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Recommended Component 2025 – Stereophile
Editors' Choice Award 2019 – The Absolute Sound
"Top Flight" Cartridge "Invites Listening for Hours"
Ortofon's Cadenza Bronze MC cartridge is a true high-end reference cartridge, conveying music with supreme precision, impact and dynamics. It uses a a Replicant 100 stylus and a conical aluminum cantilever. The coil wire is the famous Ortofon Aucurum wire, which is a gold plated 6NX copper wire.
Field Stabilizing Element/FSE, is used for optimal linearity especially during complex crescendo passages. Cadenza Bronze stereo imaging capabilities illuminate the farthest corners of the soundstage in all three dimensions.
"Recommended Component" Honors
Stereophile honored the MC Cadenza Bronze by awarding it the magazine's coveted Recommend Component status for 2025.
According to Stereophile, "AH [Alex Halberstadt] was intrigued by the fact that the Bronze has a deliberately 'flavored' tuning. According to Ortofon, the Bronze is claimed to offer 'a touch of romance and warmth." AH noted that the Cadenza Bronze's "'warm' tuning 'proved admirably subtle, lending recordings body and presence while dialing down sizzle and hi-fi artifacts like air." He was never aware of missing deleted highs or finding the bass overripe."
"To AH, the Ortofon simply sounded more natural than many moving coil cartridges and bested every cartridge he'd heard in one important respect: its ability to reject surface noise."
"Editors' Choice Award"
The Absolute Sound magazine gave the MC Cadenza Bronze an "Editors' Choice Award" in 2019. It praised the cartridge as "very much an Ortofon as regards overall neutrality, transparency, clarity, resolution, tracking ability, dynamic range, imaging and soundstaging. If you want an Ortofon with a dash of warmth, the Bronze might be just the ticket."
"The Ability to Extract All the Fine Detail"
In issue 51 of Positive Feedback magazine, John Hoffman writes, "The Cadenza Bronze is certainly a top flight cartridge, and its performance reflects Ortofon's substantial engineering resources and manufacturing experience... Cadenza Bronze is an excellent tracking cartridge, and its ability to minimize surface noise will be an attribute that can be appreciated by any perspective owner."
John Hoffman goes on to say, "The Bronze certainly has the ability to extract all the fine detail contained in a recording, and excels at all the audiophile approved tasks. Performers are clearly defined, tonal balance is evenly reproduced, and dynamic contrasts are faithfully recreated. The touch of warmth that Ortofon have infused into the design, results in a cartridge with an easy-going nature, which invites a person to listen for hours on end."
Ortofon’s Cadenza Series
Ortofon constantly looks for new technology to be used in its products and pushes the performance of existing technology. Thus it assures the highest level of performance and quality. The Kontrapunkt models and MC Jubilee became market standards and are among Ortofon’s most popular cartridges. Nevertheless Ortofon decided to develop a new cartridge series that is even more ambitious.
By carefully implementing cobalt-iron pole pieces, a new improved winding process on the armature, using extruded aluminum housing in the models as well as other changes, Ortofon has been able to reveal new possibilities in retrieving the analog information for superb audio playback.
