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

I'm just dipping into this thread very quickly to say I've tried starting a list of LPs here:

http://www.stevehoffman.tv/forums/showthread.php?t=255876

I'll catch up with the posts later.

 

I am not sure but he might be right, tracking at over 2 grams would probably induce some wear on the groove even if the cartridge is designed for such tracking weight.

Usually though, tracking higher is safer than tracking lower in the tracking force range. My Dynavector's range is 1.8-2.2.
I set it up at 2.0

 

A VTF of over 2 grams is a lot, IMO. But it is still better than 1.8 g if you are hearing serious mistraking at that VTF. If you're not hearing mistraking at 1.8 grams, I would not recommend kicking the VTF up arbitrarily to 2.3 grams just to be at the high end of the manufacturer's recommended range.

Your dealer likely knows a lot more about the Sumiko Oyster cartridge and how to get the best performance out of it than me (or most others on this forum). I've never even seen one, let alone set one up or listened to it. I would certainly defer to his expertise on the matter.

 

There are too many variables with Lp playback to pin down your sibilance issue but something is wrong if you get it on every record. Speakers can be guilty of sibilance too. Or it can be on the recording- "Little lies" by Fleetwood Mac will have at least some sibilance in any format (Lp or CD) on any system I've heard it on.
"Audiophile" Lp's have been and continue to be something other than what they purport. Experimenting with Cartridge/Arm mass matching, cartridge alignment theories, and MM cartridge loading (adjusting capacitance, and using resistance values other than the "standard" 47K) should get you where you need to be. One reason die hard audiophiles will never give up vinyl- it is the infinite playground.

 

After reading this and similar threads, the issue seems more confusing than ever. First, it seems that sibilance, in some cases, can just be a problem with the recording: for example, it shows up even on some CDs. Second, it can be due to a poorly-tracking cartridge or cartridge-arm combination (as in the subject of this thread). Third, it can be due to an otherwise well-tracking cartridge that is either worn or improperly set up. Fourth, with used records it can apparently be due to groove damage caused by a mistracking cartridge in the record's past. This complexity makes the real problem very difficult to diagnose, especially if the vast majority of your records track seemingly perfectly and you suddenly run into a problem with one or two.

That happened to me recently with some vintage Italian Le Orme pressings I got on eBay. I've only had my system since January--before that I was a headphones-only listener. I got my entire analog and speaker system used (from a trusted forum member), and have been learning a lot over the past several months. I initially did notice a lot of sibilance and inner-groove distortion, and thought it might be due to a worn stylus. That did turn out to be the case: the IGD problem miraculously disappeared after I replaced the cartridge with a Dynavector 20x2. However, on getting a lot of 4 Le Orme albums on eBay, I noticed that 2 of them had really annoying sibilance on all esses throughout the album (not just in the inner grooves). Of course, this could be due to any of the four factors mentioned above. I started a thread to ask other forum members about their experiences with these particular albums, and the general consensus seems to be that they were recorded that way. One poster, however, seemed to think it might be a problem with my set-up. I've since heard a CD rip of one of those albums through headphones and it did indeed sound pretty sibilant. Still, I wish troubleshooting were easier! How can one tell if the problem comes from one's equipment or from the recording? Even more challenging, how can one tell if problems with a used record come from one's equipment or from the original owner's equipment?

 

This is down to experience. As you've found, it's not always obvious when a stylus or cartridge is worn out .. it happens gradually, and one can get used to the sound.

I can hear when sibilance is simply recorded on a disk, and when it's due to mistracking. Mistracking becomes quite easy to hear on it's own.. it's a very distinct type of distortion artifact.

 

I find IGD can be decreased or even eliminated by decreasing the anti-skate adjustment.

 

It's not that complicated.

Poor sibilance reproduction with vinyl is almost always mistracking at the source.

The only exception is if the amplifier is somehow being overloaded and then it won't only be distortion of sibilance.

There is no way speakers can be a cause of poor sibilance reproduction. They only output what is fed into them.

The cause is the stylus in a low compliance cartridge not being able to follow the relatively complex waveform of sibilant sounds.

Doug

 

Progfan all your conclusions and questions are good ones, you don't sound confused. The "Micro Ridge Stylus" is well with inner grooves and used records too. I've been doing vinyl for 30 years and still consider myself a noob, especially the engineering math aspect of it. Btw it occured to me a high output MC was one cartridge the OP used into 47K load and wondered why he got peaky treble (which may well result in sibilance). Are there any high output MC's that won't peak out in the treble into a 47K load? Most dealers either don't know or wont tell you that.

 

I'd take exception to your belief that speakers can not be sibilant, as each speaker has a different frequency response, and if it has a peak around 8K it will sound sibilant on at least some recordings. I played the exact same song on the exact same rig at a dealer when I demoed speakers once, one speaker had sibilance, the other did not.

 

FWIW, and slightly late to the point-but. Paul Simon has a very sibilant singing voice and I would expect that to be evident on any front end- analog or digital.

 

But the thing is, the speakers are not the CAUSE of distorted sibilance sounds.

