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¿End-of-side distortion — inherent to vinyl?

By spending stupid amounts of money, we can get it to sound almost as good as a cheap DVD player. But why bother? The software to play new music on it is now stupidly expensive, and most new music does not get a vinyl release.

And in spite of what you say, the vast majority of S/H vinyl is well & truly knackered.



Chris

Actually as an avid Vinyl nut I have to agree here..as much as I love playing around and fiddling with Record Players ( engineer at heart and self confessed Alfa nut) I have had tracks from films on DVD played on a cheap LG DVD player which absolutely walk all over any Vinyl I have played for sheer realism and immediacy..I put the film on, sit back and all of a sudden a song will come along which just blows me away. In contrast everything I play on either my Meridian or Shanling CD players sounds good but nowhere that good.
 
I am not an expert but I will trust Touraj Moghaddam knows what he is doing, and it seems to work very well in my experience.

I think actually you do need increased anti-skating force towards the centre of the record because the angle of the groove is increased which in combination with velocity throws the arm inwards with increasing force.

I will try to explain this in the simplest terms possible. Please read it carefully:
the groove exerts a force on the stylus in the direction it travels. This force is affected (increases with) tracking weight and groove speed. Appropriate anti-skating force increases alongside increases of tracking weight. Appropriate anti-skating force increases alongside increases of groove speed. Groove speed is less in the centre so less anti-skating force is required there.

If you want me to provide an explanation of these simple facts in terms of force equilibrium, I will, but I hope the above is enough for you to see that you are mistaken.
 
I´ll get my coat whilst I rejoice in my lack of aural sensitivity. How I love my (Ittok) 3rd hole.
 
No it is not. In order for the play back to be accurate, the pick up arm has to exactly mimic the cutting head used to make the original acetate. Unless you use a parallell tracking arm, a conventional pivoted arm will only do this at a single point on the record.

By this argument there is no such thing as a circle. In reality, the errors in positions close to the optimum point are infinitessimally small. In fact, they are so small that it is unlikely that the CD medium would be fine-grained enough to resolve them.

By spending stupid amounts of money, we can get it to sound almost as good as a cheap DVD player. But why bother? The software to play new music on it is now stupidly expensive, and most new music does not get a vinyl release.

I am currently enjoying excellent reproduction from a deck and cartridge which together cost me a little over £400. Recently I bought 8000 singles for £100, or a penny and a quarter per track. I don't regard that as "stupid amounts of money".

And in spite of what you say, the vast majority of S/H vinyl is well & truly knackered.

A statistic which, quite frankly, you have pulled out of your crowded arse.
 
But why bother? .... most new music does not get a vinyl release

That depends entirely on your musical taste. The vast majority of the new music that I listen to is available on vinyl. OTOH, much of it never makes it to CD or when it does, only after a considerable delay. A music fan needs playback options for all eventualities.
 
I will try to explain this in the simplest terms possible. Please read it carefully:
the groove exerts a force on the stylus in the direction it travels. This force is affected (increases with) tracking weight and groove speed. Appropriate anti-skating force increases alongside increases of tracking weight. Appropriate anti-skating force increases alongside increases of groove speed. Groove speed is less in the centre so less anti-skating force is required there.

If you want me to provide an explanation of these simple facts in terms of force equilibrium, I will, but I hope the above is enough for you to see that you are mistaken.

Thanks for the condescension but you are wrong: you have completely ommitted to take account of the angle of the groove wall and the friction caused on the stylus which causes the inward pull in the first place - if it were tracking a straight groove at 1000mph there would still be no pull either side. Yes the speed decreases which would mean your explanation is correct, but the increasing angle outweighs this part of the equation.

mat
 
By this argument there is no such thing as a circle. In reality, the errors in positions close to the optimum point are infinitessimally small. In fact, they are so small that it is unlikely that the CD medium would be fine-grained enough to resolve them.



I am currently enjoying excellent reproduction from a deck and cartridge which together cost me a little over £400. Recently I bought 8000 singles for £100, or a penny and a quarter per track. I don't regard that as "stupid amounts of money".



A statistic which, quite frankly, you have pulled out of your crowded arse.

It is nevertheless true. You simply cannot refute mathematical proofs, inconvenient as they are. And as a vinyl fan, you will no doubt know the reason why 12" p/u arma are available. It is to reduce the playback errors induced by the inherant limitations of vinyl playback.

