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Recommended Component 2024 – Stereophile
"Immediately Engaging, Sounding Powerful and Vivid" Cartridge – On SH-4 Headshell
The Ortofon 2M Black is the flagship MM cartridge from Ortofon. The 2M Black is graced with a Shibata diamond stylus – the same diamond as on the acclaimed MC Jubilee. Its slim, highly polished profile allows an exceedingly wide contact area to the groove walls and ensures notably detailed reproduction throughout the spectrum, including even the most high frequency groove information.
This version of the 2M Black comes pre-mounted on Ortofon's popular SH-4 black headshell – a practical and elegant solution if you're looking for direct and easy mounting and replacement on your S-shaped tonearm. The quality of the SH-4 headshell is sturdy and rigid, yet the design emphasizes a slim and delicate form factor. The strong, lightweight headshell has an ergonomic design with a long finger lift that is easy to pick up.
"Recommended Component" Honors
Stereophile honored the Ortofon 2M Black by awarding it the magazine's coveted Recommend Component status for 2024.
According to Stereophile, "The 'ridiculously good' Ortofon 2M Black produced a bright, open sound with 'surprising heft and slam.' Because its Shibata stylus is sensitive to rake angle, the 2M Black should be used only with tonearms that permit adjustment of VTA and SRA, Mikey advised. HR used the Black on the Music Hall Stealth turntable, writing that compared with the Ortofon 2M Blue, "'tone quality, and the illusion of force and forward momentum, were enhanced to a degree that made me think I could live happily forever with this setup.'"
"Sounds Excellent"
"The Black’s greatest attribute is the way it parses the complexities of orchestral depth and dimension."
The Absolute Sound, giving the Black the magazine's 2019 Editors' Choice Award.
"The 2M Black sounds excellent across a wide range of programme material, with a distinctively ‘clean’ Ortofon sound that has tremendous detail resolving capability," says Hi-Fi Choice, September 2020.
"Holographic Imagery"
"When set-up, the Ortofon 2M Black was immediately engaging, sounding powerful and vivid," notes Hi-fi News Yearbook, 2011. "It was natural recordings of full orchestra that confirmed that the 2M Black is a stellar moving-magnet cartridge... The 2M Black delivers a holographic imagery worthy of the most sophisticated vinyl replay systems."
The cartridge body used for the 2M Black is manufactured from a newly-developed Lexan DMX Piano Black, a revolutionary material which ensures high rigidity while eliminating unwanted resonances.
The 2M Black uses a special upgraded engine with an increased output of 5 mV, featuring split pole pins with a silver plated copper wire. Split pole pins are an invention that enables moving magnet cartridges to have a flat frequency response, as with a much higher-priced moving coil cartridge. Split pole pins were invented by Ortofon, and were originally presented in the 500 series and Super OM series.
Ortofon's 2M Series
The 2M Series is designed for precise and accurate retrieval of the information in the record groove. The 2M Series is developed in conjunction with the Danish Industrial designer Møller Jensen Design – the same designer who designed the award winning MC Jubilee and Kontrapunkt series. Inspired by the facets of a diamond, whose contours gracefully trace the grooves on a record's surface, the 2M's handsome elegance establishes a great combination of form and functionality.
The name 2M was selected from among several ideas. Ortofon wanted a modern name that would be easy to pronounce and remember, and therefore an alphanumerical name was chosen. 2M means MM, which is the abbreviation for moving magnet.
Of course the 2M isn't just another pretty face. It has been engineered to the highest standards and is congruent with Ortofon's unrelenting commitment to providing the most precise and accurate reproduction possible without coloration.
Easy Mounting
Ortofon has optimized the design for ease of mounting the cartridge, and the weight and size to fit the most common turntables on the market today. The 2M Series provides excellent compatibility when used in an assortment of playback systems and with a wide variety of phono preamps.
