Many LPs are incompatible with normal cartridges - can't be played without sibilance

I’ve just made what to me is the most surprising discovery since returning to vinyl some years ago. It’s that many LPs, especially new, audiophile-grade LPs, are incompatible with normal, everyday cartridges. Depending on your viewpoint, you can put this two ways: either, you can say that mastering engineers are cutting many LPs that are incompatible with normal, everyday cartridges, or that manufacturers of normal, everyday cartridges are making cartridges that are incompatible with many LPs. Either way, the two parties are working to different and slightly incompatible standards, and the result is that many LPs cannot be played without sibilance, or distortion to the esses, on at least some tracks. The symptoms are hissing or spitting esses or esses that come out with a ch or tz sound instead of a natural ess.

This realisation has come to me after years of trying to solve this problem, swapping out and/or upgrading components in my audio system in an attempt to find the cause. I started with a Rega P3 turntable and a Sumiko Blue Point No 2 cartridge but I was troubled by sibilance on some LPs, especially new issues, from the very start. I bought the HiFi News test record and educated myself on the subject of turntable set-up using this forum and other online resources, all to no avail. I then swapped the Sumiko for the popular Denon DL 110 high output moving coil cartridge but it didn’t make any significant difference. Then I upgraded the turntable to a Michell Orbe with an SMEV arm. This didn’t make any difference to the sibilance either. I then took a stack of my most troublesome LPs to my Michell dealer and played them back on his system and they sounded just as sibilant. (I can’t remember what cartridge he had but it was a fairly expensive MC.) At that point I decided that some LPs must be sibilant to begin with, probably because they had not been recorded very well, and that it was something I just had to live with.

However, I was still puzzled by the fact that, very often, the CD version of the same record had no sibilance at all. So I didn’t give up. On this forum two of the most recommended cartridges for tracking and sibilance-busting were the Shure M97xE and the Audio Technica AT440MLA. The latter was said to be bright and I can’t stand brightness so I tried the Shure. It made no difference to the sibilance. Finally, I bought a Grado Prestige Gold cartridge after hearing of Grado’s reputation for a warm sound and I loved the sound but it still didn’t get rid of the sibilance, not at all.

To get to the point, not so long ago I bought the DCC LP There Goes Rhymin’ Simon and was very disappointed to find the esses on it sounded really pretty awful on my set-up, which I couldn’t understand. I was searching the forum here to find out if anyone else had this problem when I came across a thread in which someone said they had problems with the other DCC Paul Simon LP, Paul Simon

http://www.stevehoffman.tv/forums/showthread.php?t=53944

and there was a post from Steve saying

So I started to think, maybe I need to have yet another go at this cartridge thing. What cartridge does Steve use? He often talks about those old Shure V15 cartridges. You can’t buy those any more but I remembered there was something special about the stylus. So I started reading about different stylus shapes and thought, OK, I know I won’t like the AT440MLA but it does have a line contact stylus which I haven’t tried before and it’s the cheapest way I know of to get a cartridge featuring one of those.

So I got one and – it’s like a miracle! I simply cannot believe what I’m hearing. That line contact stylus slices through all the sibilance and can take almost anything you can throw at it. Listening to Steve’s There Goes Rhymin’ Simon brought me out in goosebumps, it was so thrilling and beautiful to listen to. My Speakers Corner Songs in the Key of Life sounded like the Japanese SHM SACD for purity of sound, only far, far better. I was like a kid in a candy store, going through all the LPs I had that I’d condemned to the “unlistenable” section, playing them with the new cartridge and grinning from ear to ear as I listened to the perfect, pure esses coming out of the speakers. Even the Classic Records LP of Peter Gabriel’s So (33rpm), which I’ve often described as the most sibilant LP I own, was a pleasure to listen to! I just can’t tell you what a huge effect this has had on the happiness I get from playing LPs.

This is not at all about the AT440MLA which many would find too bright for their tastes and which can probably be bettered by other cartridges but about the fact that there are many LPs on the market today which simply cannot be played properly using ordinary cartridges with a conventional elliptical stylus. A couple of things I think about this are:

1. It needs far more publicity. There must be plenty of people like me who are being disappointed time and time again with their LP purchases because they are trying to play the LPs with an incompatible cartridge. Maybe there should be a warning label on the LP cover - you know, like the ones they used to put on the early stereo LPs warning people not to play them with mono cartridges. As Steve points out, if you are trying to play one of his DCC LPs with an ordinary cartridge, you could be permanently damaging the LP as well as getting poor quality sound from it.

2. I think anyone buying an LP, even an audiophile LP, should be able to play it with any cartridge of reasonable quality without encountering distortion. So it seems to me that there is an industry problem here – the groove shape being cut by mastering engineers cannot be satisfactorily traced by the cartridges being made by mainstream manufacturers. That’s surely bad for the vinyl industry as well as for customers – shouldn’t the two of them get together and agree a standard so that LPs play back correctly?

Have to go now – I have so many LPs I can’t wait to hear properly for the first time!

 

Please provide more examples of LPs you believe are somehow faulty. This has not been my experience. Could it be that your old cartridge was just not aligned properly?

