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

Bingo!

Get a Audio Technica AT 150 MLX.

Tracks that bad boy perfectly.

 

Well I happen to think the original poster makes a point worth emphasizing.

I have found certain carts, even some rather highly regarded ones, no matter how much care is given to setting them up, just don't track that well and on a "big boy" cut LP like Steve and Kevin's will have problems on hotter passages. I think sometimes people convince themselves they have "tweaked away" sibilance with set up changes like overhang and tracking force etc - I've been there myself - but it you think about it, what is happening is you are then essentially resorting to otherwise less than optimal parameters which then, while perhaps killing the sibilance, can adversely affect the sound in other ways. There is NO good reason you should have to go through great gyrations to kill sibilance on any cart that is an inherently good tracker...in my experience, with the good ones, you simply set them up "normally" (pretty much neutral VTA, usual overhang, tracking force where manufacturer recommends, etc) and they track perfectly. I would get rid of any cart now that isn't capable of great tracking without having to stand on my head to get it.

A great torture test is to play a hot trumpet passage (try Freddie Hubbard when he's really smoking) on one of the Music Matters 45 rpm Blue Note LPs...if your cart has tracking problems, those kinds of passages will expose it in a heartbeat. My Shure V15V-MR has NO problems with these, whereas a number of prior carts I had did. It's not about price or overall quality of the cart, IMHO - even some rather pricey and otherwise great sounding carts have problems with tracking hotter passages, at least on the tonearms I have owned (I realize perhaps they would be better able to track with other tonearm pairings).

But anyway my experience emphasizes to me that tracking is the number 1 first thing to worry about with a cart - just as Steve said - if that ain't right, you're damaging your records and it doesn't matter how good things may sound initially.

Come on my friend...if you can play the drums (which I'm assuming from your avatar, you can) then you can do this! It's really not rocket science and once you do it you'll wonder why you were so worried. That's when the fun really begins, making cart comparisons and finding the one for you...

I don't really know the AT440a but I had an AT150MX previously and found it to be a pretty excellent tracker, though the tonality ultimately wasn't for me (not so much "bright" as "hard" or metallic sounding in the upper mids on my system).

 

Maybe the OP has finally hit the correct alignment with the correct cart? I've experienced IGD too for many years too but after getting the "overhang" correct for my setup, the sibilant issues were all gone, even with budget cartridges!

 

I collect almost any old MFSL releases i can score. If the record is in decent shape it sounds great. Any new releases sound excellent. Using Ortofon 2M Red. I have a 2M Blue but switched back to red for reasons I dont want to explain.

 

Another record I cannot get to track is "Cream Puff War," end of side one on the new mono reissue if the 1st Dead album. This one gives me problems with every cartridge I've tried.

 

My torture test record is the Diana Krall “from this moment on” Classic pressing. That record really needed the 45 treatment. MY two most natural sounding cartridges on the sibilant parts of this record are the Argo-I and the Ortofon X5MC. Both these cartridges have a rising response above 8 kHz which seems like it would make it worse. The X5MC is the old one with the (beautiful) FG2 stylus.

Sibilance can sound pretty nasty in real life if you listen for it. My HD600 headphones also seem to exaggerate sibilance but the Khorns aren’t bad with it.

 

I think my nasty sibilance winner has to be Beth Orton's Central Reservation on the double LP from Classic Records. What were they thinking? How could anyone take such a wonderful album, which sounds pretty good on CD, split it up over four sides and not use all that wax to make a listenable record? Such a waste of vinyl. I set up all my carts myself and inspect them on a high powered binocular microscope at least once a year, and I don't have excessive sibilance except on maybe a handful of records. Many records can still exhibit a trace of sibilance at times even with the very best cartridges. Those cartridges (or systems) that slightly roll off the top end will "fix" that.

 

Agreed about the Beth Orton one, although I think I have an original pressing.

The worst one I found was Alanis' Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie. Granted it probably wasn't intended to be an audiophile pressing, but it's almost unlistenable. I also had sibibilance issues with the Sundazed Mr. Tambourine Man, but I'd like to give Sundazed the benefit of the doubt and think it's an issue with my system.

