[Arny Krueger]

"Harry Lavo" wrote in message
...
"Dick Pierce" wrote in message
...
On Jun 22, 1:38 pm, "Harry Lavo" wrote:
Not only that, but square wave response tells you
much about frequency response, ringing, and tracking
response as well. Ergo, square wave response tells
you much about what to expect in the way a cartridge
sounds.

No matter how many times you say it, no matter how
firmly you believe it, it does nothing of the sort.

You assertion is that two systems with the same square
wave response will sound the same, or certainly alike,
and that's provably hooey. Consider the following as a
practical counterexample: Take a perfectly flat, linear-
phase system. It will have, for its bandwidth, "perfect"
square wave response. Listen to it, it will sound fine.
Now, take the input, delay it 10 mS, and sum it with
the output of the system.

Put a 1 kHz square wave in to the system: it will
have an identical square wave response.

Now, listen to it, it will sound absolutely dreadful.

You keep going back to the ringing canard as if it
had any significance in and of itself. A PERFECT
band-limited system MUST have a substantial
amount of ringing, Gibbs says so. You say different,
in contradiction to well-known facts.

This is no doubt to the problems of bringing non-engineers up to speed with
real-world engineering technology, as opposed to the watered-down legend and
myth that are frequently circulated by high end publications. I had my first
conversation with a cartridge design engineer in the 60s, which got me very
interested in the relevant JAES papers which were available in my university
library.

Dick, I've never seen two cartridges that have identical square wave
response to the same test record.

That says you've never effectively used cartridge loading to adjust the
response of a phono cartridge.

Cartridges as you well know are imperfect, electro-mechanical devises.

Cartridges are also electro-mechanical systems with well-known electrical
and mechanical properties. Modeling a cartridge as a reasonably simple
electrical network was not uncommon in the days before computers.

People who are familiar with the professional literature from the days when
people took vinyl seriously are aware of this.

What I am saying is that there is a
correlation between certain aspects of how a cartridge handles the test
square wave and certain commonalities of sound.

And I've twice explained why this is a myth.

So that with experience,

Obtained with no measuring equipment and without the benefit of
bias-controlled testing...

it is possible to say some things aforehand about their "likely" sound
after
seeing the square wave.

Trouble is, they aren't the best knowledge that is readily available.
Furthermore this obsession with square waves often feeds a pre-existing
prejudice against audio CDs.