My Dumb Question of the Day

I've got it! Let's burn little pits into the record and have a LASER read them. No mechanical coupling at all. This sould give us perfect sound forever. No, wait a minute, I think this has been tried and vinyl still sounds better. Go figure.

This phenomenon is known as "chatter", I believe. The less resonant your arm-cartridge system, the less you will hear it. I used to hear more of it from my RB300/Glider than I do now with an RB300/Cardas Heart (a much more expensive cartridge). This, even though the Heart has a wooden body and the Glider has none. The two cartridges both came from Benz but there are several design differences that could account for the reduction in chatter.

Naturally you do not want any chatter, since it is energy that is feeding back into the arm-cartridge-TT system and smearing the sound.

Just remember, we only hear a small section of the spectrum. Who is to say that CDs don't also make sound when the laser displaces photons.

If a CD plays in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it really make sound? :)

Elgordo, Would you believe that some one actually invented a lazer pickup for vinyl! Yep!! Obviously it didn't catch on. As to music coming from a pickup, I haven't heard this since I sold my old Sony (what ever model) many moon ago. As others have suggested its an equipment matching/set up failure when it occurs.

Gosh!!!

What 4 the JC sake R U talkin' about???

What kind of efficient transfer???

It's NOT sound waves are being transfered but mechanical waves of stylus induce electro-magnetic force emf across the coil of cartridge as per Faradeys' Law of electro magnetic induction. Hearing mechanical waves of stylus being transfered to the air is absolutely irrelevant to the conventional analogue reproduction.

Earlier in mechanical gromophones the mechanical vibrations of the needle were transfered acoustically through the brass horn. Well, nowdays we have better solutions than brass horns(again mr. Faradey comes very handy) and to "preserve" this "wasted" energy try to use microphones with all applied stuff such as mike amp or mike preamp input, mixer(the device that takes many input signals at the same time)... Gotta be those high sencitivity ones from recording studios next to the cartridge or simply you may use karaoke machine he..he..:-).