{"id":6316,"date":"2020-12-13T16:51:36","date_gmt":"2020-12-13T14:51:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tonmeister.ca\/wordpress\/?p=6316"},"modified":"2020-12-13T16:51:36","modified_gmt":"2020-12-13T14:51:36","slug":"turntables-and-vinyl-part-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tonmeister.ca\/wordpress\/2020\/12\/13\/turntables-and-vinyl-part-4\/","title":{"rendered":"Turntables and Vinyl: Part 4"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Back to Part 3<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

MMC: Micro Moving Cross<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

As mentioned above, when a wire is moved through a magnetic field, a current is generated in a wire that is proportional to the velocity of the movement. In order to increase the output, the wire can be wrapped into a coil, effectively lengthening the piece of wire moving through the field. Most phono cartridges make use of this behaviour by using the movement of the stylus to either:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

  1. move tiny magnets that are placed near coils of wire (a Moving Magnet<\/strong> or MM<\/strong> design
    or<\/li>
  2. move tiny coils of wire that are placed near very strong magnets (a Moving Coil<\/strong> or MC<\/strong> design)<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    In either system, there is a relative physical movement that is used to generate the electrical signal from the cartridge. There are advantages and disadvantages associated with both of these systems, however, they’re well-discussed in other places, so I won’t talk about them here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    There is a third, less common design called a Moving Iron<\/strong> (or variable-reluctance<\/strong>(1)) system, which can be thought of as a variant of the Moving Magnet principle. In this design, the magnet and the coils remain stationary, and the stylus moves a small piece of iron instead. That iron is placed between the north and south poles of the magnet so that, when it moves, it modulates (or varies) the magnetic field. As the magnetic field modulates, it moves relative to the coils, and an electrical signal is generated. One of the first examples of this kind of pickup was the Western Electric 4A reproducer made in 1925.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \"\"
    Figure 1: Figures from R\u00f8rbaek Madsen’s 1963 patent for a Stereophonic Transducer Cartridge.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

    In 1963, Erik R\u00f8rbaek Madsen of Bang & Olufsen filed a patent for a cartridge based on the Moving Iron principle. In it, a cross made of Mu-metal is mounted on the stylus. Each arm of the cross is aligned with the end of a small rod called a “pole piece” (because it was attached to the pole of a magnet on the opposite end). The cross is mounted diagonally, so the individual movements of the left and right channels on the groove cause the arms of the cross to move accordingly. For a left-channel signal, the bottom left and top right cross arms move in opposite directions – one forwards and one backwards. For a right-channel signal, the bottom right and top left arms move instead. The two coils that generate the current for each audio channel are wired in a push-pull relationship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \"\"
    Figure 2: Erik R\u00f8rbaek Madsen explaining the MMC concept.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

    There are a number of advantages to this system over the MM and MC designs. Many of these are described in the original 1963 patent, as follows:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    1. “The channel separation is very good and induction of cross talk from one channel to the other is minimized because cross talk components are in phase in opposing coils.”<\/li>
    2. “The moving mass which only comprises the armature and the stylus arm can be made very low which results in good frequency response.”<\/li>
    3. “Hum pick-up is very low due to the balanced coil construction”<\/li>
    4. “\u2026 the shielding effect of the magnetic housing \u2026 provides a completely closed magnetic circuit which in addition to shielding the coil from external fields prevents attraction to steel turntables.”<\/li>
    5. Finally, (although this is not mentioned in the patent) the push-pull wiring of the coils “reduces harmonic distortion induced by the non-linearity of the magnetic field.”(2)<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n
      \"\"
      Figure 3: The magnetic circuit representation of the MMC cartridge, showing the diagonal pair of pole pieces for one of the two audio channels.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
      \"\"
      Figure 4: The Micro Moving Cross MMC 4000 cartridge design. 1. Nude Pramanik diamond, 2. Low mass beryllium cantilever, 3. Moving micro cross, 4. Block suspension, 5. Pole pieces, 6. Induction coils, 7. Mu-metal screen, 8. Hycomax magnet<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
      \"\"
      Figure 5: Large-scale models of the MMC cartridges used for past demonstrations.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

      Footnotes<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
      1. reluctance is the magnetic equivalent of electrical resistance<\/li>
      2. “Sound Recording Handbook”, ed. Glen Ballou<\/li><\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

        Back to Part 3 MMC: Micro Moving Cross As mentioned above, when a wire is moved through a magnetic field, a current is generated in a wire that is proportional to the velocity of the movement. In order to increase the output, the wire can be wrapped into a coil, effectively lengthening the piece of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[66,4,32,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6316","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-analogue","category-audio","category-bang-olufsen","category-history"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p48hIM-1DS","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tonmeister.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6316","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tonmeister.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tonmeister.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tonmeister.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tonmeister.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6316"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.tonmeister.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6316\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6322,"href":"https:\/\/www.tonmeister.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6316\/revisions\/6322"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tonmeister.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tonmeister.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tonmeister.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}