So from what I have gathered low effective tip mass, or moving mass (I'm just gonna call TM), or whatever is obviously better when comes to cartridges. But how low does it need to be perform its job or reproducing audible signals? What are the consequences of too great a TM? I would imagine that any cartridge with an overly large TM would be unable to trace higher frequencies as the inertia of the cantilever assembly would be too great to allow it to change directions (accelerate and decelerate) at the same rate as the grooves. Thus its frequency response would stop above a certain point.
However, most cartridges (even old designs like the Denon DL-103) will reproduce frequencies well above what human could potentially hear (say 22kHz being the absolute theoretical maximum). From this can we conclude that the TM of any reasonably good cartridge is low enough to allow for "perfect" reproduction of all audible frequencies? I know Technics made a cartridge with perhaps the lowest moving mass ever. It had signal response up to 100kHz. This is impressive, but not especially useful. If a cartridge can reproduce all the audible frequencies at reasonable level, is there any reason to seek a lower TM? I assume many cartridges can get flat frequency response within the audible range using comparatively (that is compared to what is available) crude aluminum cantilevers and ordinary generators (the Denon DL-103 responds at -2dB or so at 20kHz, the DL-301 is basically flat as well, as is the DL-110 likely has a pretty heavy generator being a HOMC cartridge), so I am not really impetus for things boron, and ruby/sapphire cantilevers.
Is there something I am missing to this whole TM thing? While lower is theoretically better, most cartridges would seem to be "good enough" as they can playback the audible range of frequencies at useful level.
However, most cartridges (even old designs like the Denon DL-103) will reproduce frequencies well above what human could potentially hear (say 22kHz being the absolute theoretical maximum). From this can we conclude that the TM of any reasonably good cartridge is low enough to allow for "perfect" reproduction of all audible frequencies? I know Technics made a cartridge with perhaps the lowest moving mass ever. It had signal response up to 100kHz. This is impressive, but not especially useful. If a cartridge can reproduce all the audible frequencies at reasonable level, is there any reason to seek a lower TM? I assume many cartridges can get flat frequency response within the audible range using comparatively (that is compared to what is available) crude aluminum cantilevers and ordinary generators (the Denon DL-103 responds at -2dB or so at 20kHz, the DL-301 is basically flat as well, as is the DL-110 likely has a pretty heavy generator being a HOMC cartridge), so I am not really impetus for things boron, and ruby/sapphire cantilevers.
Is there something I am missing to this whole TM thing? While lower is theoretically better, most cartridges would seem to be "good enough" as they can playback the audible range of frequencies at useful level.