Why your perfect setup is all wrong: How to perfectly playback vintage vinyl

Discussion in 'Audio Hardware' started by Ghostworld, Oct 23, 2016.

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  1. Robert C

    Robert C Forum Resident

    Location:
    London, UK
    Seek help.
     
  2. Agitater

    Agitater Forum Resident

    Location:
    Toronto
    Your posit is a false premise because it's technically incorrect. Therefore, everything that follows it was incorrect.

    Microscopic analysis of a stylus playing a groove clearly shows that nothing in the groove deforms. The material in the groove is much harder than the compliance of the cantilever/suspension, hence the stylus and the cantilever to which it's attached do the moving. No deformation of anything on the groove walls.

    There is no high temperature of any kind generated by the stylus tracking the groove. Measured temperature differences between the groove or LP surface and the surround air, platter and everything else are vanishingly low and so far below anything that could create pliability that any such thing is impossible.

    You've imagined a couple of things and then presented them without first checking existing knowledge on the subject. Sorry.
     
  3. TubularBell

    TubularBell Forum Resident

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    Finland
  4. JamesD1957

    JamesD1957 Forum Resident

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    Cypress, Texas
    Why do I suddenly have the urge to eat some Cocoa Puffs.........
     
  5. Combination

    Combination Forum Resident

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    New Orleans
  6. Mr Bass

    Mr Bass Chevelle Ma Belle

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    Mid Atlantic

    Do you have a link or reference for these statements? Thanks
     
  7. Doug Sclar

    Doug Sclar Forum Legend

    Location:
    The OC
    Actually this is one of the best reasons to make hi-res needledrops. You CAN optimize all the parameters on a record by record basis and only have to do it once for each record.
     
  8. avbuff

    avbuff Forum Resident

    Location:
    Central NY
    Wow, kinda takes the fun out of it!
     
  9. Tullman

    Tullman Senior Member

    Location:
    Boston MA
    That ain't ever gonna happen here.
     
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  10. tootull

    tootull Looking through a glass onion

    Location:
    Canada
  11. spridle

    spridle Forum Resident

    Location:
    Cleveland
    I think you should let someone else science for you.
     
  12. Doug Sclar

    Doug Sclar Forum Legend

    Location:
    The OC
    We do that, but we've also only done about 100 records so far. What's amazing is that I can hear minute changes in the turntable setup here after we convert to 176k-24b. We do the work in San Diego and shuttle the files back and forth. I'd have never thought we'd be able to hear these minute changes via digital files, but we surely do.
     
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  13. Agitater

    Agitater Forum Resident

    Location:
    Toronto
    Why sure I do. There are lots of sources. Factmag is a good one, and this video was initially shot through a scanning electron microscope. Start watching at about the 4 minute mark. As you get into the meat of the video, it will likely dawn on you how off-target the OP's premise was and how a typical LP would be nothing but junk after only a couple of plays if anything in the OP's premise was accurate. The first part and the later part of the piece also has video scans of CD, Blu-ray and DVD surfaces (which should also help to educate some members here). There are many, many other, similar videos. Groove walls in Microgroove or later LPs (the only ones that have been video scanned, to the best of my knowledge) don't distort or melt.

    You will see in the video that nothing deforms or softens or melts. Allegedly authoritative people including such audiophile literary luminaries such as Robert Harley have written brief essays on LPs and various other current music reproduction methods. In his LP piece, by way of example, he states that the passage of the stylus through the groove generates a tiny point of 500F heat that briefly melts the vinyl that magically reforms itself as the stylus passes. It's complete nonsense, because nobody has ever done a temperature test of the exact stylus contact point during play. Materials scientists estimate that the microscopic contact point of a spherical stylus playing a groove might momentarily (for a microsecond or less) transfer 300-500 F, but nobody has ever directly measured any such thing. as with so many things promoted by Harley and his pseudo-science confreres. As a reference, I direct you to the Music Reference Services Quarterly, volume 1, 1992, issue 1, and the article "Preservation Guidelines for the Storage, Handling, Playback, and Cleaning of LPs, CDs, and Audio Tapes" available in your nearest reference library (unless you can find it online). I believe the article contains one of the few temperature rating guidelines for frequencies of play related to potential heat damage.

    What the OP misses, aside from a basic lack of inquiry into the existing, very solid research and documented observations, is that a significantly greater amount of groove wear from repeated plays of an LP will occur with an improperly adjusted cartridge and stylus compared to a properly adjusted one. The heat estimates made by non-scientists are just that - non-science. In fact, mechanical action is needed to generate significant heat in the case of a stylus tracking a groove, but the microgroove of all LPs (bascially since 1949). The transcript of the Proceedings of the IRE (Volume: 37, Issue: 8, Aug. 1949) lays it all out, but again you'll have to hit the reference library to read the full article. Basically, with the introduction of the microgroove, and with further advancements in cantilever technology from the late '50s onward, only an astonishingly tiny amount of mechanical energy is needed from the stylus wigging in the groove to generate sufficient voltage to drive a phono stage. The amount of actual heat involved is irrelevant.

    It is true, however, that residual heat can be deliberately built up/stored in the LP material if, for example, somebody repeatedly plays the same three minute track over and over and over and over and over, etc., etc., again. Try it sometime on an LP you don't like using a stylus you don't care about. Obviously, anything can be done if one works hard enough at it. In practical terms and in normal use, there is no damaging or deforming heat. Again, one of the enemies of LPs is the incorrectly adjusted stylus and cartridge. Use a protractor and work slowly and carefully and patiently. That last bit is the key - far too many audiophiles rush the alignment and tracking force adjustment processes when they should be taking their sweet time about it.
     