 

It's simple. It's the physical limitations of vinyl, at least when it comes to IGD.

I bought an AT120e cart and I don't get sibilance anymore. That cost $80. Hell, even my M97xe, though it sucked with IGD, I got no sibilance. It wasn't really rocket science.

 

Get a Jico SAS stylus for your Shure M97xE.

Grados are not known as the best trackers, neither is the Sumiko BP.

 

+1 I have that combo and have not had the negative experiences with sibilance that you describe.

By the way, I admire your determination to find a solution to the problems you were having and congratulate you on being able to thoroughly enjoy records you previously had not been able to.

 

Paul Simon - Paul Simon I find very difficult, and I have the normally unflappable AT ML440a. It is just too hot. I don't have the DCC, just the Columbia from the 5LP box set. Maybe the pressing was substandard. I still say it is too hot in the extreme highs. It doesn't sound especially bright, IMO. But those sssssibilants!

 

Hmm....I don't find my AT 440 MLA bright at all. My TT came with a Goldring 1012 - now THAT was too bright, and didn't track inner grooves very well at all. Neither did its companion styli - the 1022 and 1042. I commented in another thread today that I'm enjoying vinyl more than ever thanks to the AT 440 MLA. I still get IGD on some records, but I chalk that up more to prior-owner abuse than anything else. As for newer records, I have a few Sundazed that give me some IGD, but again, it is greatly diminished with my AT440MLA.

I'd love to see more examples of hard-to-track albums though, such as the Paul Simon. I think I have a thread like that in the archives.

 

I have never liked that effect, and I hear it on many systems that I did not choose to purchase. In the systems I use, excessive sibilance is due to increasing stylus wear and when it gets unbearable I get a new stylus or cartridge and it goes away.

I don't doubt that modern audiophile disks are cut to, and beyond, the limits of some technology to play back. The same was true of Mercury and Living Stereo disks in the 50's and 60's.

If this sibilance is due to your cartridge not being able to track the groove correctly you want to fix that. In many cases I've found that electronics is to blame, especially overload in preamps. With increasing levels due to high output cartridges (MC or MM) and 45rpm super cut discs you're not putting out 5mv anymore. If your MM input can't take 1V peaks cleanly you may be in trouble on transients.

 

I was thinking of starting a thread that would be a list of LPs that couldn't be tracked properly with ordinary elliptical styluses. It's not an alignment issue - the number of cartridges I've tried, multiple times per cartridge, plus the dealer's set-up, rule that out. I know many people don't have a problem with sibilance and I don't think I did when I was younger but I think people have widely varying degrees of sensitivity to it.

Funny you should say that! That was going to be my next move! Or else, the AT-OC9 ML3. I'd be interested to hear of any other cartridges that have got this problem licked.

Many thanks, dschwab.

I haven't heard either version yet. Have you tried the CD? It's just been reissued by Sony Legacy. That's my usual test - if the CD sounds as bad, you know it's the original recording. But Paul Simon did seem to favour a very hot sound. And there's one sibilant on the DCC There Goes Rhymin' Simon that even my AT440MLA won't track - in the line "In the city of my dreams," the soft cee in "city" sounds like someone's tearing their shirt in two!

 

Crappy carts, badly aligned will cause sibilance problems with hot records. It doesn't have to be newly pressed audiophile records.

Look at my profile - and please do not laugh. I have been planning on a TT upgrade for many years, but I just never pull the trigger. My crapola Stanton table isn't in the same continent as any Rega. When it was fitted with the stock Stanton cart, I had major sibilance issues on some records - from the Classic Records mono The Who Sell Out to every stock Atlantic records copy of Yes - Fragile (several different pressings).

One day I hooked up an old (I MEAN OLD), beat up AT cart I had from when I was 19 years old (1975). It had a bent stylus. It came off an old turntable, and for some unknown reason I had saved it.

Sibilance gone.

I bought an ATML440a and haven't looked back.

Listen - I am NOT hawking the AT brand, I know that it is not everyone's flavor. What I learned was that sibilance problems have more to do with stylus/tonearm configuration than they do with the vintage of the record. You do not have to have an unlimited budget to solve this problem... you just have to figure out where the problem is.

 

I wonder if the Dark Side of the Moon 30th Anniversary (Gray/Sax) fits that category. SH and others said it was the best sounding version, but numerous people reported sibilance on it. I also recall someone saying there were some carts that tracked it perfectly.

 

The new Legacy pressing of "Electric Ladyland" is also very sibilent.

 

I have the Warners remastered CD of Paul Simon/Paul Simon, and it was my understanding from the SH Forum that the new Sony edition is the same mastering. So, obviously with a CD you will not have tracking problems, but the sibilants are on occasion still a tad splattery IIRC. Much less than vinyl. I have considered tracking down an original Columbia CD of that album, not because of the sibilants, but because the Warners remaster of that albums sounds dynamically unexciting to me, compared to the vinyl. I sense it was compressed/limited.

