Ortofon - a miserable failure for CD-4

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I have a new young audio pal, who is a serious vinyl person, and he likes, uses, and recommends SoundSmith.
 
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Specs are likely zero. There are very few P mounts left available. I worry about my beloved Technics SL P10 as far as what to do when the cartridge dies.

The cartridge that comes with it the EPC 310 does not say anything that I noticed about CD 4. But it is a moving coil cartridge and the turntable has a built in pre preamp which should eliminate "cable capacitance" problems. Also I found out recently that the cartridge has one of the lowest effective tip masses out there. So it ought to work. I don't know if the pre preamp has enough high frequency response for CD4. Might be some interesting experimentation in the future.

There is a cartridge company in Japan called JICO that is worth taking a look at.

https://www.jico-stylus.com/
Most (if not all) of the CD-4 demods I know about have their own preamp in them. They amplify the entire signal without RIAA EQ, detect the carriers, then apply the RIAA curve to the results. They have line-level outputs and can be used as a stand-alone preamp, although more modern gear would probably work better.
 
Specs are likely zero. There are very few P mounts left available. I worry about my beloved Technics SL P10 as far as what to do when the cartridge dies.

The cartridge that comes with it the EPC 310 does not say anything that I noticed about CD 4. But it is a moving coil cartridge and the turntable has a built in pre preamp which should eliminate "cable capacitance" problems. Also I found out recently that the cartridge has one of the lowest effective tip masses out there. So it ought to work. I don't know if the pre preamp has enough high frequency response for CD4. Might be some interesting experimentation in the future.

There is a cartridge company in Japan called JICO that is worth taking a look at.

https://www.jico-stylus.com/
You'd have to bypass that built-in preamp to add a CD-4 demodulator. The demodulator is also a preamp. If the TT has a switch to turn the built-in preamp off, you'd have to do that. I'd still be concerned about the added capacitance from the extra circuitry in that TT's output path.
 
There is a pre pre /bypass direct out button. The EPC 310MC cart lists frequency response to 60 kHz. Vinyl Engine is weird right now.
The Technics propaganda brochure does not mention CD4 at all though this table came out , long after the heydey of CD4 was over.
 
fwiw i tried CD-4 on my SL-10 with the EPC-310MC through an Ortofon MCA-76 into a CD-400B demodulator, keeping interconnects between each piece of apparatus as short and low capacitance as possible and got lousy noisy results, nowhere near as good as with an AT ML or Shibata MM on my SL-1200
 
Important to remember - CD-4 needs at least 12 dB of channel separation from ~20kHz to 45kHz, wide (phono cart) frequency response is useful (the limiter in the CD-4 demod can compensate somewhat for 45kHz being much lower level than 20kHz), but some channel separation is needed also.

I have an SH-400 demod, I don't know if the CCC + special adjustment disc can compensate for lower than 12dB separation in a phono cart (anyone? - did a marginal [for CD-4] phono cart start to work when the CCC was used to increase the channel separation [in the carrier frequency range])?


Kirk Bayne
 
fwiw i tried CD-4 on my SL-10 with the EPC-310MC through an Ortofon MCA-76 into a CD-400B demodulator, keeping interconnects between each piece of apparatus as short and low capacitance as possible and got lousy noisy results, nowhere near as good as with an AT ML or Shibata MM on my SL-1200
So that saves me the trouble of performing the experiment. Thank you.
 
Specs are likely zero. There are very few P mounts left available. I worry about my beloved Technics SL P10 as far as what to do when the cartridge dies.

The cartridge that comes with it the EPC 310 does not say anything that I noticed about CD 4. But it is a moving coil cartridge and the turntable has a built in pre preamp which should eliminate "cable capacitance" problems. Also I found out recently that the cartridge has one of the lowest effective tip masses out there. So it ought to work. I don't know if the pre preamp has enough high frequency response for CD4. Might be some interesting experimentation in the future.

There is a cartridge company in Japan called JICO that is worth taking a look at.

https://www.jico-stylus.com/
The built-in preamp would apply RIAA equalization, which removes the CD-4 carriers.
 