 

It's really interesting to me, hearing other people's experiences with this. I feel I've been so naive - all these years, when I heard people talking about one cartridge being a better tracker than another, I thought they were just talking about minute variations in tonal quality that I probably wouldn't even notice - I didn't realise they were talking about whether a cartridge could even reproduce the sounds in the grooves accurately! What I just can't get over (but give me time) is the fact that there are very many cartridges out there that simply can't play a challenging LP without introducing sibilance or other forms of distortion in certain passages and possibly even damaging the LP in those passages.

I know many or even most people aren't bothered by this. It's like when someone starts a thread on off-centre pressings and people say, "I've got 50,000 LPs in my collection and I've only ever seen one off-centre pressing. I fail to see the problem." Different people notice, and/or are bothered by, different things. I'm extremely bothered by sibilance and also by off-centre pressings but if you talk to me about inner groove distortion, well, I'm completely unaware of ever having heard it and it's not a problem for me at all. However, I understand the theory of it and I've heard enough people talk about it to recognise that it's a serious problem and I'm just very lucky indeed not to have noticed it... yet!

I've been wondering the same thing and, since I have this LP and am one of the many who find it spoiled by sibilance, I'm really looking forward to carrying out the test. The only reason I haven't done it yet is I only play this LP on special occasions! Though if someone could point me to a specially sibilant passage I can just test that section.

I'm definitely going to start a thread containing a list of LPs that won't track properly without a big boy school cartridge. I'll do it in the next day or two.

A couple of questions, if anyone's interested:

1. Is it actually OK to use a microline or line contact stylus on 45rpm LPs? I thought these styluses weren't recommended for 45rpm singles and possibly they might not be suitable for 45rpm LPs for the same reason?

2. If you buy a very, very expensive cartridge, can you be certain it will play almost any LP without sibilance distortion even if it doesn't have a line contact stylus? Or do they all have line contact styluses anyway?

 

Line contact stylii are fine on the 45 rpm reissues, Joe Harley's (producer of Music Matters 45 rpm series) profile says he uses a Lyra Titan and that has a line contact stylus. The cutter heads used to cut these aren't any different than the ones used for regular 33 rpm reissues.

 

Same here - Steve/Kevin Van Halen and Chris Bellman Van Halens track great on my Technics with 440mla. One thing I noticed about the Bellman VH records is that they have very large deadwax - I would assume to avoid inner-groove distortion as much as possible. I have a couple of records that are hot and go very close to the label - those give my 440mla trouble. If there are other, non-cart factors involved, I'd like to know.

 

The problem with some line contact styli and some 45s has to do with the material used to make the records with - not the speed.

 

That last DEVO release has a lot of sibiliance. Everyone agreed. Definitely the worst offender that I own.

When I upgraded from my m Ortofon Super OM-40 to my Rondo Red, almost all of my igd and sibilance went away on every release I had problems with before. Now it's on a per record basis. I've found a lot of newer releases where they just took a commercial CD and cut the record tend to be the worse. As in the case above, that DEVO record.

 

The only albums I have that have sibilance distortion is the new Rhino Van Halen 1984 (Ease the sssseat back...), and US white label promo/original UK/Universal Japan reissue copies of T. Rex Electric Warrior. This is with a Lyra Delos set up perfectly on a MintLP Best Tractor, top of cart is exactly parallel to a 180g LP, VTF @ 1.750 grams. I have a feeling the sibilance was cut into the lacquer.

 

One LP that gave me particular trouble with sibilance was the "From the Capitol Vaults" pressing of Frank Sinatra's Come Dance With Me. In fact it bothered me so much that it set me on the upgrade trail. For inner groove distortion, Isolde's Liebestod from the King Super Analogue pressing of highlights from Tristan Und Isolde has always been my litmus test. If a system can track that, it can track absolutely anything.

My gut instinct is that rather than the cutting or the cartridge being at fault, the interaction between the Arm, Cartridge and Preamp Loading is the key. No amount of tweaking can compensate for components that just don't get on. In my previous LP12 / Cardas rewired Ittok setup, my Grado Statement Reference 1 with Graham Slee Reflex C phono amp was normally a little bit bleached in the treble, but when provoked with some tracks like Peter Gabriel’s Red Rain from the Classic pressing of SO, it would collapse into a complete mess. After changing to the SME 10 with Series V arm, and getting the setup just right, the top end is smooth and open with no hint of the treble excess of the previous setup. Steve’s Nat King Cole pressings have been a particular revelation here.

 

Agreed.

