I have always thought stylus/cantilevers to be quite loud, and add to the in room sound much like super tweeters....that extra HF air that sounds good but does not really belong.
CD players should be mechanically silent, as should turntables.
Agreed, properly mounted/loaded pickups are acoustically quieter, but you still have that rising HF air in the room.....very clean HF but not natural.
Dan.
Reviewer prefered vinyl
I recall visiting a reviewer's house several times and we played around with different equipment. We usually listened to his Reimyo CD player, but he also had a SME30 (don't recall the cart, but likely top notch like the rest of his system). We never did a head to head comparison, but he claimed that his vinyl rig was better than the digital rig. While I did not confirm this for myself, I found his listening to be at least as good as mine, and probably better, so I trusted his listening.
I think the reason why so many people who have both digital and analogue systems of comparable quality prefer vinyl has to do with the jitter in the digital equipment.
The late Allen Wright designed a power supply for the clock in CD players which pushed jitter down to very low levels. He had two versions of his power supply. One was $2000 and another was $900 (the prices indicate the level of effort that was placed to improve on the power supply and reduce the jitter). I never heard it for myself, but those who purchased either of these products claimed that it made the digital sound more like analog. You may be able to find discussion of these products in the archives as well as the associated reviews.
Just one more factoid to consider.
Retsel
I recall visiting a reviewer's house several times and we played around with different equipment. We usually listened to his Reimyo CD player, but he also had a SME30 (don't recall the cart, but likely top notch like the rest of his system). We never did a head to head comparison, but he claimed that his vinyl rig was better than the digital rig. While I did not confirm this for myself, I found his listening to be at least as good as mine, and probably better, so I trusted his listening.
I think the reason why so many people who have both digital and analogue systems of comparable quality prefer vinyl has to do with the jitter in the digital equipment.
The late Allen Wright designed a power supply for the clock in CD players which pushed jitter down to very low levels. He had two versions of his power supply. One was $2000 and another was $900 (the prices indicate the level of effort that was placed to improve on the power supply and reduce the jitter). I never heard it for myself, but those who purchased either of these products claimed that it made the digital sound more like analog. You may be able to find discussion of these products in the archives as well as the associated reviews.
Just one more factoid to consider.
Retsel
That does not follow, the reciprocity of the cartridge electro-mechanical system is poor as we covered ad-nauseum last year. I've varied loading on a MC cart from 100 to 47K Ohms with no detectable difference in the incidental acoustical output. The difference in electrical power delivered in this case is orders of magnitude.
I would suggest reading some of the comments especially one where even cheep DACs had low jitter levels, it keeps getting brought up, yet is it really a problem these days with even reasonably priced gear...
You also don't need to go to $900 to do a decent supply for a clock that's just marketing and promoting high end... A few dollars, correct placement and routing, correct decoupling, correct layer structure and bingo a low jitter clock for peanuts....
Try listening to a DDDAC. If you want holographic imaging, front to back depth and all the venue`s ambient clues, it will do it.
I think it is a resolution problem with the Dacs being used to compare vinyl with.
I concentrated on getting the power supply as quiet as possible to allow the low level signals to be revealed
Ok, i understand that the MC generator by itself has lots of loss and the electric loading of the generator has no influence on the acoustical output.
I try to express better ( language problem) that no acoustic output from the generator assembly means, there are only veeeeery low or no uncontrolled resonances which must be damped by the arm or other mechanical parts.
So the frequency response will be almost linear without massive HF resonance peak around 20 khz.
For MCs this means once more again, the behavior of the damping rubber and the suspension has most influence for the result, this has been confirmed by luckythedog.
Sonically i would say it makes me feeling the dynamic on the record is recreated a little bit better and no disturbing sound from the cartridge is a good thing anyway.
For good sound quality i say always as first rule, keep the noise floor as low as possible.
Surely vinyl has 'jitter' which is orders of magntitude worse than digital? Not to mention the tape masters which almost all older vinyl was made from. And then there are the digital masters from which most newer vinyl is made.Retsel said:
If you want to hear real jitter, try phase-locking a digital clock to a turntable!
No, preferences for vinyl are clearly preferences for something which vinyl adds to the music.
