[Arny Krueger]

"Sonnova" wrote in message


As a concept, you're probably right. You can make a good
or a bad magnetic cartridge using any of the three
generating principles (moving coil, moving magnet, or
moving iron - sometimes called variable reluctance).

Agreed. And in the day of, I experienced all of the above personally.

Cartridge design is probably, at least as much as speaker
design, dependent upon improvements in materials and
manufacturing technology to move forward.

Regrettably untrue due to the fact that even 30 years ago, the limiting
factor was that nasty slug of vinyl that this whole discussion centers on.

The reason why we moved on to digital was that it was no secret then, and
since the laws of physics have not changed in any relevant way since then,
it is no secret now; that as long as you use a relatively slow-moving piece
of vinyl with mechanically transcribed analog grooves, ca. late 60s early
70s performance is all you are ever going to beat out of the vinyl dead
horse.

There were several attempts do take vinyl to the next step that failed
miserably. One was the DMM process which removed a mechanical step from the
tooling process of pressing the same limp old LPs. Then there RCA's lame
attempt to keep the mechanical disc format but change the mode of data
coding from direct analog to FM and possibly even digital, with a
contact-based capacitive pickup. This actually came close to seeing the
light of day as a format for distributing video. Optical-based storage blew
it all out of water before it ever went mainstream. The Laser Disc in both
FM and digital audio formats was generally accepted technology for years
before the CD was introduced.

There is no
doubt that even a relatively inexpensive cartridge these
days from Audio Technica, Grado, or Sumiko, to name a
few, is equal to or superior to the best cartridges
available 20-30 years ago,

I own one of those Grados and it has a chance of approaching the M97XE.

yet they use the same
generating principles as they did then.

More significantly they have the same old analog noose around their neck.

What has changed
are the materials used in the stylus suspensions, the
stylus shank itself, and even the magnets used.

Not so much.

Concurrent with that are manufacturing processes for
shaping and polishing the stylus as well as how the
stylus is mounted to the cantilever and even assembly
techniques.

That's probably more automated than it was in the day. The inflation
adjusted price of a Grado Black is still far more than a late-60s V15.