Sibilance is natural.
It is also very difficult to be reproduced accurately in most systems. The annoying sibilance that people complain about is sibilance that sounds harsh, distorted or overemphasized. This is due to inadequate or inferior equipment or a record that it's been permanently damaged by a turntable that is set up poorly.

A system that reproduces sibilance in a proper way is one that a high end cartridge, tonearm and preamp have been set up properly so that are capable to reproduce a good recording accurately.

When you are hitting the limits of the tonearm and cartridge combination's tracking ability there is nothing you can do other than to accept mistracking as a drawback of your system.

 

I hardly ever find records that cannot be tracked cleanly--without sibilance or other forms of tracking distortion--unless they are used records that have been damaged by a prior owner. Most records are cut at levels that are well within the tracking capability of most cartridges, assuming alignment of the cartridge is spot on (particularly overhang and VTA). For all practical purposes, a good moving coil cartridge has much more tracking ability than is needed. Where I've heard sibilance from most decent cartridges, issues of improper setup (alignment, too high VTA, improper loading, and arm/cartridge incompatibility) better accounted for the problem than inherent cartridge design problems. Because moving coils with narrow profile styli (microridge, shibata, etc.) tend to have quite extended top ends (as well as a significant high frequency peak) and far less dynamic compression than most MM/MI cartridges, there may be a tendency to overload certain phonostages at very hot peaks (singer overloading a microphone, hot trumpet blast).

Yes, I have heard certain quite expensive cartridges mistracking with some extreme excursion records (a Koetsu Jade Platinum playing the very limited reissue of Ray Brown's "Soular Energy"). My own cartridges (Lyra Titan and Transfiguration Orpheus L) have no problem with this or other records.

I heard problems with inner groove distortion and sibilance with an Ortofon Per Winfield cartridge when it was mounted on a really cheap tonearm (a temporary arrangement). That same cartridge performed flawlessly on a better arm. Here, there was an obvious problem with compatibility. Many of the medium to low compliance moving coil cartridges transmit a large amount of vibrational energy to the tonearm and thereby put a lot of demand on the arm to be able to dampen such vibration or drain such energy away from the headshell.

I don't think one has to avoid MC cartridges to get away from sibilance. Yes, the more extended and peaky top end on some might emphasize a sibilance problem that is in the recording itself, but, that is not too common a problem when things are set up correctly.

 

Very true, in my own experience the difference between a really good MM and a really good MC isn't always the night and day difference that some would have you believe and is highly system dependant. Many of the most highly rated MC cartridges are very highly strung and demand that the pre-amp loading be correct to within 5 or 10 Ohms otherwise they sound either too bright or too closed in.

 

I still can't understand how people fail to see how the MM has less moving mass than MC. MM magnets are smaller and less massive than an MC armature with it's four coils and the cantilever is usually shorter on an MM, it's so obvious that you don't even need a scale.
Trackability was the pursuit of the MM design, When was the last time you heard of an MC scoring any high marks for trackability.

 

Surely the way the record is cut makes quite a lot of difference,

With a Technics SL1210/SME 309/Ortofon 2M Bronze I get slight sibilance on "You Can't Do That" from a 70s UK pressing of "A Hard Day's Night". However the same track on my UK "Rock And Roll Music" sounds fine.

 

Just increase the tracking force. Audiophiles tend to want to set this at the low end of the cartridge manufacturers reccomendation, that's understandable as we all want to minimise record wear. But mistracking also causes record wear/damage. Increase the tracking force. Go all the way to the upper end of the cartridge manufacturers reccommended range if that's what it takes.

 

I'm sure many people here know this, but it bears repeating: you are much more likely to cause damage to your records (due to mistraking) by setting your VTF too light than you are to cause excessive wear by setting it too heavy.

 

In my case with the PJ Harvey record, I'm wondering if your UK pressings may be superior to the ones cut over here.

 

See, I told my dealer that I did this with my Sumiko Oyster (increased to 2.3 g, which isn't even the maximum, which is 2.5), and he immediately recommended taking it back down to 1.8 g, which is what he had set it to in the shop when I bought my TT. He said that he wouldn't track any of his records at 2.3 g, as it causes a "tremendous amount of heat and pressure," which could lead to record damage. He's a nice guy and treated me really well as a first-time custormer, but after reading so much conflicting advice online I'm just not sure how far to trust him when it comes to proper turntable setup.