Other things being equal, a longer tonearm is always better, with one exception: linear tracking arms. The reason you want a long conventional arm, or a linear tracker of any length, is to minimise or eliminate tracking error and therefore tracking distortion. When a tonearm moves across a record, it does so in an arc, […]

A great question. Some remasters are better, but often, original pressings are where the gold lies! The answer varies according to the album and the pressing, due to many technical factors, but remastered records are often worse than excellent, lightly played original pressings, and in my experience, only occasionally better. A Golden Example A classic

I don’t like either very much, but I generally recommend a good moving magnet cartridge over a cheap moving coil. If you have say around $500 AUD to spend, and assuming you are chasing a medium compliance cartridge for a typical medium mass tonearm, there are lots of choices. Moving coil cartridges are technically better

Either a good step-up transformer or an exceptional active gain stage. There is no one best phono preamplifier, but almost nothing does a better job of taking extraordinarily small signals from a moving coil cartridge and amplifying them than a top-notch step-up transformer or absolutely first class active gain stage. A Perfect Match Technically there’s

This is a really good question, variations of which I hear a lot. Let’s look at this in a little more detail. Here’s the summary, though: cartridge alignment tools are typically setup tools, not measurement tools. These setup tools are designed for various unique tonearm setups and should therefore be used with the precise equipment