I’ve posted this video before, but I’ll do it again as a follow-up to today’s post about Ortofon. Audio-Technica doesn’t publish the tracking specs for its cartridges, but a $39 model, the AT85EP, tracks at the rated performance of the Ortofon 2M Blue at $189. In fact, it does it at a lower tracking force. If you listen with headphones, you can hear slight buzzing from the discontinued Shure M92E, indicating mis-tracking.
Category: Tech
Ortofon the Obscure
This self-contradictory headline is obviously intended to attract attention. It caught mine. Saying that a particular brand dominates a market implies it isn’t obscure.
Why Does This Obscure Brand Dominate the Turntable Market?
https://www.gearpatrol.com/tech/ortofon-phono-cartridges-popular/
The article misses one reason why I favor Ortofon. They do something all cartridge manufacturers should do, by publishing the tracking ability of their products.
The 2M Red has a diamond-tipped stylus, and the 2M Blue has a solid, or “nude,” diamond stylus.
2M Red $99 Tracking ability at 315Hz at recommended tracking force 70 µm 2M Blue $189 Tracking ability at 315Hz at recommended tracking force 80 µm
Cleanly tracking a 70 µm (15 dB) cut in a record is very good, and tracking 80 µm (16 dB) is outstanding performance. Ortofon’s 2M Blue predecessor is the Super OM 20. It is also rated for 80 µm, which I confirmed in this test. Side 1 of the test record was pressed slightly off-center, resulting in “wow” being heard.
Something I first noticed fifty years ago, when replacing my American made Shure M91ED with the Danish Ortofon FF15E shown above, was the superior quality of plastic from the land of Lego.
“You-do-it” No Mo’
For ten years, my commute took me along Route 128, no longer dubbed “America’s Technology Highway.” On my way home, if I wasn’t stopping at Sight & Sound, the LaserDisc store in Waltham, I would sometimes hang out at You-Do-It Electronics in Needham.
As you can see, there’s a TV transmitter tower near the store. There are more of them on the other side, as those guy wires show. The Yagi directional outdoor antenna I have on the porch is pointed precisely at those towers, some 15 miles away.
I’m sure the engineers working at those nearby TV stations helped to keep You-do-it in business all of these years, but now the store is scheduled for closure. Boston and America’s Technology Highway aren’t what they used to be.
A Cloudless Day in Australia
When all of your data is up in the cloud, you don’t want to hear there’s a clear, blue sky.
Google Cloud event wipes out customer account
“UniSuper [a $135 billion pension account] thankfully had some backups with a different provider…”
Why Spend More?
Unbelievable prices at the moment on Amazon for two excellent items that I own:
Sony MDR-ZX110 Headphones w/mic and pause button: $15 https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00OUX6U6G/
Subynanal USB-C Dongle DAC/headphone amp: $3 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08817XKSW
A dongle DAC is pretty much a requirement for those who prefer wired headphones for their phones. At only three measly bucks, the DAC’s specs aren’t state-of-the-art, but the sound is excellent, the noise floor is silent (no added hiss), and there’s plenty of volume with all of my headphones and IEMs I’ve tried.
According to Amir at Audio Science Review, equalizing the Sony headphones (for the Harman target frequency response curve) “produces reference quality sound!” You can do that automatically on an Android phone, using the free Wavelet app. (I sometimes prefer the un-equalized sound.)
The sky’s the limit on expensive audio equipment, but for most everybody there’s no need to spend more than $18. Don’t need the mic and pause button? Then the headphones are only ten bucks. I’m not limited to these two products, but if I were I’d be perfectly okay with that.
Hooked on Needles
Something I realized rather quickly with CD (and also DVD), is the players are commodities. I have never felt the same personal connection for a disc player the way I always have for my speakers, headphones, receivers, turntables, and phono cartridges. Yes, even phono cartridges.
These are a few of the pickups, as cartridges used to be known, that I remember fondly.
The Pickering V15 came installed on my Garrard 40B turntable, way back in early 1972. Five years later, the Stanton 500 was on the Micro-Trak tonearms of the Russco Cue-Master turntables at the radio station.
The Shure M91ED was purchased to replace the Pickering.
The Audio-Technica AT-13Ea lived on my JVC VL-5 turntable.