I'm dubious that light use would make any difference, but your point is well taken. I think we'll just need to live with the small amount of wear that is put on the cartridge by the hours of play in the interim between captures. Perhaps
@BendBound could estimate the number of hours of play that is planned, or that actually occurs, between captures.
I have another MC cartridge, new actually, that I will install. The Ortofon Cadenza Black has at most two additional hours on it from when I did the 96/24 dubs.
The new MC cartridge has a Replicant 100 stylus shape. Ray has already taken a T(0) image of that stylus tip as this cartridge will be subject to periodic imaging showing its evolution to critical wear. Likely this allied experiment will take four years to unfold.
In this case, I will be making dubs, perhaps at 192kHz, for the purpose of capturing evolution in cartridge performance over time. I'm looking for guidance here, details, specifics.
Like Ray I invite someone, anyone to specifically layout a protocol for how to better conduct this experiment. As Ray said, we are still open but moving forward to wearing out this elliptical stylus tip. That noted, we are discussing following up this experiment by next wearing out a Shibata tip. So, please detail, not snippets, detail how to conduct such a test so that its not viewed by some as simply anecdotal. That critique can be levied against any person's experience: its just anecdotal, on my rig, the stylus tips works without any degradation for 5,000 or is it 20,000 hours. We are working to gain penetrating insights into stylus wear that moves beyond hearsay. We will show it in progress.
@JP, as far as "uncontrolled variables that make this non-conclusive" I for one would appreciate it if you would elaborate. Maybe we have missed something critical, we want to know what that variable is, what could we be doing better? What you have noted is not coming across to me as a specific crucial must do recommendation. I need specifics so that I can understand. We've already mentioned why we are not going to use a linear turntable. We selected a turntable and cartridge and records that meet the 80/20 rules on general use. Our record cleaning is beyond 80/20, in my community where I live, no one cleans their records using an ultrasonic machine and a vacuum machine. We made this choice to specifically remove as a uncontrolled variable the prospect of playing dirty records.
On the capturing of dubs to look at THD at whatever selected frequencies with harmonics, I have read all that has been written in this thread and I still do not have a good understanding of what has been suggested. If someone is willing to write out a procedure from start to finish, I'd for one would be grateful.
I will add, that if one believes
carte blanche some cartridge manufacturers claims of up to many thousands of hours of stylus use to critical wear please show me their published procedures. Maybe in my endeavor to learn about this facet of audio I have missed it, because I have found literally nothing. Our team has been as transparent has possible. We have left nothing to assumptions or guess work by the community. We may not have designed a 'perfect' experiment, but to be honest, given how most of my buddies play and clean either records or stylus or even align their kit, the experiment we are doing moves beyond simply anecdote.