This post is now 107 pages long and I've searched the thread to see if anyone else has observed the following:
The mechanically-induced crosstalk in the Westrex "45/45" system is out-of-polarity. This is true both in cutting and playback. The polarity of one channel driving the cutterhead is reversed by design and per the specification. On playback, cartridge coil labeling corrects this inversion. The polarity inversion during cutting is to reduce vertical modulation when "Side," (L-R) amplitudes are high.
Mechanical errors during cutting and playback produce crosstalk that is out-of-polarity.
A cartridge playing back a test disc with tones produces mid-band crosstalk that is the opposite polarity of the driven signal. It's clearly visible on an oscilloscope but not using a meter.
"Normal" electronic crosstalk, e.g. blending, will have a crosstalk component that is in the same polarity as the driven channel.
A cart measuring 20 dB separation is not equivalent to blending resistors measuring 20 dB.
Without other additional playback impairments a CD (without significant crosstalk) playing back an identical master to a vinyl one will sound narrower in stereo width compared to a vinyl one because the vinyl crosstalk, being out of polarity, makes it sound wider and thus "better."
By careful adjustment of stereo width (partial blending) I can make a 20dB separation cartridge measure 30 dB. But it doesn't necessarily sound better...
An FFT of vinyl playback on tones also shows strong 2nd and 3rd order THD you won't see with digital mediums. I built a gizmo that allows an engineer to dial in 2nd and 3rd THD. His overall response was "It makes my mixes sound like a record." (I'll take that as a compliment BTW. Who doesn't want that?)
I'm not sure rumble or warp creates that much ambience other than some FM/doppler effects.
I did do some experiments where I steered warp to mono. Mono warp sounded much better than stereo warp and didn't make one's head spin using 'phones. Any ambient effect from stereo warp is, IMHO, not good.
My hunch is that the crosstalk being out of polarity and the THD contribution add ambience and warmth to vinyl.
On modern music there's also the problem with hyper clipping during PCM mastering which simply has to be avoided when cutting vinyl. Cutterheads are very, very expensive to repair. Mixes printed to vinyl just don't get slammed in mastering like they often do when mastered to digital mediums.
The mechanically-induced crosstalk in the Westrex "45/45" system is out-of-polarity. This is true both in cutting and playback. The polarity of one channel driving the cutterhead is reversed by design and per the specification. On playback, cartridge coil labeling corrects this inversion. The polarity inversion during cutting is to reduce vertical modulation when "Side," (L-R) amplitudes are high.
Mechanical errors during cutting and playback produce crosstalk that is out-of-polarity.
A cartridge playing back a test disc with tones produces mid-band crosstalk that is the opposite polarity of the driven signal. It's clearly visible on an oscilloscope but not using a meter.
"Normal" electronic crosstalk, e.g. blending, will have a crosstalk component that is in the same polarity as the driven channel.
A cart measuring 20 dB separation is not equivalent to blending resistors measuring 20 dB.
Without other additional playback impairments a CD (without significant crosstalk) playing back an identical master to a vinyl one will sound narrower in stereo width compared to a vinyl one because the vinyl crosstalk, being out of polarity, makes it sound wider and thus "better."
By careful adjustment of stereo width (partial blending) I can make a 20dB separation cartridge measure 30 dB. But it doesn't necessarily sound better...
An FFT of vinyl playback on tones also shows strong 2nd and 3rd order THD you won't see with digital mediums. I built a gizmo that allows an engineer to dial in 2nd and 3rd THD. His overall response was "It makes my mixes sound like a record." (I'll take that as a compliment BTW. Who doesn't want that?)
I'm not sure rumble or warp creates that much ambience other than some FM/doppler effects.
I did do some experiments where I steered warp to mono. Mono warp sounded much better than stereo warp and didn't make one's head spin using 'phones. Any ambient effect from stereo warp is, IMHO, not good.
My hunch is that the crosstalk being out of polarity and the THD contribution add ambience and warmth to vinyl.
On modern music there's also the problem with hyper clipping during PCM mastering which simply has to be avoided when cutting vinyl. Cutterheads are very, very expensive to repair. Mixes printed to vinyl just don't get slammed in mastering like they often do when mastered to digital mediums.
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Agreed (and well said).
One of my arbiters is centre mono narrowness, not width.
When width problems are cured, depth info becomes clear.
Dan.
