As I stated in my recent editorial, I’ve been on a bit of a tangent toward the value side of the audio world over the past few months. It wasn’t a conscious decision on my part to start looking for more reasonably priced components. That wouldn’t be fair to the good folks over at SoundStage! Access and SoundStage! Hi‑Fi. And besides, it’s not my beat. Here at Ultra, people want to read about huge, dripping, wretched excess, right? That said, I don’t think it’s a good look to only have experience with expensive gear. It’s a requirement, in my mind, to have a grounding in what’s possible with a limited budget, so that you can recognize when you’re getting flimflammed by hucksters selling screamingly pricey gear that doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.
Here’s the thing, though—I love playing with and evaluating high-end equipment. For the most part, I’m firmly entrenched in the high-cost Ultra world, but sometimes high-value gear finds me. I recently reviewed the Ortofon MC X40 phono cartridge, which I bumped into at Munich’s High End 2025 show. The price has gone up since then in some regions, but the MC X40 currently sells for a still-reasonable US$1149, CA$1449, £999, €999. At High End 2025, it just jumped out at me not only as great value, but also as something of a paradigm shift, given that it was armed with a Shibata stylus, boron cantilever, and silver coil wire. For €999. You usually see cartridges with those features for double that price. Add Ortofon’s long history and the fact that these guys actually invented the moving-coil cartridge back in 1948, and I’d say that when this company spins up a new cartridge, it’s worth investigating, regardless of the price.
The MC X40 lived up to my expectations—a lively, sophisticated cartridge for a very reasonable price. That experience made me curious. If Ortofon could pinch out a cartridge this good for around a grand, what could they do with a higher budget? A quick email to Louis Dorio, Ortofon’s product specialist in Ossining, New York, netted a suggestion that I check out a cartridge from the Cadenza line, which is the next level up from the MC X series. The obvious choice was the Cadenza Black, which also features a Shibata stylus and boron cantilever, and thus makes a good comparison to the MC X40.
The Cadenza Black (US$3199, CA$4349, £2449, €2999) is a significantly more expensive cartridge than the MC X40, but you’re getting a whole bunch of trickle-down from Ortofon’s top-line products. The Cadenza Black uses Ortofon’s Wide Range Damping system—which provides separate control for high- and low-speed movements—found in the company’s top-line cartridges. The coil is wound with Ortofon’s proprietary Aucurum gold-plated 6NX copper wire. Despite its steel-and-aluminum construction, the Cadenza Black weighs a reasonable 10.7g.
At 0.33mV, the Cadenza Black’s output should be manageable by most phono stages. I ran the cartridge on European Audio Team’s F‑Note tonearm, which was attached to my EAT Fortissimo S turntable. The Cadenza Black’s 16μm/mN compliance is very well matched to the F‑Note’s fairly high 21g effective mass. Every now and then, through the review period, I looked over at my VPI Prime Signature and considered swapping the Ortofon over to the VPI’s Fatboy ’arm, but it was working so beautifully on the EAT that I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. Ortofon recommends 2.3g of tracking force, and I had no objection to that.
The F‑Note terminates in a mini-DIN plug, so I used a Furutech Ag‑16 cable to run out to the Mola Mola Lupe phono preamplifier. The Lupe had no difficulties with the Cadenza Black’s somewhat low output. I kept the loading at 150 ohms; anything lower made the sound a touch constipated.
The Cadenza Black comes packaged in a nondescript cardboard box and protected within a plastic cylinder. Another plastic cylinder contains mounting hardware and an Allen wrench. It’s clever packaging, but not extravagant. That’s fine by me, as I prefer that the resources go into the cartridge, rather than boxes and such that I’ll only use once. Mounting the Cadenza Black was a fairly easy process, as cartridge installs go. It comes supplied with a stylus guard, and the mounting holes are threaded.
Smooth as silk
Yeah, OK, I get it. From the first few records I spun via the Cadenza Black, I got it. The Cadenza Black is nearly three times the price of the MC X40, so it damn well should sound better. I stand by my review of the MC X40—it’s a superstar cartridge, but the Cadenza Black topped it in several crucial respects. And yet, at no point in my review of the MC X40 had I found it deficient in any of the ways in which the Cadenza Black was clearly superior.
The most notable attribute that immediately caught my attention was a silkiness in the upper midrange that carried on up into the highs. You know how a well-made French macaron starts off crunchy as you bite into it? And how it then dissolves into fluffy, flavored air? That’s how the Cadenza Black presented high frequencies. There was all the texture of real instruments, but with a purity to the overtones, to both the leading edge of the note and the fundamental.
