Houdini - Cartridge Isolation

Two years of development went into solving a problem most listeners did not know they had: the stylus picking up the tonearm’s own resonance and adding it to the music.

This is a major source of “analogue sound” becasue it is happening in 99.9% of tonearms - yes, really, that many. 

Just check out the response plots of common arms to see this is true - the plots come from HiFi Choice or Hifi World. (We are looking for an even plot.)

The best solution is to replace the arm with a true, low resonance plot like FX3 (from HiFi World). But arms are costly. Also there are many decks, from SL1500C or AT's 120XP, say, who's arms cannot be removed, never mind teh many really find vintage decks that again have a fixed arm. 

For these pople Funk developed Houdini. It makes a dramatic sonic difference because it blocks arm tube vibrations from reaching the cartaridge. The result is sound much closer to teh one heard by the engineer in the recording studio

Houdini is a precision-engineered cartridge decoupler. It works with virtually any setup, filtering much of the unwanted energy from the arm before it reaches the cartridge. A great deal of “analogue sound” simply vanishes.

Houdini is a remarkably small price to pay for music that sounds more natural and more real. It is not only for high-end turntables. More modest decks often have greater resonance problems, so the improvement can be even more obvious.

For decks without VTA adjustment, the Cobra Headshell is its companion.

Key details

• Precision-engineered cartridge decoupler — works with virtually any setup
• Filters tonearm resonance before it reaches the cartridge
• Audible improvement on both modest and high-end turntables
• Available in Threaded and Bolt-Thru versions
• Part of the Funk Firm Isolation Bubble concept