You can tell it's the Opéra at Versailles when you listen with a Stanton.
------ The Opéra at Versailles. completed 1770, scene of the first
performances of Jean Baptiste Lully's operas and ballets. (Lully
was court composer to Louis XIV.)
The ultimate test of a stereo cartridge isn't the sound of the music.
It's the sound of the hall.
Many of today's smoother, better-tracking cartridges can reproduce instrumental and vocal timbres with considerable naturalism. But something is often missing. That nice, undistorted sound seems to be coming from the speakers, or from nowhere in particular, rather than from the concert hall or opera stage.
It's easy to blame the recording, but often it's the cartridge.
The acoustical characteristics that distinguish one hall--from another, or any hall from your listening room, represent the subtlest frequency and phase components of the recorded wave-form. They end up as extremely fine undulations of the record groove, even finer that the higher harmonics of most instruments.
When a cartridge reproduces these undulations with the utmost precision, you can hear the specific acoustics of the Opéra at Versailles, or of any other hall If it doesn't you can't. The Stanton does.
The specifications. Frequency response from 10 Hz to 10kHz, ± 0.5 dB. From 10kHz to 20kHz, individually calibrated. Nominal output, 0.7mV/ cm/ sec.
Nominal channel separation, 35dB. Load resistance, 47K ohms. Cable capacitance. 275 pF. DC resistance, 1K ohms. Inductance, 500mH. Stylus tip, A002" x .0009" elliptical. Tracking force, 3/4 to 1.5 gm. Cartridge weight, 5.5 gm. Brush weight (self-supporting), 1 gm. Each Stanton 681 is tested and measured against the laboratory standard tor frequency response, channel separation, output, etc.
The results are written by hand on the specifications enclosed with every cartridge. The 68IEE, with elliptical stylus and the "Longhair" brush that cleans record grooves before they reach the stylus, costs SW. The 681T, identical but with interchangeable elliptical and conical styli both included, costs $75.
For free literature, write to:
Stanton Magnetics, Inc., Plainview, L.I., N.Y.11803, USA.
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(High Fidelity)
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