If you have an Ortofon 2M Red, you can upgrade it to a 2M Blue by replacing the stylus with a 2M Blue stylus. Their bodies are the same and their styli are interchangeable. A permalloy centre shield plate enables the effective separation of left and right channels, suppressing electrical crosstalk to below 40dB. This is similar to the actual crosstalk value found in the grooves of the record itself. Preassembled With HS10 Headshell This chart shows the left channel frequency response directly compared to the right channel separation as well as the reverse condition. This is not an automated test. There are 116 total measurements for this graph comprised of 29 individual tones over 4 sweeps.

And 1984 to complete a triplicate was also the title of George Orwell’s classic novel about the shape, form and function of the absolutist, totalitarian state. It’s hard for analogue loving music lovers not to fail to notice the symbolism between CDs arrival and Orwell’s classic novel. There was plenty of the performer’s breathing heard between notes, indicating good subtle detail recovery. The piano solos also had a vibrancy about them, with wonderfully clean ringing sounds to the notes and a good weight to the lower registers. On “Versatile” the flutist switches to a bass flute which is fleshed out nicely by the VM540ML. The deeper, now almost midrange, body to the notes was quite palpable and the change up in the performer’s breathing and mouthing was also quite noticeable. Moving up to a hurricane sized groove of 88um lateral, what happens to our little 4kHz groove? The IM distortion is now up to 25%. Yes, this is audible. It is especially unpleasant if you high-pass filter the 400Hz tone and listen only to the 4kHz tone. Note the fundamental level has dropped 6dB but the groove size is unchanged. Our 4kHz ship has gone under the sea. The 4kHz THD is up to 1.3%, but that is meaningless with the drop in level. THD for the wide groove at 400Hz is still 0.8% but we have lost 4kHz.The Elliptical stylus was created in response to the demands of stereo while the 3rd generation shapes were developed for the short-lived RCA CD-4 quadraphonic LP. The 4th generation tips were designed for the biggest RCA flop of all, the vinyl video disc. These diffferences led me to rearchive my entire collection with the VM540ML after having spent years on collecting and archiving it with the AT440MLa/b. I was able to rearchive everything in about 100 days, with 3h or recordings on a daily basis. I've taken some of the brightness off of it by setting my phono preamp (SPL Phonos) to the 0pF setting and using low capacitance phono cables.

Centre shield plate enables the effective separation of left and right channels, suppressing electrical crosstalk to below 40dB Standard model with a Microlinear stylus, comes pre-assembled with a lightweight aluminium headshell (AT-HS10). Distortion is low even on the inner circumference of a record because the curvature radius of the stylus tip does not alter even if the stylus becomes worn. Perhaps Hanpin improved newer gen LP120s, but I doubt it is in the same league as Technics or Rega.

You might be able to remedy that by getting yourself another preamplifier stage with a smaller load (the budget ART DJ Pre II is a very good option; the iFi Phono is another good option, albeit more expensive; both feature 100pF on their input), or ensuring that the Rega Luna has 100pF instead. 250pF is a bit above the recommended load for ATs, but it still sounds pretty aceptable there. The 2M Blue has a higher output level than the VM540ML and it is definitely noticeable. When I swap from the 2M Blue to the VM540ML, I have to turn the volume knob quite a bit to get the same music volume. I have also compared the Ortofon 2M Blue and the VM540ML against the Audio-Technica AT95E and the Ortofon 2M Red. You’ll find links to those articles towards the end. Even with a removable headshell, I still have difficulty slotting the cables to the connectors. They are so small that I need a plier to push the wire connectors into the pins.