Three decks, three carts, three technologies.. which is which/ better?

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Waterhond

R.I.P. August 2020
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Thought I'd try this to see what people with good ears make of it (mine is not so good anymore!)

I picked a piece of well recorded light classical music to hear the differences between 3 different decks plus three different cartridges.

From my own listening I've matched up the cartridges with the decks as follows:

[list type=decimal]
[*]A Denon DP-31F direct drive deck with a Shure V15 series 3 moving magnet cart. (Stock arm)

[*]Garrard 401 idler wheel driven deck with a Denon DL-160 high output moving coil cart (Rega RB300 arm)

[*]A Technics SL-Q2 direct drive with a Grado F3+ moving iron cart. (Stock arm)
[/list]

See if you can match up the music sample with the deck/cart combo! :thumbs:
Which one you prefer and why.

16bit 44.1k mp3 files:

a) http://www.mediafire.com/listen/u5arir179ehjdpt/Sample_One_16bit_44100.mp3
b) http://www.mediafire.com/listen/1b4hpyv9u9nog44/Sample_Two_16bit_44100.mp3
c) http://www.mediafire.com/listen/6vq7zdha8vgzo5v/Sample_Three_16bit_44100.mp3

16 bit 44.1k Flac files:

a) http://www.mediafire.com/download/q5n7jab88n6ush5/Sample_One_16bit_44100.flac
b) http://www.mediafire.com/download/bu2f8gbg8i44ogh/Sample_Two_16bit_44100.flac
c) http://www.mediafire.com/download/ey1wn9l6edy1bsn/Sample_Three_16bit_44100.flac


24bit 96k Flac files - beware, they are quite large! This gives the best near Vinyl experience short of the real thing.

a) http://www.mediafire.com/download/1w9ecdeqsd56ww8/Sample_One_24_bit_96k.flac
b) http://www.mediafire.com/download/gkxmzo3kp6ukxaa/Sample_Two_24_bit_96k.flac
c) http://www.mediafire.com/download/p6n8h4xn2bp04xs/Sample_Three_24_bit_96k.flac

Tell me if you can tell which is which, and which one you prefer for what reason.

The arm/ cart geometries were all optimised using an Arc template generator and tracking weights set with an electronic scale.
 

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