And, BTW, the terms constantly get misused. Sibilance does not refer to the distorted, unpleasant reproduction of those sounds. Sibilance refers to those types of sounds themselves like sssss or sssshhhhhh, etc.

The thing with different speakers is that one kind may be able to reproduce the distortion or make it more evident through its frequency response and the other can't.

But the speakers don't cause the distortion. It's there before the signal gets to the speakers.

And I would not want to control whether my system displays sibilance distortion with what type of speakers I have. I would want to get rid of the distortion at its source, which is at the stylus/record groove interface.

Doug

 

I've heard the distortion you talk about sometimes at live concerts (which is not sibilance distortion but something so called?), so I don't know if tracking distortion is the only cause as you say in your earlier post. Treble peaks in microphones and speakers along with the person's singing style can do something very similar.

 

Right but we were talking about a home stereo system. At live events, microphone overload and/or preamp overload can cause sibilance distortion because the preamp clips the signal, resulting in the distortion.

When a stylus skips over or bounces around in the groove modulations representing sibilant sounds, a similar thing happens. The normal signal that would be there if the stylus traced faithfully gets distorted by the stylus failing to do so. Of course, this distorted signal gets amplified and reproduced out of the speakers.

The degree of distortion can certainly be influenced by the amplifier's or speaker's response because of the range of frequencies where sibilant sounds occur.

But assuming a normally operating system with no defective amplification stages or speaker drivers, the source of the sibilance distortion has to be at the stylus/record groove interface.

Doug

 

The most common form of sibilance is that of the human voice pronouncing the letter "s." Go to a live opera or choral performance and the sibilance is there (not just a recording/microphone phenomenon). But, sibilance seems more pronounced and annoying when it is heard in recorded music. I hear it with both CD and LP sources, so it is something that is in the recording.

While components may not "cause" sibilance, they certainly can exaggerate what is in the recording. Speakers can do that by having a peak in the @ 2k to 8k range. Amplifiers that are bright sounding or have a hard "attack" (exaggerated edginess to transients) will make the problem worse. Cartridges with an excessive peak in this same frequency range, or which ring when hit with a sharp transient, or which are mistracking, will of course make matters worse.

Which kind of cartridge tends to make exaggerate problems with sibilance? As a gross generalization, I would say MC cartridges. They tend to have a more extended top and some have a rising response at higher frequencies. But, most of the better MC cartridges have a peak that lies above the sensitive frequency range (mostly ultrasonic). Loading with a resistor in parallel with the signal will electrically dampen such peaks, but at some loss of liveliness and upper end extension and "air." The Lyra cartridge designer, Jonathan Carr, said that he generally prefers cartridges to be unloaded, and speculated that problems with brightness and sibilance from the cartridge being unloaded might be related to the ultrasonic peak overloading phono preamps that can't handle such energy. I don't have any problems with mistracking with the MC cartridges I own, so, if certain other cartridges manage to track higher modulation levels of torture test records, that is largely irrelevant. I think that proper setup and choice of other equipment can reasonably mitigate most problems with sibilance, but, I will not deny that it is easier to avoid that problem with MM/MI cartridges.

While most MM/MI cartridges tend to be less prone to exaggerating sibilance, I find that there is usually a tradeoff--a duller sound, less detail, loss of ambient cues and a natural sounding decay to notes. Like anything else with audio, one always has to live with tradeoffs.

 

Interesting. I don't know anything about compliance but I'm going to find out about it and its relationship with tracking ability.

I wish we could hear more about other cartridges that have a high tracking ability other than the Shure V15 series, no longer available, and the AT440MLA, which is almost the only one anyone ever talks about. There must be many others.

I don't know, cara - I'm almost persuaded but I still feel tracking comes first and the rest, though very important, comes afterwards. If your cartridge isn't tracking faithfully, then surely, no amount of "getting on" between the other components is going to restore the missing or distorted information?

I agree Paul Simon's voice can be hard to track but is it his voice or the bright recording sound he favoured? Some artists do seem to present more challenges than others, either because of their voice or because of the recording style they favoured. As well as Paul Simon, I find Stevie Wonder, Peter Gabriel, Rickie Lee Jones and Karen Carpenter can sometimes be difficult, and Nat King Cole can be a good test of your system.

 

I don't believe that is what the OP is talking about.

Some recordings have more sibilance than others. Ok. Things like EQ, speakers, etc can emphasize or deemphasize that sibilance. Ok. Whatever the case, it should still be *clean*. I.e., like this:

SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

The problem the OP has is with sibilance that becomes distorted. Like this:

STHSTHSTHSTHSTHSTHSTHSTHS

This distortion is usually not the same in both channels, so centered elements with a lot of sibilance (cymbals, for example) smear and spread out a bit.

One issue is that styli with larger front to back profiles (spherical, conical and most elliptical) often can't physically fit in the more tightly packed grooves of sibilant passages. So they begin to ride over them, causing distortion (and likely damaging the records). Styli with smaller profiles (line contact, microline, Shibata, etc) can better fit into those grooves and thus have a better chance of tracing them correctly.

 

Yep.

