MC versus MM. Which to choose.

There was a time when H.Pearson, right or wrong, could make or break the bottom line of most any audio company with a single paragraph in TAS. He wheedled that much influence on the readership.

Nandric made referance to this influence experience and he speaks for many including myself though hopefully we are all the wiser to it today.

Back to the subject of MC, TAS started the conditioning process for the good of the collective about 1977 onward, yet with a host of quirks and added expense with many MC of the time, if not all. The truly great MM and MI of the 1970s and early 1980s were ignored.

Anyone with a table capable of two arms or more can hear for themselves comparing their favorite MC and modern tone arm to a ridiculous inexpensive alternative combination that could very well out perform their choice of MCs.

My advice would be to find a dealer you trust, and listen, if they are set up for cartridge demos. If you have friends who are audiophiles, their systems and experiences would also be of value for you.

But a thread such as this often becomes a "Mine's better, here's why" shootout, because there is no right answer to a subjective question. The only real answer to the question you posed is "It depends on what you like, based on your system and your budget."

For example, I've listened to many a cartridge, high and low ouput MCs, etc, etc. And I run a Grado Reference Sonata through a Grado phono stage. And I love it. But that is no more guaranteed to be the right combination for you than a Koetsu Rosewood with a Burmester phono stage. It all depends on your ears.

12-26-11: Rauliruegas
Dear Rockitman: That benefits of superior cartridge tracking abilities that means lower distortions means at the same time more music recorded information that with cartridges that are " jumping "/out of the groove walls at microscopic levels.

So, two advantajes: more precise and clear recorded music information with lower distortions!!!

Dear Raul...Please recommend that is available today, the absolute best MM cart you can think of. My system link is there if needed for the recommendation. Given the price of hi end MC's, it would be nice to have an inexpensive cart to test out your MM sound quality theories.

Best,

Chris

Dear Rockitman, check out the huge 6000+ post thread. All kinds of stuff to learn. Look at ebay and Audiogon to find some of those gems, sometimes for cheap. If learning more about the MM alternative would not be interesting and fun for you than maybe just try a Clearaudio Virtuoso or Maestro, but vintage can be a cheaper alternative. Or just stick with modern MC since you already enjoy them a lot. Good luck.

My dear audiophile friend, who is now too ill to have fun with this hobby, and I found out about HP's feet of clay early on, I think around issue #3 of TAS, when he went wild over the then new Harman Kardon solid state preamp (Citation 12, I think). He and I auditioned one and found it to be just plain awful, "shrill" is the best single word description. This was our first bit of evidence that HP favored a very clinical sound with exaggerated hf response. What HP did do that makes him memorable is to invent a language that can be used to describe the differences in sound among audio components. In that way he was/is a genius.

To his credit, he did also recognize the Audio Research products early on. His endorsement of this and other tube gear was a seminal event in shattering the notion that solid state was inherently superior to tubes just because it measures better in the then common analytical tests. (This is not to say that present day SS gear is in any way inherently Inferior to present day tube gear. Don't want to start a war. The SS gear of the early 70s was like early digital gear of the late 80s.... not so good sounding but great in the laboratory.)