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Impulse Response of the Pickup Arm-Cartridge System

A model of the pickup arm-cartridge system is considered which includes both stylus assembly and arm pivot damping. The impulse response of this system is considered when the stylus is subjected to a sine-squared displacement. This enables the evaluation of the behavior of the system when excited by both infrasonic (that is, warp) and audio impulses. It is shown that no signal choice of parameters can provide ideal behavior at all frequencies of interest, but that the best compromise involves both arm and stylus damping. This shows up a clear deficiency in most current high-quality record-playing systems, in which no arm damping is used. Equations are furnished to enable further analysis in any specific case.

Author: Lipshitz, Stanley P.
Affiliation: Department of Applied Mathematics, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ont., Canada N2L 3GI
JAES Volume 26 Issue 1/2 pp. 20-35; February 1978 Import into BibTeX

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