I used to have trouble tracking Jan Garbarek's saxophone on his albums Dansere and Dis, and maybe on Keith Jarrett's My Song as well. That was before I had the Audio Technica ML150 and ML440. I consider certain passages on those LPs difficult for lesser carts to track.

 

I've tamed the sibilance on my Ortofon 2m Bronze (on a Rega P5) with parallel loading resistors. Its made a world of difference! I took some 1-piece RCA bronze Y-couplers. I plug the TT into one hole, and into the other, I have put together a set of plugs with different resisters inside. Makes it easy to try different values until you get the right one. Things are very tame these days, with really no loss (and maybe even better) low end.

 

Audiophile LP discs are pushing the limitations of the medium. They are cut with the best pickups and tonearms in mind and not the average setup. If you have an average setup, play average records on it. Most audiophile issues don't squash dynamic range or filter high and low frequency information. And make sure thy setup and overhang are correct.

 

I have some go-to test LPs that come in handy if I want to check a cart's alignment/performance for sibilance.

Side 1 / track 1 of REM's "New Adventures in Hi Fi" is a tough one. Anything less elliptical than a .2 x .7 mil brings the sibilance. My AT cart with Shibata stylus, of course, can play anything it seems...

 

I think the whole thing started in the late seventies - early eighties with the touted moving coil cartridges and the ignoring of trackability. Just in the name of that "wonderful" sound.

A lot of these cartridges have very poor compliance/trackability.

Trackability was just another spec. audiophiles chose to ignore since it was a traditional thing in audiophilia and these new fangled guys wanted to appear superior to all that. They even went so far as to say the V15 Type III sounds dull and boring to bolster their case. It's ridiculous.

I never did buy into all that (admittedly partially due to lack of money) and stayed with high compliant/light tracking cartridges like the V15s, ADCs, Empires, etc. and I do have an AT440MLa and I have never had problems with distorted sibilance.

It just has never been an issue. I have never even thought about it since it is so rare an occurance.

I don't really think it has to do with the shape of the stylus tip so much either. I have had good results with all different shapes.

I still think the pro high compliance engineers back then were on the right track or in the right groove, if you will. After all, it is a diamond being pushed around in a plastic groove and the easier it is for forces to do that, the better.

Doug

 

I have played audiophile LPs on an AT-LP120 turntable, a Numark TT-500, Dual turntables, etc. without problems.

 

Plenty of moving coil cartridges out there with line contact stylii. It's just the AT440mla is a SH forums favorite so we rarely hear about cartridges from Zyx, Ortofon MC, etc which all track just as well and sound better. The lower moving mass of a low output coil design does give you higher resolution than a moving magnet.

 

The late 70s models, starting with (say) the Supex SD900 and on, really didn't track very well. I preferred my Decca London.

Within a few years things had changed and my Linn Karma (still made by Supex) could sail through all bands on HFS75 at it's regular 1.75 and a bit grams. Much smaller tip mass and more controlled suspension parts. Same for the progression to Koetsu models.

Cutting studios tend to want lighter (<>1g) tracking cartridges and typically what's seen in articles are the old (and unobtainable!) discontinued warhorses of the Stanton 881s and Shure V15vxMR or V15III. Studios laid in stocks of these when they went out of production.

Fortunately, audiophile quality control is done on more modern equipment; the production teams (like Music Matters) use items like VPI tables and Lyra cartridges.

It's mostly setup, setup, setup and a small side order of have a good unworn and clean stylus tip. I'll never be caught without several alternative styli and/or cartridges to swap out when I'm suspicious of any one's condition.

 

I'll add PJ Harvey's new album Let England Shake to the list. I've tried two different copies and both have distorted highs at the same places (most glaringly on "The Last Living Rose" [Side 1, Track 2]). I'd love to try the AT440a but am petrified of installing and aligning a new cartridge on my TT.

 

If you take your TT to an audio store that specializes in higher-end gear, they will, for a fee, take care of the installation and setup.

 

I cannot stand sibilance; drives me nuts. I've had issues with Grado carts & even Dynavectors but now I run a Zu Denon DL-103 on a P25 and a DL-110 on a P1, and carefully set up both myself. I have pressings ranging from classical to jazz to metal, plenty of audiophile pressings and even thrift store finds. I can't remember the last time I've heard sibilance on any of them.

 

I have never suffered from sibilance at least with any cartridge costing over say £50. I think some of the models BacktoVinyl has tried are known to be poor designes in this area but I have no personal experience of them. Cartridges I have used with no particular problems include the budget AT95, Goldring 1042, Ortofon MC15, MC25FL, Dynavector 20XL and ATOC9 MLII. A mixture of eliptical and line contact designs. A line contact is not essential to avoid sibilance and inner groove distortion.

With a great arm like the SME I would suggest AT33EV as apparantly it is less bright than that ATMLA440a or ATOC9. This is in fact an eliptical which may be better as I have found the ATOC9 can be hypersensitive to LP surface damage. Unfortunately this means going to the cost of MC preamp or SUT but in my experience the best choice of good trackers are found with low output MC's.

 

None of these records have sibilance with a quality cartridge properly aligned eliptical or line contact. In my experience these 3 are superbly cut and pressed on vinyl.