Ortofon YouTube Channel

Ortofon is a great company that manufactures high end moving coil record cartridges, Concorde DJ cartridges, hearing aid precision bone conducting transducers and not only.


The company's website is one of the most beautiful that exist with an excellent use of the orange color.


It is great that they have a YouTube channel (ortofonAS2010) where one can see how the moving coil cartridges are made.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=951VT7mMWM4
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=S8oVe8j9U4o&feature=youtu.be
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GZM7sFTbZCE&feature=youtu.be
https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=9Zk4ionVgr4


It is nice to realize that much of our music is captured by a moving coil microphone and a great way to reproduce from a record is the use of a moving coil again.


Would it be nice if Ortofon uses all its expertise of amazing magnets and precision coil engineering to make microphones too?


Or perhaps ribbon microphons which are effectively just one turn (of moving conductor) microphones. There is a great example of an RCA ribbon microphone seen while Amy Winehouse records Back to Black, (on YouTube).


Or perhaps making ribbon microphones based on the Bang and Olufsen ribbon microphone design. Is Royer using a design of the same principles?


How would a moving coil cartridge with just one turn sound like?


Would it benefit by having the first step up transformer next to it inside the cartridge (as ribbon mics), to step up the impedance from less than 1 ohm to 200 ohms. Would that reduce the loses from the very long turntable cable that has to carry a very tiny signal of 10 ohm impedance? Would transmitting the stepped up signal of 200ohms be a great improvement in signal to noise ratio?


Would amazing magnetic transformer cores such as the Magnetec Nanocrystalinne Nanoperm play an important part in having a tiny step up transformer just next to the 1 turn winding coupled to the stylus? Would it be possible by using one of those small Nanoperm cores of extreme inductance index to step up so much that we already have inside the cartridge from one turn as much signal as from a MM cartridge? Would this make it easier to design a replaceable stylus with one turn of moving coil?


How would this signal sound to the ultra low noise 3 Volt battery powered Pleiades series V pre preamplifier using electron tubes with reduced heater voltage as on the Neumann 47 microphone to extract as much of information?


In the recording industry it is very usual and fantastic sounding to have 2 transformers connected one after the other. A ribbon transformer of 200ohms secondary feeds the input transformer of the microphone preamplifier so that the signal will be stepped up even further, eg 50Kohms or more to drive the grid of an electron tube or gate of a jFET. (One must not of course overlook that fantastic sounding of omnidirectional for example moving coil microphones that have a direct out of 200-500ohms, but this may be because correct (flat) reproduction from vocal chords to brain of the listener may need less bandwidth, see other euroelectron posts on the Hollywood secret).


A possible setup could be (similar to a recording studio setup):


One turn cartridge - first trasformer inside the cartridge to 200ohms - a Pleiades step up transformer after the turntable - a Pleiades V4 preamplifier etc


Moving coil cartridges, moving magnet cartridges as well are ready to supply a balanced signal.


Why is this protocol not used on hi end signal transition from cartridge to preamplifier?


It is so simple to make, using a twisted pair of wires as signal and shield connected to the metal parts of the equipment involved. All common mode noise is rejected. It is quiet.


But no matter how things are done unbalanced is great too.


And it is the music shinning through that matters.


Microphone coils of 200ohms direct output can sound amazing too and an example is Stevie Nicks singing in the studio with Sennheiser MD4441, MD421 and the like. It is possible that Tell me Lies was recorded with one of these microphones as we know from the Shelly Yakus interview that from all the microphones presented to her while choosing in the studio she always picked up the moving coil one.