  14. Ghostworld

    Ghostworld Senior Member Thread Starter

    Location:
    US
    But my thinking is that previously played records are often have been damaged by incorrect setup and the grooves deformed to the out of alignment contour of the previous playback equipment. If a record was played on a turntable set to 9 grams of pressure, you'd get the best playback with the least distortion if you set your tracking weight to 9 grams, too.
     
  15. Dennis0675

    Dennis0675 Hyperactive!

    Location:
    Ohio
    My thinking is that once the grooves are damaged, they are not going to sound right no matter what you do. A properly set up cart is going to play what is there, giving it 8 times the recommended VTF isn't going to make it work better.
     
  16. Agitater

    Agitater Forum Resident

    Location:
    Toronto
    Why? You've made up a premise that isn't based on any facts. First of all, how would you be able to know how some randomly chosen used LP was played including the VTF, VTA, azimuth and alignment, by its previous owner? And if you did know all those things, you'd then also have to know the precise amount of wear by first examining the entire groove using a scanning electron microscope. Then, you'd have to find some way of precisely duplicating the previous owner's stylus/cartridge/arm combination. After all though, there's no rational theory (much less research) to support your proposition, because without also comparing an original, unplayed groove of the exact same LP from the same pressing run, you've have no way of telling exactly how much wear had taken place overall or where in the groove it was better or worse for wear. There are three other problems, in addition, that would make your proposition impossible.

    Sorry. It might have been an interesting thought experiment, but it really doesn't get anywhere practical. Short of a mm by mm comparison of an unplayed groove with a played groove, you have no way of assessing wear patterns or degrees of any kind. And even then, why does it follow in your thinking that something other than a properly adjusted stylus and cartridge would not be the best way to play the LP in question? In fact, a properly adjusted 1-1.75 gram stylus/cartridge combination of respectable manufacture is mostly likely to far more easily and accurately track a groove with wear.

    To some extent, you may have inadvertently fallen prey to the pennies-on-the-headshell thing that people used to do when console stereos were still all the rage in the '50s and '60s. Mishandling of LPs and 78s in those days resulted in significant warps, bad scratches and other nastiness. The extra weight on a headshell caused premature wear on the cantilever (which invariably failed after a week or two over overweighted play, requiring a replacement stylus and removal of the pennies). The extra weight buried the stylus too deeply into the groove and actually made tracking worse in many situations, always creating worse sound, and caused the VTA to change drastically and the cantilever to frequently bottom out - but the stylus sometimes stayed in the groove even as it did more damage. Same goes for your over-VTF/deliberate misalignment premise. It's a non-starter, but it forced people to think hard for a moment about what actually goes on in a groove. Check out the video link I supplied above in my previous post - the video is fascinating.
     
  17. Mr Bass

    Mr Bass Chevelle Ma Belle

    Location:
    Mid Atlantic
    I thought the consensus was that using a different stylus profile than the one which caused the damage would contact more areas of the groove which remain Undamaged. I think this should work best when moving between a spherical stylus profile and a line contact profile which sits deeper in the groove.
     
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  18. rcspkramp

    rcspkramp Forum Resident

    Location:
    Vancouver, WA USA
    Just buy new records.
     
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  19. Schoolmaster Bones

    Schoolmaster Bones Poe's Lawyer

    Location:
    ‎The Midwest
    I don't think so.
     
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  20. The Pinhead

    The Pinhead KING OF BOOM AND SIZZLE IN HELL

    I think the OP made a ¨drunk post¨, for the other thread he started about aligning by eye was pretty good and well written.
     
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  21. Bananas&blow

    Bananas&blow It's just that demon life has got me in its sway

    Location:
    Pacific Beach, CA
    And only play them once. Audio nirvana.

    [x] Troll Thread
     
  22. The FRiNgE

    The FRiNgE Forum Resident

    I wonder if your observation relates more to how the record was cut? If the cutting head was set at 95 degrees vs 92 degrees, this difference may be very audible, especially for a line contact stylus as we must adjust the stylus rake angle to the groove. However for the conical stylus and mild elliptical, a few degrees makes no difference at all. Groove damage varies widely, scoring, lapping, deformity, melting, all of which produce some form of distortion. The azimuth, IMO does not do much to alleviate damage and wear. The stylus type, diameter and shape does make a difference when groove wear is localized. Play of a record on a different shaped stylus other than the previous which caused the damage, may track an undamaged portion of the groove.

    Just some thoughts here, rock on,
    Steve VK
     
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  23. Dave S

    Dave S Forum Resident

    Did you actually watch the video?

    First, he coated the vinyl with silver. Second, he couldn't actually photograph the stylus moving in the grooves. Instead, he photographed the stylus in the groove, then moved the stylus 50 microns before photographing it again. The process was repeated until he had his film. That's not to say the stylus will deform the record, only that this film is essentially screenshots of stylus on metal.
     
  24. missan

    missan Forum Resident

    Location:
    Stockholm
    The reason for the grooves not being deformed is that the time for building up necessary forces are too short. The contact points at styli are in particular places at an extremely short time, and deforming cannot happen instantly, it will time. At the slowest groove velocity(at inner grooves), the groove velocity is still more than 200mym/ms; and a contact point length is around 2-4mym! That means for a ms the needle will contact 50-100 times its own length. And this is with the slowest case.
     
  25. Agitater

    Agitater Forum Resident

    Location:
    Toronto
    But it was basically just as potentially damaging to LPs as his OP here.

    Lots of people want shortcuts - they want to get things done faster, and they want the results to be just right. Me too! The problem is, very often shortcuts, haste and estimations by eye or by ear without the benefit of basic and inexpensive tools designed specifically to make the work accurate, create poor results.

    The tools - protractors and gauges - were originally developed because it was found that doing things by eye and by ear alone weren't producing good results.
     
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