..and the reason that many talk about the AT and Shure carts is that they offer these types of stylus profiles at affordable price points, with reasonably well engineered electronics to back them up. Those that dwell in the high end could probably recommend carts that would sink the Shure and AT in a nanosecond - but not everyone is able to dump a few grand on the cartridge alone.

To the credit of the SH Forum high-end folk, they even often say nice things about these carts. They may not ever use them except for a back-up system, but they seem to appreciate the value for the dollar.

 

Not strictly true as a tip too big for a microgroove would jump or stick rather than just cause sibilance. All but extreme budget cartridges have fairly small tips no matter what profile. Note that the better cartridges have extremely small diamonds. The conical Denon 103 has in fact a smaller than normal tip for this type of cartridge hence it's continued popularity. There are variations in eliptical profiles also giving more extended groove contact v a true eliptical shape. In fact the ability of a line contact to dig out the high frequencies should make it more suseptible to picking up recorded sibilance.

Obviously there are other elements of the design of the cartridge which affect trackability such as cantelever and suspension. Another factor is the cartridges compliance in relation to the mass of the arm used. My guess is that in the OP's case Nagoaka's are not a good match to the SME V. Medium to high mass arms are more suited to med/low compliance cartridges mainly MC types. I don't think many cartridges are poor trackers under real world conditions. Differences are usualy only highlighted using test LP torture tracks. AT cartridges tend to punch above their weight as the company is much larger than other producers resulting in economies of scale. Also they appear to allow large discounts as opposed to the likes of Ortofon.

There are plenty. Most of the Ortofon range, Denon, Transfiguration, Lyra, Goldring etc. Look up magazine and internet reviews which usualy address this aspect of performance as well as effect on sound quality.

 

Setup is vital, you won't hear me disagree about that and optimium setup will render most combinations listenable most of the time. At the level of equipment most posters on this forum are using truly awful products are as rare as golden hen's teeth. But at the most fundamental level, if components that need to work together have elements that work against each other then no amount of adjustment can compensate for it. This is just as true of Amplifiers, Speakers, Cables and Supports, but it's particularly troublesome at tonearm/cartridge level though, because of the scale (microvolts and micrometers) that they work at.

 

Other than setup, I don't know what could account for excessive sibilance with all the different cartridges tried by the OP. I have some familiarity with the SME arm, and it does a very good job when it comes to tracking. Using the same Transfiguration Orpheus cartridge, and an old Shure IV obstacle course test record, higher modulation levels were attained with the SME than with a Basis Vector III arm or the Graham Phantom. I don't think the arm is contributing to mistracking by rattling (poor resonance control), unless the bearings on the arm have been damaged.

Tipped up frequency response exaggerating sibilance that is in the recording should also NOT be an issue with the Grado Prestige Gold cartridge--if the Grado is too hot, then hardly any cartridge would work. I am not surprised that the Blue Point sounded sibilant; that is a somewhat peak and rough sounding cartridge.

Perhaps the OP is just particularly sensitive to sibilance that is actually recorded in the grooves of these records. It is possible that the CD release has less sibilance because the remastering engineer made edit/corrections to mitigate the problem. Also, many CDs actually have a softer top end than the record (they will also sound shut in because of that).

 

Talk to Steve and Kevin:

"Let’s take a look at cymbals and vocal sibilance (those loud ‘S’ sounds). "Why", do you ask, "Do they sound OK on the tape but sometimes so awful on the record?" The answer is twofold. First, the problem is aggravated by the high frequency boost we just discussed. Further excessive boost in your mix makes it that much worse. Unlike a cymbal crash in which the impulse is short (the actual hit of the stick on the cymbal), the duration of an ‘S’ is considerably longer, so it is even more pronounced. And second, the worst part: Remember the river? Suppose the river’s twists and turns are actually tighter than your raft? Ever watch a raft attempting rapids? Well, that is exactly what your stylus is doing when it hits a loud cymbal crash or a loud ‘S’ in the record groove. At the instant that the curvature of the groove is tighter than the tip radius of your stylus (raft), it goes over instead of through ‘the rapids’, and you have 100 percent distortion. The higher the frequency and or level, the greater the curvature and distortion."

http://www.stevehoffman.tv/forums/showthread.php?t=106876

If this really wasn't an issue, there would have been no need to come up with the Shibata profile for CD-4 (quad) records.

Most microgroove styli are about the same width (side to side), but while conical and spherical styli will have the same dimension front to back, elliptical and line contact style have a far smaller front to back dimension.

See above.

Again, sibilance isn't the problem. Distortion because the sibilance isn't traced correctly upon playback *is*.

 

That's what I said. Something is wrong with this equation. I can get elliptical styluses to track with no major sibilance problems, even Grados, which actually reproduce vocals extremely well.

 

I have one copy of Johnny Mathis's first Greatest Hits mono LP (an essential LP to pick up in a used record store, thrift store, etc.) that is sibilant on When Sunny Turns Blue, and another copy of the same album without sibilance on that track.

 

I agree with Brad above...

sibilance may be due to a bad pressing...try another copy of the LP...