It was BIG! …in quantitative terms. It is not for your ears, it is for your eyes.
What remains for analogue improvement? The best window into the analogue future was the expert panel hosted by Michael Framer. Topic: Frontiers in Modern Groove Extraction
Host: Michael Fremer – TrackingAngle.com, The Absolute Sound, Panel Guests were: Alex Kornienkov – Korff Audio, Leif Johannsen – Ortofon, Mark Doehmann – Dohmann Audio, Richard Braine – SUPATRAC an all star band!
Everybody agreed on the value of harder materials (ceramics, steel, ruby) for tonearms, cartridges,…. until Leif Johannsen reminded everybody on the value of damping. If you you want bell-resonances with a high Q, then go “harder”. If you want uncoloured support of your cartridge, go for a combination of stiffness and damping. Have a look at sambuco.net
Wait for this YouTube Video and you will enjoy technical insights, and a number of charming stories about hum and where it might come from. The High End Society will upload it soon….
Another valuable video from WallyTools is already on the air: https://www.wallyanalog.com/post/sra-versus-vta At the show I enjoyed a short discussion with J.R. Boisclair on this topic: the needle never has groove contact that exceeds two POINTS! Therefore it is well worth trying lower SRAs! Particularly for “small” diamonds. Try shims. On my test rig, I was lucky to have an excellent GRACE F9 body that allowed to lower the SRA by 9 degrees. Immediately noticeable was a better soundstage and silence in between.
Unfortunately most cartridge bodies do not allow for lower SRAs. THey start to touch your record and scratch it. Keep this in mind if you want to spend money on a new cartridge, and see whether it will allow for a shim to reduce SRA.
Installation Instruction in English