It is not a phono preamp. It is a moving coil pre-preamp. It is flat response. and plugs INTO a phono preamp stage where the RIAA EQ occurs.
 
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The built-in preamp would apply RIAA equalization, which removes the CD-4 carriers.
The RIAA will not always remove the 30kHz. That would need another LowPassFilter, which the industrie would cost extra money.
I recorded all my stereos and also my CD-4's on a normal Amp. and got angry that all CD-4 are "distorted" with high noise. Some years later I recognized that it might be the carrier and so I'm able to record all my valuable CD-4 vinyl onto computer.
But for playback you need to fed the recording into the CD-4 demodulator, just behind the RIAA, before the demod. And because all CD-4 demodulator's have the RIAA integrated you'll need to cut those 2 wires (a little switch is best).
Recording: from Windows 7 (not XP) on all input is limited to 48kHz, use an external analog - USB like Focusrite Scarlett (120,-), it prevents also from hum. Audacity is good for recording with 192kHz 24bit into wav. If you zoom in, you should see the 30kHz.
Quadradisc to Harddisc, now I've more than 400 songs, playable without loss and without always running to the TT or CD-Player.
 
It is my hope that folks that take the trouble to make things like CD-4 and Q8 (and other magnetic tape versions too) work,will record them to digital media so that they can be preserved for the future. Magnetic tape in particular does not last forever. The polymer oxidizes and gets brittle and the oxide sheds and even just sitting on the spool the recording loses some magnetism and causes print through. CD4 cartidges and demodulators seem to be getting rarer and rarer.
 
It is my hope that folks that take the trouble to make things like CD-4 and Q8 (and other magnetic tape versions too) work,will record them to digital media so that they can be preserved for the future. Magnetic tape in particular does not last forever. The polymer oxidizes and gets brittle and the oxide sheds and even just sitting on the spool the recording loses some magnetism and causes print through. CD4 cartidges and demodulators seem to be getting rarer and rarer.
and there are no longer the right tape heads available, as it happens to my 4-CH Sony..
"CD4 cartidges and demodulators seem to be getting rarer and rarer."
.. only clay tablets last forever ..
Is there anyone else around who recorded CD-4 to digital media ???
 
It is my hope that folks that take the trouble to make things like CD-4 and Q8 (and other magnetic tape versions too) work,will record them to digital media so that they can be preserved for the future. Magnetic tape in particular does not last forever. The polymer oxidizes and gets brittle and the oxide sheds and even just sitting on the spool the recording loses some magnetism and causes print through. CD4 cartidges and demodulators seem to be getting rarer and rarer.
Of course they are rarer and rarer. CD-4 is a deprecated format.

It has been my observation that, properly taken care of, phonograph records outlast all other media. Most of my tapes have either become sticky or have shed the oxide. I have several CDs and CDRs that have quit playing right due to internal deterioration. And many of the digital recording formats I have used in the past won't play on Windows 10.

The record companies want them to fail so you will buy it again.
 
The lack of equipment for CD4 playback is a good reason to record "needle drops" into decent digital format. Preserve and conserve them for future listening/listeners.

Someone here mentioned undoing Q8 cartridges and playing them on a reel to reel. Brilliant imo. It would reduce the wow and flutter from the cartridge format. Probably a very hard to source tape head. Maybe take the head out of a player and mount it on a reel to reel.

I myself have had discs that looked like they might want to give me some trouble but they actually did play. The only one I have had that didn't play was a disc that had a big crack in it near the center hole. It wouldn't play its first three tracks out of ten.

I don't think they want you do "buy it again". They want you to rent it. Over and over.

I generally agree with midimagic about the longevity of phono records. There are some excellent 78s that have been transcribed to CDs and it is often astonishing how good they sound. When I see such discs at Half Price Books they are usually so inexpensive that I can't resist buying them. 78s of Jascha Heifetz, Caruso, Toscanini and other famous musicians. The optical disc formats will last long enough for me.

Nowadays it should be fairly easy to record the undemodulated CD4 and probably would be a reasonable thing to do. This guy does not appear to be a quaddie and was just experimenting. He is a vinyl guy.
 
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