Ortofon Cadenza (Bronze!)

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Efraim roots
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Joined: 2009-10-23 01:37
Location: Sweden

Ortofon Cadenza (Bronze!)

Post by Efraim roots »

Efraim roots wrote: 2022-10-20 12:19 I have my Entity in 1.2 version and it really is a remarkable product. I use top flight LP12 and Ortofon Cadenza Bronze at 120ohm setting and it sings!! I much prefer Ortofon Cadenza Bronze to Linn Krystal which I also have. Warning; Ortofon Cadenza Red, Blue and Black is all less musical than Adikt. This is a very unlikely event I know, but indeed it's true! Ortofons way of things is to make cartridges for different preferences. And YES, they do have a cartridge for us aswell, intended or not. The catridge should be used with the Ortofon LW 7N leadwires for magical results (not included).

With my Entity 1.2 and Ortodon Cadenza Bronze cartridge I feel immortal. Never ever have my LP12 come thru in such a powerful way. EVERYTHING I connected the LP12 to nowadays sounds incredible, it's crazy. The latest Entity is not just a pearl, it's a very high grade pearl.
ThomasOK wrote: 2022-10-20 20:34 Thanks for the report, Efraim. That is indeed one of the problems with Ortofon cartridges. Apparently they don't know what a cartridge is supposed to sound like (or being cynical they feel their customers don't) so they just make different flavors in most of their series. Do you want it bright and incisive? We've got that. Do you want it warm and a little tubby? We've got that too. So you can't necessarily expect that the more you spend on a cartridge the more musical it will be. I'm glad you found a solution that makes your system sing.
lejonklou wrote: 2022-10-20 20:47 Thank you Efraim!

It really pleases me to hear that you’re so happy with your system now.

Regarding Ortofon cartridges, I’m looking forward to hearing Cadenza Bronze. It’s been my experience as well with Ortofon cartridges that they are often all over the map and you have to audition them all to find out if one is really good. And then usually the other ones in the same series are very unbalanced.
That's Ortofon, but hey; there is a few great ones which tend to be of very good design and quality I think. What you can do in the case of Cadenza series for example is to look at the design features for each one and learn what features actually makes good sound. So if we take Cadenza series;

Cadenza Red - Has pure silver wire for coil and a Nude Fine Line stylus with cylindrical aluminium cantilever - The silver coil wire alone makes it very unlikely that the cartidge will sound really musical. Otherwise I like the Red, I think it would sound good with another coil wire.

Cadenza Blue - Has pure silver wire for coil and a ruby cantilever - Ok so first we have the silver coil wire which already makes a huge problem. And that ruby cantilever is a bit silly feature I think. Very impractical design which is ultra thin and very fragile! Looks like bling and sounds like bling. And if you're unlucky it says *ping* and you'll never see that cantilever again.

Cadenza Bronze - Has inhouse technology goldplated copper coil wire called Aucurum, conical aluminum cantilever and the replicant 100 stylus, also applied is the FSE (field stabilization element) tech from higher end carts - Let see this one; finally the silver coil wire is replaced by goldplated copper which obviously has a much better chance to sound good if you have any experience with silver and copper cables, and goldplated has never been a problem either I think. The aluminum cantilever; sure not the most exotic material but it has proven to be a very good one, conical design? hmm interesting, who knows? It sounds good! And then that Replicant 100 stylus (!); you'll see that in the range of really high end Ortofons, every single one of them has that stylus! So, when Ortofon want to show the world their best of the best, cutting edge avantgarde technical designs, they choose the Replicant 100 stylus, every time! Since this cart sounds amazingly good I think it also is a good guess that the FSE tech works!

Cadenza Black - Has the Aucurum coil wire, boron cantilever with nude shiabata stylus, also applied is the WRD (wide range damping) tech from higher end carts - So this top model actually has a lesser stylus than the Bronze, but a more luxurious thin boron cantilever. I think you can recognize the qualities of the nude shiabata stylus if you been around and heard Ortofons "Black" ones before. It's almost good, but in the end music suffers from the exercise in separation and detail. I am very unsure about what the applied WRD tech offers in the mix. What I am sure of though is that the Bronze is much more musical, by large margin. I also think I prefer the Cadenza Red to the Black which may be a case of the WRD tech but it could also be the cantilever and stylus. It sounds a bit overdamped though.

In general of the Cadenza series I love the design, quality of material and build quality. Build like a tank (the Cartier watch). The body is aluminum and stainless steel, it has three point contact to arm which means you adjust azimuth with the cartridge screws. Supplied is brass screw which sounds good, you should use them. It's a similar practice setting up these carts as if you would set torque by ear but you have the azimuth factor aswell. I have not been able to use the SR torque tool on these, I think it has to be done by hand and a lot of listening tests. VERY rewarding to set it perfect. As I said earlier I think 7N cartridge leads available separately sounds much better than the supplied 6N leads. Second best is the supplied 6N leads, I tried a few others, including the ones supplied with Linn Krystal and it doesn't sound as good. The Cadenza series fits perfectly in an old Ekos SE arm but it takes time to perfect.
the players of instruments shall be there..
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