And how many of those singles were in any way playable? More iportantly, how many of them did you actuallty want the music on? £0.0125 per single is a stupid amount of money if the record is a) f*cked, b) shite. And even if they wer all 1st pressing masterpieces by the greatest bands ever, the fact remains that if you are in any way interested in new music, you are mostly f*cked.

And I base my contention that the vast majority of S/H LPs are knackered from my own experience. I have been collecting music since 1965. I have about 1200 LPs & 2500 singles/EPs. A goodly proportion of which I bought second hand.

And even at the peak of vinyl's popularity, most 2nd hand LPs were ****ed. They had mostly been played on some mass market groove grinder, were covered in fingerprints & fag ash & quite honestly fit only for landfill.

Now, you might want to be the audio equivalent of a steam train enthusiast, getting covered in soot & shite whilst taking an inferior form of transport from one place nobody has heard of to another nobody wants to go to, and that's just fine.

But at least do not try to con people who do not know any better that your obsession has anything whatsoever to do with the search for true audio excellence. It is an anachronistic, technologically inferior dead end used mostly for playing sub-standard (all the good condition LPs having been snapped up years ago) old music.

And stick that up YOUR arse, sunshine.

Chris
 
I will try to explain this in the simplest terms possible. Please read it carefully:
the groove exerts a force on the stylus in the direction it travels. This force is affected (increases with) tracking weight and groove speed. Appropriate anti-skating force increases alongside increases of tracking weight. Appropriate anti-skating force increases alongside increases of groove speed. Groove speed is less in the centre so less anti-skating force is required there.

If you want me to provide an explanation of these simple facts in terms of force equilibrium, I will, but I hope the above is enough for you to see that you are mistaken.



Gosh ! I think I'm mentally distorting after reading that. I don't dispute the physics, but bite-sized sentences may have eased my aged brain in grappling with it.

WHY is tracking force higher on the inner groove wall when one might think that outward pressure would prevail? I know you're right, but why?

Does the fact that the arm is pivoted outside the circumference of the record have any bearing on this?

If bias should increase with playing weight, why do Koetsu cart's much prefer little or no anti-skating when, say, a Lyra playing at .25 of a gramme lower performs better with a much higher bias?
 
Thanks for the condescension but you are wrong: you have completely ommitted to take account of the angle of the groove wall and the friction caused on the stylus which causes the inward pull in the first place - if it were tracking a straight groove at 1000mph there would still be no pull either side. Yes the speed decreases which would mean your explanation is correct, but the increasing angle outweighs this part of the equation.

Sorry to sound condescending, but I don't think you have understood why an anti-skating force is required.

The stylus sees a straight groove, because it only touches the record at one tangential point. If your cartridge is aligned properly, then there is no practical variation in groove direction during the playing of a record. The groove is always dragging the stylus in the direction in which the cantilever points. That direction of the dragging force RELATIVE TO THE STYLUS does not change significantly during the playing of a record. It's magnitude decreases as some function of the groove radius.

The reason anti-skating force is required is that the arm's pivot DOES NOT LIE ON THE LINE OF THE DRAGGING FORCE ON THE STYLUS. There results a torque on the arm in a clockwise direction. The anti-skating force is there to COUNTERACT that torque, thereby ensuring that the arm is in equilibrium. That is why anti-skating is applied as a counter-clockwise torque on the arm. The force that it is designed to balance out is stronger at the beginning of a record because the frictional drag on the stylus is greater when groove speed is greater.

You can verify all of this by sight with lipless records: with appropriate anti-skating force set, lowering a conical stylus onto the flats at the beginning of a record invariably causes the stylus to jump forward into the groove (inadequate anti-skating force) whereas at the end of the record the stylus slides back into the preceding groove (centrifugally, due to excessive anti-skating force). You can also verify my contention that drag is affected by groove speed by switching to 45 or 78 rpm, and doing the same test. You will then see a greater tendency for centripetal movement, suggesting that anti-skate force needs to be raised.

Appropriate anti-skating force ought to be less towards the centre where the groove is slower, creating less torque for the anti-skating force to balance.
 
all the good condition LPs having been snapped up years ago
Sorry, this isn't true. I still find new (as in sealed) copies of stuff all the time. Johnny Cash at San Quentin, Jaco Pastorius Word of Mouth, Emmylou Harris Quarter Moon in a Ten Cent Town, Ry Cooder Paradise and Lunch, a couple more, all within the last few weeks.
 
