“I think both moving coil and moving magnet cartridges are terrible.” That’s what legendary Canadian audio designer Ed Meitner told me when I asked about the pioneering transimpedance current drive phono stage he created for his Meitner PA6 preamp some 40 years ago.
Meitner has been designing innovative hi-fi gear for the pro and consumer audio markets for more than 50 years, but for most of the last 30, he has been best known for his work with high-resolution digital audio and DSD recording.1 Despite this focus on digital—and despite that comment about the two leading phono cartridge technologies—deep in his heart, Ed still loves analog and has fond memories of the Kenwood optical cartridges from the 1970s, which I discussed in the April-issue Spin Doctor. So when Ed read that a company in Japan called DS Audio was bringing back an improved version of the optical cartridge using modern materials, he contacted designer Tetsuaki Aoyagi to learn more.
As luck would have it—and as discussed in last month’s Spin Doctor column—DS Audio seeks partners willing to help push the optical-cartridge approach. The company is happy to share details about the technology with other manufacturers. Ed says that once he got his hands on a DS Audio W2 cartridge and learned what kind of circuit was needed to work with it, he whipped up a working model overnight and was astonished by the results. He thought it would be a game changer for vinyl playback. The experience rekindled his enthusiasm for vinyl records. He further developed and refined the circuit he had hastily assembled, creating
