Am I Doing This Wrong (Vinyl)?

I've heard it. Depends on a lot of factors, but the best LP replay has surface noise on another plane from the music, not intermodulating the music. The worse the LP replay, the greater the distortion and vice versa. Get the distortion low enough and the effect of the noise interacting with the music goes away. Counterintuitive but true. Has more to do with the perfection of set-up than the perfection of the gear, but the quality of set-up means addressing the synergy of the system, addressing cartridge loading, speaker-amp interaction and other variables. I've heard it, it's not an Urban Myth but it is also pretty rare.

 

After realizing that a fair part of the problem was my (lack of) maintenance of my rig, I'm definitely willing to give this setup a fair shake before passing any kind of serious judgment on it. Aside from getting the tools to make sure everything is probably aligned and the weight is set correctly, I do think a new pre-amp is in the cards.

Has anyone any experience with Emotiva's offering in this field? The price is right and I certainly like their powered monitors.

http://emotiva.com/products/pres-and-pros/xps-1

 

Google is your friend:

http://hometheaterhifi.com/reviews/amplifier/preamplifier/emotiva-xps-1-phono-preamplifier-review/

http://audiokarma.org/forums/index....s-1-the-next-great-budget-phono-stage.564717/

http://www.audioholics.com/gadget-reviews/emotiva-xps-1

The Lounge Audio phono pre has been getting raves, goes for $300:

http://www.loungeaudio.com

http://www.tonepublications.com/spotlight/2014-product-of-the-year-budget-component/

http://www.tonepublications.com/review/lounge-audio-phonostage/

I would rate this phono preamp above all the direct competitors that I’m familiar with (Cambridge, Graham Slee, Bellari, Jasmine, to name a few). Mated to a good MC cartridge and SUT, it makes music come alive, with drive and verve, in a way that’s really unheard of at this price level. Again, please bear in mind the context in which I’ve employed the Lounge. You could start off using it in a very basic system, even with a vintage Dual or Pioneer belt-drive, and build your way up around this unit. It’s that good.

http://www.wallofsound.ca/audioreviews/the-300-dragon-slayer-lounge-audios-lcr-mk-iii-phono-stage/

 

Many thanks.

 

I have to assume phrases like 'on another plane' and 'interacting' are intended to imply that the noise is somehow 'separate' from the music, but separate in what way, in terms of the frequency spectrum, spatially? Make no mistake about it, the noise is occurring simultaneously with the music, so it's not separate in terms of time. Frequency-wise, maybe a good setup disproportionately reduces noise in the frequency band that the bulk of musical information is in (40 Hz - 12 kHz)? But if noise is being reduced uniformly across the entire spectrum, the noise level is simply being lowered. Spatially, if we're talking about stereo specifically, maybe a good setup pushes stereo noise out to the very edges of the stereo field? Otherwise, if we're talking about noise simply being reduced and dominated even more so by the music, I certainly wouldn't use the word 'separate', or even more romantically, 'on another plane' () to describe that phenomenon.

@Mr Bass: I appreciate your input. I reread your posts and I suppose there may be some merit to what you said regarding stereo (as I just wrote above), though with mono that certainly wouldn't be the case.

 

Though all the above is not to say that if I had to choose between relatively low-level noise being 'separated' from the music or being blended in with it, I'd certainly rather the latter since the music would do the job of masking the noise, meaning I would think the separating of the noise would actually draw the listener's attention to it even more.

 

When a system has the kind of focus where the directional aspects of stereo are really successful at reproducing the sense of depth in a recording, [like the hall capture in Argo's great series of King's College Cambridge Choir LPs] one gets the impression that the sounds are coming from a different "plane" than the noise cues and there are a lot fewer of those clicks and pops as well. I get the impression that inferior phono preamps [or improperly loaded cartridges] amplify the surface noise, bringing its sound forward in the stereo imagery. Additionally, I've found that tube driven systems have been more convincing with this illusion than solid state gear.

That "blend" usually results in the music being modulated by the surface noise, increasing distortion. That "gritty" sound is what you get when they blend.

 

I think @RobinL expresses it well above. Yes stereo greatly enhances the apparent separation because you have left - right and also front - back as possible dimensions of separation. As for prominence, the lower the distortion of the stereo system the less prominent that clicks and pops become. This is because the noises tend to overload the audio system momentarily so that distortion is added to the noise. Overload or headroom margins on phono preamps make the biggest difference, but of course the rest of the system can also contribute distortion to these sharp sounds.


Also: one rough and ready test for analog system distortion level is how dead sounding the cartridge sounds in the leadout deadwax of the record. Ideally it should sound like a tiny point is traveling in a narrow groove.

 

I hope someday to get my Scott 299B up and running again. Of all the phono-based systems I've owned, the ones with the Scott 299B managed to be the most musical, least 'noisy'. I'd guess the phono stage has a lot of headroom and distortion of the amp stage is primarily second order.

 

Yes I am a big fan of tube phono preamps and I have had a couple of excellent SS models which while very nice sounding don't have the purity and finesse with the tubed models. The caveat is of course how quiet they are. The older model integrateds with phono circuit like the Scott were much better built than the later SS receivers of the 70s and 80s IMO.

 

Play a semi bad soiled lp with a cheap cartridge and then play it again with a more expensive one, lets say a grado blue, which appears to have a smaller diamond tip, which is also a little bit narrower.It reads less the edges of the grooves, so the surface noise appers to be more 'back' and more on the left and right of the music.
Conical styluses i think are the ones that 'read' more on upper sides of the grooves while the elliptical ones reproduce less surface noise, im not sure about the shape but some types of styluses tend to have this characteristic thus making them more suitable for old worn records.

OOOOOHHHHHH Steeleye Span!!!!

 

Welcome, brother, to the rabbit hole! I get where you're coming from. Vinyl is a lot of work. That being said , i have to say now i prefer listening to vinyle than my cd's. There's a "depth" that i dont get from other formats. I dont have a lot of $ but i started slow, researched (peeps on this site r fantastic) bought used & upgraded slowly, selling my old gear to partially finance newer gear. I went solid state all the way. You 'll know when u arrive at audio nirvana. You'll b amazed at the diff. Try not to stress out too much. After all, arent we supposed to ENJOY the music?