Ortofon Rondo Bronze ... the Long Goodbye

By -
The Rondo Bronze in all the Glory
One of the largest sources of distortion and excellence in any LP setup is the cartridge.  We're big fans of Ortofon, and we took a big leap first jumping from a Grado Sonata1 to a Denon DL-103R then to the underappreciated, excellent Ortofon Rondo Bronze.

We listen to a lot of vinyl, around 8-10 hours a week.  But keep meticulous care of our records and clean the needle with every side of a disk.  This means that at best we'd have 1500 hours of enjoyment.  At our rate that is right around 3 years.  We're into year 2, and while everything still sounds fantastic, it is time to start the long arduous process of finding a replacement, since in the mean-time, Ortofon has discontinued the Rondo line.  They have consolidated most of their LOMC offerings into two series:  "Quintet" and "Cadenza"

I can have the Rondo Bronze retipped (3rd party), or I can replace it with a Quintet or Cadenza.  Or look elsewhere, but there is no going back.  Nothing on offer is precisely what I had.

As we continue to spin our LP's and enjoy the music, we'll know the voice of the system will change eventually, as we're on the downswing.  It's been a great ride, and we will try to hold out as long as possible ... but the knowledge of eventual ending with guaranteed change makes us a little sad ...

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Thorens MM002 and MM008 meet the Crosley C10 (Part 2 of 2)

By -
Image
It used to be that every single receiver or preamp had a built in phonostage.  The way it used to work is that you would by a turntable, plug it in, and start spinning records.  For the audio enthusiast, there was always low output moving coil cartridges, and the resultant step-up-transformer you could use to present a signal to the phono input, but the built in was always used.  When the CD came to dominate, that the good 'ol built-in phono input went away.  A minor proliferation of external phono stages began as analog declined, but it left the mass market's consciousness as the silver disc rose in domination.  Given the people sticking to their vinyl through the near death of the medium were mostly performance oriented enthusiasts.  The state of the art playback for analog rose considerably (both in performance and price) during this dark time.  Now that vinyl is beginning to flirt with becoming mainstream again, brands are introducing their own tables and phono stages aime
Read more

Full Rez Streaming: Deezer Elite, Murfie and TIDAL on Sonos

By -
Image
We were looking over the end of year reports from the RIAA and others, and one thing is clear - the traditional CD album - is in decline, and streaming services are on the rise.  We have been on the tip of that wave - being longtime subscribers to Pandora, Spotify, and others - and are happy with them.  The one thing that has stopped them for being anything other than a casual/background listen is the compressed nature always fell short of spinning a CD, or even playing a FLAC file for musical enjoyment.  The holy grail, in our book, would be a high resolution streaming service (preferably something on the order of 24/96) that could give us a reliable, high quality sound that wouldn't sound like a compromise for convenience's sake. But streaming services c2013 weren't there.  Even at the highest offered rate of 320kbps, there was a small amount of lost ambience and detail compared to a silver disc spun in our CD player (not to even broach the subject of an LP which would
Read more

The Quad 2805 Review Part1: The Anticipation

By -
Image
In an earlier post, I went on and on and on (and on)  about the tremendous crush I have on the Quad ESL.  I droned on about the history of this hard-to-live-with but highly regarded speaker.  I even went so far as outlining all of its faults and foibles, and how I was able to look past them in my mental fantasy of them and still like the idea of the speaker. Quad c1960 ... note the lack of man-cave And I realized like a stormy relationship, it might never work.  And it might never be compatible with our idea that every family member should be part of the fun given it's narrow "sweet spot*" and fragility. I would love to take a test drive someday of the originals, but I think in my heart of hearts, the later version would be the easier one to live with ... *The so-called sweet spot is the small place, usually making an equilateral triangle with the speakers where you get the best sounding tonal balance and stereo effects.  In some speakers it is large, say the si
Read more