Ortofon's Beethoven-dedicated cartridge picks up another award

David Price writing for Stereonet thinks Ortofon's 2M Black LVB 250 might be the best moving magnet cartridge ever made, granting it an Applause Award…

See some highlights below, read the review in full at Stereonet.com and for more detail and ordering, see our product page here.

"I found the 2M Black LVB 250 to be easy to fit, set up and use”

“…a recording that I’d thought sounded quite mediocre with the stock 2M Black—and almost all other moving magnet cartridges I’ve ever heard—was now a vibrant, living, breathing entity. There was a wealth of detail, loads of little production clues popping out from the mix, plus a lovely sense of rhythmic flow”

"It opened up the soundstage, letting me peer deeper into the mix. I could really hear things like the sound of the vocal booth and the crisp, rich timbre of the lead electric guitar.”

"The 2M Black LVB 250 was again a revelation, conjuring up a really wide soundstage inside which the instrumentalists were better etched. Depth perspective was excellent, and the finesse with which this cartridge did its stuff was startling from a moving magnet perspective.”

"Output voltage is a healthy 5mV, and Ortofon quotes an almost ruler-flat frequency response of 20Hz to 20kHz, ±1dB; the latter is the sort of thing that would get digital audio fans hot under the collar, not so long ago. Hi-res digital fans should know that the upper-frequency response of this cartridge doesn’t fall off a cliff at 20kHz, either.”

Ortofon’s new 2M Black LVB 250 cartridge is at the top table of moving magnet cartridges – it’s so good that it gives mid-price moving coils something to worry about."

"Dynamically the new Ortofon is a great performer, yet never comes over as forced. It’s better at communicating the natural accents of the playing than pretty much any other moving magnet I’ve heard”

"It certainly has a worthy claim to being the best sounding moving magnet around"