And stick that up YOUR arse, sunshine.

Chris


I use an R.C.M. for my records, which somehow brings '****ed' records back to (almost) virgin (!!£&?!) condition. I prefer toilet paper for my arse, though !:)

Yes, a 12" arm WILL reduce tracking distortion, but it unfortunately increases mass. No free lunch here, I'm afraid !
 
But at least do not try to con people who do not know any better that your obsession has anything whatsoever to do with the search for true audio excellence. It is an anachronistic, technologically inferior dead end used mostly for playing sub-standard (all the good condition LPs having been snapped up years ago) old music.

And stick that up YOUR arse, sunshine.

Chris

Inaccurate in the extreme. Rude and unnecessary in tone too. Especially the last two sentences. PFM is a record shop, remember? That's how this site is financed. Also, and as I've stated already: New music is released on vinyl.
 
What makes you think that? I have quite a few. I even have some cds made from cylinder records.

Are you suggesting that most (as in, the majority of) stuff originally released on vinyl or shellac actually is available on cd?

Far more than were ever released on LP.
 
Far more than were ever released on LP.

Far more of the stuff originally released on vinyl is actually available on cd than was ever available on lp? You aren't making sense.

My point is actually simple. There is a lot of music that isn't available on cd. I like quite a bit of that music. I therefore buy it and enjoy it on lp. Which part of that are you contesting, please?
 
I have a nice record player in an LP12, Ekos, Lingo and Dyna 10x5 but I too must now come out and say that CD replay in my system has now nosed ahead of the black stuff on average. Of course I could play you some vinyl that sounds magical and the same goes for some recordings on CD.

I never thought this day would actually come, but there you have it.
 
Far more of the stuff originally released on vinyl is actually available on cd than was ever available on lp? You aren't making sense.

My point is actually simple. There is a lot of music that isn't available on cd. I like quite a bit of that music. I therefore buy it and enjoy it on lp. Which part of that are you contesting, please?

I meant, of the stuff originaly released only on 78, far more of it has made it to CD than LP.

If you listen almost exclusively to classical, the LP is a long dead format.
 
I meant, of the stuff originaly released only on 78, far more of it has made it to CD than LP.

If you listen almost exclusively to classical, the LP is a long dead format and has been for quite a while now.
A valid point I suppose, irrelevant to what I was saying, but hey.
 
...whereas most "old music" will never get a cd release. Which is why a music fan uses both, accepts the strengths and limitations of each, and gets on with enjoying the music.

AMEN! Why do people always feel like they HAVE to take sides and declare one format superior to the other, when they BOTH have well documented technical/subjective faults, but - more importantly - BOTH can sound superb?! I own and enjoy both formats, and try and get the best mastering of an album on the format which gets the best subjective review for its sound. I really do think the mastering is way more important that the respecive merits/demeroits of one format vs another. Heck I've heard MP3s made directly from masters that sound absolutely superb!

The only coda to all this is that when a 16-bit CD master happens to be used to make an LP (remember all those Simply Vinyl issues?!) it often ends up sounding quite different to the master because it has had to go through changes in order to get mastered for LP use. However an LP digitised (using a decent quality ADC) at high-res then converted to 16-bit using something decent like Izotope RX can sound extremely close to the the source indeed...

Use and enjoy both I say, and don't get caught up in any arguments and have to take 'format sides'. Life's wayyyy too short and there's far too much great music available on both formats ;)
 
The stylus sees a straight groove, because it only touches the record at one tangential point. If your cartridge is aligned properly, then there is no practical variation in groove direction during the playing of a record. The groove is always dragging the stylus in the direction in which the cantilever points. That direction of the dragging force RELATIVE TO THE STYLUS does not change significantly during the playing of a record. It's magnitude decreases as some function of the groove radius.

There is 'significant' variation in the angle that the stylus is presented to the groove wall as it tracks across the record, why else would angular distortion exist? Only a linear tracker does not see this change in angle.
 
I buy mainly virgin vinyl.

I use high quality line-contact stylii (Ortofon and Lyra MCs).

I'm extremely fussy about record hygiene and TT set-up.

I rarely encountered end-of-side tracking or tracing distortion with Linn Ittok.

I've yet to encounter end-of-side tracking or tracing distortion with Naim ARO.

No, I'm not deaf or getting deaf.

What's the problem with vinyl?
 


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