Ortofon t-5000 manual

[RothwellAudio]

This is a rookie question but how do you know the impedance figure of the Cart? Is it in the specs?

I'm not quite sure I understand the question. If you're talking about the impedance figures relating to the graph in post #5 they're marked on the graph. If you're talking about the source impedance of cartridges in general, it's on the spec sheet (usually). It could be referred to as the source impedance, the internal impedance, the output impedance, or simply as the impedance. Don't fall into the trap of thinking that the load impedance of the phonostage should be the same figure as the source impedance in order to "match the cartridge to the load". A load impedance of about ten times the source impedance is a good rule of thumb, though there's a lot of tolerance on that figure. Lots of people seem to believe that there's a magic load impedance figure for any given cartridge at which the tonal balance is optimised and the cartridge sounds right. Personally, I believe that not to be the case, though I'm sure plenty will disagree with me over that. In my defence I'll point out that companies like Ortofon usually state the recommended load impedance for their cartridges to be "greater than X ohms", which obviously only sets a lower limit to the acceptable impedance range.

[Bigman80]

I'm not quite sure I understand the question. If you're talking about the impedance figures relating to the graph in post #5 they're marked on the graph. If you're talking about the source impedance of cartridges in general, it's on the spec sheet (usually). It could be referred to as the source impedance, the internal impedance, the output impedance, or simply as the impedance. Don't fall into the trap of thinking that the load impedance of the phonostage should be the same figure as the source impedance in order to "match the cartridge to the load". A load impedance of about ten times the source impedance is a good rule of thumb, though there's a lot of tolerance on that figure. Lots of people seem to believe that there's a magic load impedance figure for any given cartridge at which the tonal balance is optimised and the cartridge sounds right. Personally, I believe that not to be the case, though I'm sure plenty will disagree with me over that. In my defence I'll point out that companies like Ortofon usually state the recommended load impedance for their cartridges to be "greater than X ohms", which obviously only sets a lower limit to the acceptable impedance range.

Got ya!

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