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The cutterhead polarity is reversed on one channel. As one voice (cutterhead) coil pushes out the other one is retracting to create lateral modulation. (For L+R).
If the cutterhead did not have reversed polarity in one coil, and they were pushing together or retracting together, the resulting vector would be vertical.
Finally found the animation here: How to pack a stereo signal in one record groove
Note the polarity of the coils and the lateral motion for mono.
If the cutterhead did not have reversed polarity in one coil, and they were pushing together or retracting together, the resulting vector would be vertical.
Finally found the animation here: How to pack a stereo signal in one record groove
Note the polarity of the coils and the lateral motion for mono.
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Okay, I get this, but I don't understand why this mechanical crosstalk signal is INHERENTLY the opposite polarity of the main signal. Okay, you didn't say inherently, but it seems like you're implying it. Maybe it's just your observation that it's always opposite polarity.
The "perfect" system is aligned at 90 degrees. The crosstalk would be the same polarity if the cutter (or cartridge) channel sensitivity is off from 90 degrees in one direction, but it would be the opposite polarity if it's off in the other direction.
Maybe things (cutters and/or cartridges) are always a little off in the same direction? Is there some other mechanism that can cause crosstalk?
And thank you for correctly using polarity here. I've seen too many Official Writings in books and such that use the word phase when polarity is clearly meant.
@benb
I have observed it with multiple carts which has caused me to try to figure out why. My test record has left or right-only modulation so it's easily observed. (STR-100)
Still doing some research as to why but here's my best guess...
The cutterhead has one channel with reversed mechanical polarity. From what I can glean Neumann appears to to reverse the coil polarity, Westrex reversed magnet polarity. Don't know about Scully et al but the mechanical result is the same: One channel's mechanical polarity is flipped during cutting. The NAB 1964 spec addresses this.
The "playback head" (cart) has one coil's electrical polarity reversed to compensate.
When a single channel tone is cut and then played back, the mechanical systems - and their errors - are between the record and playback electrical processes.
When a single channel's groove is modulated (cut by the lathe) there is both a Mid (lateral) and a Side (vertical) mechanical component. The mechanical errors between record and playback convert some lateral to vertical and vice versa.
If you look at left-only modulation in the animation you'll notice the top of the right groove wall is a straight line. Imagine the right groove wall line modulating slightly in polarity with the left. See: How to pack a stereo signal in one record groove
The mechanical crosstalk on the right wall (using one's imagination to visualize) is in polarity with the left groove wall. But the right channel's coil is reversed to compensate for the polarity flip during cutting. Thus, the unintended mechanical modulation that is occurring in sympathy with the left grove wall impressed on the right wall is being electrically reversed in polarity by the coil winding.
Because the mechanical errors occur between record and playback the resulting electrical crosstalk polarity is flipped by the playback cart.
That's the current working theory...
I have observed it with multiple carts which has caused me to try to figure out why. My test record has left or right-only modulation so it's easily observed. (STR-100)
Still doing some research as to why but here's my best guess...
The cutterhead has one channel with reversed mechanical polarity. From what I can glean Neumann appears to to reverse the coil polarity, Westrex reversed magnet polarity. Don't know about Scully et al but the mechanical result is the same: One channel's mechanical polarity is flipped during cutting. The NAB 1964 spec addresses this.
The "playback head" (cart) has one coil's electrical polarity reversed to compensate.
When a single channel tone is cut and then played back, the mechanical systems - and their errors - are between the record and playback electrical processes.
When a single channel's groove is modulated (cut by the lathe) there is both a Mid (lateral) and a Side (vertical) mechanical component. The mechanical errors between record and playback convert some lateral to vertical and vice versa.
If you look at left-only modulation in the animation you'll notice the top of the right groove wall is a straight line. Imagine the right groove wall line modulating slightly in polarity with the left. See: How to pack a stereo signal in one record groove
The mechanical crosstalk on the right wall (using one's imagination to visualize) is in polarity with the left groove wall. But the right channel's coil is reversed to compensate for the polarity flip during cutting. Thus, the unintended mechanical modulation that is occurring in sympathy with the left grove wall impressed on the right wall is being electrically reversed in polarity by the coil winding.
Because the mechanical errors occur between record and playback the resulting electrical crosstalk polarity is flipped by the playback cart.
That's the current working theory...
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