and we already learned to read reviews " between lines " on each reviewer: we know what that reviewer wants to sale/sold us: we can detect the " hidden information " in those reviews.
- the whealthy gentlemans normally have less knowledge overall music&audio levels that the ones that as me are not whealthy. So we are really carefully to tup everykind of mistakes at minimum.
- we know perfectly the resolution of our home audio systems, its advantages and disadvantages.
With all those know-how ( we are no rookies any more ) we can buy a high price LOMC cartridge with almost no risk that we make a mistake with. The risk is at minimum.
@daveyf : are you a rookie or have doubts on your audio system?
No?, then you have not to worry and pull the triger with any cartridge youwant it that your knowledge tell you will works wonderful in your room/system ! !
Regards and enjoy the MUSIC NOT DISTORTIONS,
R
As @lewm said: that possibility just gone for ever.
Now, in the last years i listened in my own system cartridges from 4k to over 10K. Some I own and some coming from my audio friends.
In those last years no single of those high price LOMC cartridges performed bad or that definitively I did not like it. All sounds good but different and some of them sounds more alike than different.
We can't make that new top LOMC cartridges can goes at lower prices but in reality over the next times prices will follows the trend: higher prices. So is useless try to fix this issue.
Then what can we do about?, some premises to explain my way of think in the whole regards:
- true music lovers/true music audiophiles are more alike than different: at the end what we want is to listen MUSIC at its best in each one home audio system.
- true music lovers/true audiophiles are gentlemans that have as a reference: live MUSIC because attend to live music events. So all of them know for sure how MUSIC sounds, how instruments performs at near field seat positions.
- if those two premises are true then our home audio system are builded according those premises and this means that we already took care to choose each single link in the home audio system chain very carefully, especially our analog rig: TT, TT plattform, Tonearm, PhonoLinePreamp, IC cables and deep knowledge level to cartridge/tonearm alignment set up.
So, in some ways we are: " experts " about and we know what we want it and how achieve it. We know for sure all the " problems/degradations " of the recorded signal and playing signal proccess and can distinguish between sound and sound+added distortions.
- we read cartridge reviews and knows the tonearms where were mounted and we already learned to read reviews " between lines " on each reviewer: we know what that reviewer wants to sale/sold us: we can detect the " hidden information " in those reviews.
- the whealthy gentlemans normally have less knowledge overall music&audio levels that the ones that as me are not whealthy. So we are really carefully to tup everykind of mistakes at minimum.
- we know perfectly the resolution of our home audio systems, its advantages and disadvantages.
With all those know-how ( we are no rookies any more ) we can buy a high price LOMC cartridge with almost no risk that we make a mistake with. The risk is at minimum.
@daveyf : are you a rookie or have doubts on your audio system?
No?, then you have not to worry and pull the triger with any cartridge youwant it that your knowledge tell you will works wonderful in your room/system ! !
Regards and enjoy the MUSIC NOT DISTORTIONS,
R