Fantastic
Well-Known Member
The capacitance loading is there to actually lift a drooping response. This happens due to the resonance of the cartridge inductance and the 'total' capacitance of the circuit. The resistance loading damps this resonance to try and achieve a reasonably flat response till 20Khz. Adding more capacitance lowers the resonance frequency ( making it sound dull) and reducing it too much could also do the same. The resistance ( nominally often 47K ohms ) controls the peak level of the resonance. Too much ( higher value) and it will sound brighter , too little and it can sound dull.
In real life both R and C need to be optimised for a particular system. You can try to do it by ear ( but that means you will set it to what you 'like to hear' !) or use a frequency response sweep record from Denon or many other labels. Or just stick to recommended values and you will be in the ballpark region.
Interestingly I find that no one seems to be experimenting with tone arm fluid damping. It can tighten up the bass further and extend it deeper if done properly. However it is messy . The damping fluid, usually silicone oil , or other viscous oils tend to creep out of the container that holds it and spread slowly all around it's base. You you need to clean up every now and then.
In the early 80's the Japs used to experiment a lot and report it in their audio magazines complete with LF response graphs etc. I used to have a bunch of those articles which unfortunately seem to have 'disappeared' over time.
I used to damp the arm on my direct drive turntable. It made a very audible difference. It was only recently I took it off from that turntable. Not really to get rid of it but to implement a newer and better design. You have low frequency sweeps on vinyl that help to test out the LF behaviour of the cartridge/arm combination. With that one can fine tune the damping system.
Those days we just used voltmeters to watch the rise or fall of the frequency sweep. Spectrum analysers were only found in labs !To day we can do a better job of that by using a PC based FFT right at home.
About surface noise. The Hf overload capability is very important. Surface clicks and pops are 'almost' like switching signals. They result in a lot of significant ultrasonic spurious signals and some preamps cannot handle that well. They tend to sound noisier than preamps that have a very good HF overload margin. One reason why opamp input preamps can benefit greatly with modern high speed opamps.
In real life both R and C need to be optimised for a particular system. You can try to do it by ear ( but that means you will set it to what you 'like to hear' !) or use a frequency response sweep record from Denon or many other labels. Or just stick to recommended values and you will be in the ballpark region.
Interestingly I find that no one seems to be experimenting with tone arm fluid damping. It can tighten up the bass further and extend it deeper if done properly. However it is messy . The damping fluid, usually silicone oil , or other viscous oils tend to creep out of the container that holds it and spread slowly all around it's base. You you need to clean up every now and then.
In the early 80's the Japs used to experiment a lot and report it in their audio magazines complete with LF response graphs etc. I used to have a bunch of those articles which unfortunately seem to have 'disappeared' over time.
I used to damp the arm on my direct drive turntable. It made a very audible difference. It was only recently I took it off from that turntable. Not really to get rid of it but to implement a newer and better design. You have low frequency sweeps on vinyl that help to test out the LF behaviour of the cartridge/arm combination. With that one can fine tune the damping system.
Those days we just used voltmeters to watch the rise or fall of the frequency sweep. Spectrum analysers were only found in labs !To day we can do a better job of that by using a PC based FFT right at home.
About surface noise. The Hf overload capability is very important. Surface clicks and pops are 'almost' like switching signals. They result in a lot of significant ultrasonic spurious signals and some preamps cannot handle that well. They tend to sound noisier than preamps that have a very good HF overload margin. One reason why opamp input preamps can benefit greatly with modern high speed opamps.