There was a calm sense of relaxation through the midrange. The Cadenza Black presented midrange images with a complete feeling of purity: discrete instruments and voices popping out of black space.
I’m still enamored with St. Vincent’s MassEducation (Loma Vista LVR00448), finding it both a perfect reviewer’s tool and superbly entertaining music. Annie Clark’s clear, unaffected voice on “New York” projected outward without any sense of artifact. There are parts of this song that are almost a capella, with just the barest hint of accompaniment, and the Cadenza Black formed a complete reproduction of Clark’s voice between the speakers with excellent image focus—no aural haze, just a bell-like clarity. At this point, I must stress that the MC X40’s midrange was similarly unaffected and extremely neutral. But the Cadenza Black went a step further, stripping away a slight blur, a lack of concrete solidity around the edges of images, that I hadn’t realized was there in the MC X40’s presentation. The Cadenza Black wasn’t exactly better through the midrange—just more sophisticated.
It’s that midrange purity that aided the Cadenza Black in projecting such crisp, solid images. “So Hard Done By” is one of my favorite songs by the Tragically Hip. Day for Night (Universal Music 7747461) is far from my favorite Hip album, but it’s got some killer songs none the less. “So Hard Done By” is a swirling, introspective song, and Gord Downie’s voice is the focus here, with the instrumentation working to tastefully support him. Downie’s voice just snapped into focus via the Cadenza Black. More three-dimensional, more fleshed out, the plaintive, introspective musings of sorrow projected out of the speakers laden with emotion.
There’s an abundance of bass on Day for Night. On “So Hard Done By” it adds a thick layer of menace, and the Cadenza Black dredged up a feeling of fear and misery. That bass can easily devolve into looseness, into boominess, but the Cadenza Black kept it tight and under control. Over top of that claustrophobic bass line, Downie sings, “Just then the stripper stopped in a coughing fit. She said, ‘Sorry, I can’t go on with this.’”
Those lines caught my attention, probably because of the way they sounded like they were emanating from a dark, smoky bar, a room filled with sorrow, lust, and broken dreams. I haven’t thought about that song, those lyrics, in a while, but with the Cadenza Black I was pulled in.
Sticking with vocals jumping out from the mix, I pulled Bruce Cockburn’s Humans (True North TN‑42) out of the rack on a whim. “Sun went down, looking like the eye of god,” Cockburn sings on “How I Spent My Fall Vacation.” The Cadenza Black’s three-dimensional way with images continued here, placing Cockburn’s voice as a large, corporeal image. More than that, though, the Ortofon organized the image, rendering it with a clear, front-to-back dimensionality.
I listened through Humans twice, luxuriating in Cockburn’s vocals and silky guitar. My pressing isn’t the greatest, but the Cadenza Black didn’t care—it strode over the flaws, delivering the music in an extremely flattering way. It was that satin-like, sophisticated top end effortlessly floating an integrated presentation of the entire performance. What helped also—very much so—is how quiet the Cadenza Black was in the groove. I’ve had several cartridges tipped with Shibata styli through my system recently, and the Cadenza Black is the champion at rejecting surface noise.
Once again, I want to reiterate that I stand by my review of the MC X40, and I could easily make it my daily driver. There’s a feeling of liveliness to the MC X40 that’s extremely endearing and, to repeat myself, it punches far, far above its price point. The Cadenza Black is a completely different cartridge, coming at the vinyl-reproduction event from an oblique angle. The more expensive cartridge exudes poise and grace, and it’s extremely kind to records that aren’t in the best shape.
I’m left wondering how to spin the value proposition. The MC X40 is so good, for so little money, that it makes it a bit difficult for me to say that the Cadenza Black is much of a bargain at its three-times-the-price tag. But the Cadenza Black is notably better in several important ways, and if money were no object, I would definitely choose it over the MC X40.
That said, there’s huge value in both of these cartridges—and that’s great news. If you’re cost-constrained, you can push this review of the Cadenza Black out of your mind, pull the trigger on the MC X40, and never think about another cartridge again. Done—you’ll have great music for years to come. But if another $2K isn’t out of reach, you’ll find more juice, more flavor, in the higher-class Cadenza Black. It’s great to have choices, right?
. . . Jason Thorpe
jasont@soundstagenetwork.com
Ortofon Cadenza Black moving-coil phono cartridge
Price: US$3199, CA$4349, £2449, €2999
Warranty: Two years
Ortofon AS
Stavangervej 9
4900 Nakskov
Denmark
US subsidiary:
Ortofon Inc.
500 Executive Blvd. #102
Ossining, NY 10562
Phone: (914) 762-8646
Fax: (914) 762-8649
Website: www.ortofon.us
