Saturday, August 17, 2013

Choosing On The Best Turntable Cartridges

By Essie Craft


A turntable usually has a magnetic cartridge that is used to serve for its playback purposes. The cartridge serves to convert the mechanical energy generated by the stylus on the record groove into electrical sparks. The electrical charges from the turntable cartridges further undergo amplification before being transferred to the loudspeaker as musical noises.

The cartridge often has a magnet that exerts light pressure to the record groove in order to reduce record wear and improve the quality of the playback. The magnets are also used to exert low amounts of tracking force, which reduce the chances of damaging the grove. Moreover, the magnetic types have relatively lower amounts of voltage output, thus they only require little amplification.

Generally, a turntable cartridge is designed in a way that it incorporates various mechanism of working in attempts of improving its functionality. The main types of this kind of cartridge include the moving magnet and moving coil cartridges. A moving coil cartridge often has thin wires and a tiny electromagnetic generator used for attracting the needle and moving within the electromagnetic field of the permanent magnet.

The electromagnetic generator is used to produce small amounts of electric voltage since it has few windings of the thin wires. Therefore, it produces few micro-volts of the electric signals that are readily consumed by the loudspeaker noise. As such, a step-up transformer is usually used to boost the amplification of the moving coil cartridge in order to reduce the noise of the loudspeaker.

There are other types of moving coil cartridges, of high-output, that can be used to produce large amounts of electric voltage. Despite the fact that the moving coil kinds are tiny and relatively expensive, they are usually preferred for use by the audiophiles because they are perfectly designed for that. Moving magnet types on the other hand have styli cantilevers that are made of several magnetic materials, which constitute the electromagnetic generator.

The magnets are usually positioned between a pair of fixed coils and vibrate in response to the movement of styli on the record groove, thus inducing a current in the coils. Given the fact that the magnet is tiny, it is not attached to the generator in order to enable the stylus to follow the record groove with little tracking force. Moving magnet cartridges often use a set of different types of magnets that enable it to operate in a proper way.

The cartridge has moving irons and induced magnetic substances attached to the stylus cantilever and used to dictate the movement of the irons. Similarly, it also has a permanent magnet placed over the coils and used to consistently generate magnetic influx. Given the specific differences in designs and prices, both the moving coil and moving magnet types are often evaluated in a number of ways.

The moving coil cartridges have low inductance and impedance, while moving magnet has relatively higher inductance than them. However, it should be noted that high inductance can also negatively affect the frequency flatness and linearity of the phase response. This implies that, in a way, moving coil turntable cartridges can be preferred to the moving magnetic types.




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