Quote Originally Posted by Mike Reed View Post
Dear me, Martin; this seems like a bookkeeper's approach to recorded music !
Hi Mike, thanks for the notes on sound signatures and tonearm matching.

Just to answer the bookkeeper's approach - I'm introducing the Agile methodology into my Hifi hobby ;-). Quick iterations, speed matching components and getting rid of anything that doesn't really impress me.
It has to be 3 systems - an idler, belt and DD and the idea is to have multi tonearm setup and dedicated rigs for genres and for particular records. I'm moving away from anything suspended because I don't want to be eternally tweaking.

I know exactly what I'm looking for in terms of the sound - low distortion, low fatigue, good bass and don't care much about realistic cymbals and perfect imaging and various other sub-atomic components of the sound taken in isolation.

It has to be a full bodied, moving sound that is very intimate. The main thing in my philosophy is that I don't want a system which plays a few select records really, really well. I want a system (systems) that plays most of my records very well. I don't want to be stunned by an odd track - it has to be consistently pleasing. Very important is that I can grab any opera recording and not have my wife screaming to turn the volume down ;-)

That's why I'm attacking all the legendary cartridges in order to find not THE ONE, but a bunch of cartridges that would fit my multiple genres objective and still satisfy the above criteria. Then the tonearms :-(